Modern Wargaming | Azazel's Bitz Box.

Today we have the entirety of the Zombicide 1e Boxed set “Murder of Crowz”. I think I had two sets of these, and painted five of them a year ago with rural/fantasy-style basing – as I’d picked them out to use as Dark Eldar Razorwing proxies years ago (still need to set up 40mm nesting bases for those ones) I never found the rest of that boxed set – so there’s 10 more of these Crowz missing somewhere!

I found the contents of this set in a tub under the painting desk, and suggested to Marouda that we work together to try and get them finished as quickly as possible – asking her to help with the fun task of mold line trimming. In short, we succeeded, and they went from bare grey plastic to painted, varnished and blood-spattered within 24 hours over this Easter weekend.

I just gave them simple grey, lightly-textured bases. I mulled over adding some road markings to them, which would have looked a bit better, but this way they’re very usable in Black Plague as well as still being fairly incongruous in any other fantasy games. Like, if I ever need Ravens alongside Vikings – or Razorwings for my Dark Eldar/Drukhari. Not to mention a Hitchcockian nightmare for our Zombicide games.

Sure, they’re simple, but they’re comppletely fit for purpose for boardgames and miniatures games, they pass the “four foot” test, and most importantly – they’re now painted!

And then, between finishing them and writing this post, what else did I happen to find? Yes.. that’s the Black Plague box version of the same figures. very much direct echoes of my last post’s postscript when another box of Death May Die investigators arrived just as I was finishing my “last” Investigator!

Damned if this post doesn’t have an overly-complicated nightmare of a title. So.. for those masochistic enough to read this… here we go

One of the original bonus survivors from the original Kickstarter of Zombicide 1e, which I missed by like a week was “Dave”, based on Jim Parson’s portrayal of Sheldon Cooper. Along with characters like El Cholo (Danny Trejo as Machete) Nick (Bruce Willis in Die Hard) and Ivy (Angelian Jolie in Mr.&Mrs.Smith), These original bonus figures were never re-released, although their character cards were, and a collected box containing their Zombie versions did become available late (if you got lucky – which I did only about a year ago).

I eventually found proxies for both Bruce and Angie, but old Sheldon has been a much tougher find. Wanting to get the thing done, I recently plucked my Hasslefree HFA066 William – who I understand is a model inspired by Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and just went with “good enough”. I never watched Buffy, so no big deal for me to use this model as Sheldon. So combining William with Zombie Dave and we have a workable pair to use as “Dave” aka Sheldon Cooper in our games, thereby completing the Big Bang Gang in the short timeframe of only… (checks earlier posts) almost-nine years.

Oh.

Our second figure is only slightly less convoluted. We have “Kirk”, who bears no real resemblance to Captain James.E, but instead was designed as a caracature on the increasingly-corpulent former action star and current vatnik, Steven Seagal. Now my original idea for this model was to paint him with a Ruzzian flag on his t-shirt and a big-arse Z – one on the front and one on the back. The problem was that I would then need to occasionally play as this putin sucking, carrot eating piece of shit. Aaaand.. well, I just couldn’t do it. I mean, I have German WWII armies (along with forces from everyone else from the European and African theatre) but when playing the Germans I’m under no illusions or delusions that I’m playing as the “good guys”, even if I’m playing as Rommel’s DAK.

For some reason, I’d be much more inclinded to paint a “Z” modern russian army for Team Yankee, if only as a “supply both armies for games” OpFor for the eventual Ukranian force that I want to paint with an interesting mix of NATO and Pact hardware than to play as an individual like Seagal as one of a few living survivors I’m trying to save. So.. unable to stomach playing as Steven, this model sat on my desk. For over a year. So with the bar set exceedingly low, I eventually settled on painting him bnased on J. Allen Brack. The Warcraft developer from Blizzard Entertainment who is infamous for his “You think you do, but you don’t” comments in response to a question asking for Classic WoW servers – which turned out to be clownishly wrong…

Also not someone I’d particularly want to play as, but better than Seagal, anyway.

Azazel's Bitz Box.

Painting, Modelling, Miniatures, 1:6, Games… Whatever else I find interesting.

Category Archives: Modern Wargaming

Zombicide 1st Edition: Murder of Crowz

Zombicide Survivors & Zombivors “Kirk” (Not-Steven Seagal) painted as J. Allen Brack & Hasslefree Miniatures HFA066 “William” (Spike from Buffy) painted as “Dave” (Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory)