Zombicide: Black Plague - Grom painted

Lately a friend of mine brought the newish CONAN board game to our club meeting and lead us into the world of Hyboria. This however brought an old love to life again. Although I've never been a true fan of Robert E. Howard's I wasn't able to escape from the very special vibes of the iconic 1982 movie. Anyway I had to channelise this inspiration and turned my attention to Zombicide: Black Plague again and digged out the survivor which is clearly inspired by the famous Cimmerian: Grom.

Grom was one of the characters that came as an Kickstarter exclusive additional buy. Together with his companion Thalia (an obvious interpretation of Red Sonja) he was available for $18 but now the duet it's listed for much higher prices on the secondary market.

The paintjob was pretty much straight forward. As you see our barbarian friend is hot blooded enough to go with the absolute minimum of clothing. Thus there was a lot of skin to paint and it was indeed a very interesting experience to work out his enviable muscles. The six skin tones of Wargames Foundry's excellent paint set were of invaluable help of course. For the other parts yours truly employed different shades of brownish colours.

The base is covered with the usual mix of sand and stones, painted greyish brown and drybrushed slightly. It will receive some pieces of clump foliage and static grass later but not before Grom is varnished. As usual I took the pictures before.

Well then... Next time our gaming group heads for smashing some zombie heads we'll have a sturdy companion. He looks pretty able to plough through hordes of undead.

Zombicide: Black Plague - Klom painted

From time to time I leave the fields of history and take a walk back to the realms of fantasy where my passion for miniature painting started ages ago. So it's very suitable that a fantasy game with excellent figures has become our favourite board game with friends: Zombicide: Black Plague.

Hence after having painted a couple of heroes last year to start with I turned my attention to a supplement with heroes based on artworks of Paul Bonner. It includes four characters of very different appearance: A dwarf, an ogre, a female sergeant and an inquisitor. Although I prepared all four of them the most impressive figure took my attention first:

Klom the Orge

Klom is a massive figure measuring 42mm in his stooping position. That means that all parts on this miniature are large enough to deserve a special share of attention. On the one hand that makes painting this fellow rather time consuming but on the other hand that delivers the chance to try out the limits of skill.

As usual I employed Wargames Foundry colours for the skin parts and a variety of Vallejo colours for the other parts. It was a great experience to work on the larger areas and try to work out the folds of Klom's gown. But the most exciting part was the face. It's significantly larger than at other 28mm miniatures and it's full of expression. The large scale granted me the chance to go much deeper into the facial traits and I'm really satisfied with the result.

As you see the base isn't finished yet but I couldn't wait to take pictures. I'll keep the base simple because Klom's chain unfortunately blocks the way of the brush.

Some great sources of inspiration for this project where the Zombicide web page which holds the character card and some background information about Klom (here). Besides that gifted Michael Awdry painted him last summer and created a wonderful interpretation of this crumpy fellow (here).

Final Rush: 15mm T-72 for Team Yankee

Actually I thought that the boat would be my final entry for this painting challenge but then I regonised that only 30 points were missing to fulfill 500 points goal. Luckily I've been working on a couple of 15mm T-72 tanks during last week. I inserted a night shift yesterday and a final rush this afternoon. So here we go:

All ten T-72 tanks.

The models are plastic kits from Battlefront's Team Yankee range. They are pretty easy builds but nicely models on the table anyway. As usual I primed them and gave them a thin coat of the Sovjet greenish base colour.

Numbers one to four...

Then some ink (Armypainter 'Strong Tone') and a couple of different layers of drybrushing. After all I wanted a 'quick and dirty' technique because I'm afraid the the Sovjets will obtain much more reinforcements than my German Bundeswehr in which I but some more work for the three colour camouflage sheme.

... numbers five to eight...

After all I'm pretty satisfied with the result. I haven't applied decals yet because I'm not sure for which country to field them. I'm undecided between Red Army and East German Volksarmee though...

... and finally numbers nine and ten.

However that's my final entry for this year painting challenge then. It was great to join the bunch and I enjoyed the many tremendous entries a lot. Many thanks to all participants and especially to Curt for taking the efforts of organising the gathering again!