Zombie of the Week #44: Phelan

Phelan

Another rotting rank and file member of the undead horde of Karloth Valois, Phelan stumbles through the ruins of a pillaged world.

Gangly Flesh Eating Corpse

Better late than never heres Phelan.

Phelan is a gangly old GW zombie from the 80′s that I painted up in 1998 (or possibly even 1997) or so.  At the time I was playing Necromunda a fair bit, as I never played much 2nd ed 40K because it was absolutely awful.

While I never played most of the cool oddball style games derscribed in the Necromunda Outlanders supplement, I did very much enjoy reading about them and thinking about playing them.  That was where I first became inspired to collect zombie figures, in order to stage a zombie incursion  in the Necromunda setting.

Phelan was one of the figures that I bought for that purpose and as such he has been used in a lot of games since.

Like all of the figures in the that stage of my ongoing zombie project, Phelan was painted to a lower standard than the other figures that I was painting at the time (my Sin-Eaters are good examples of that standard) simply because I wanted to get a reasonably large horde on the table as fast as possible.

Technical Difficulties

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Regular programming will be resumed as soon as possible, not later than Monday.

Sin Eaters Chaos Lord Eddie

Chaos Lord Eddie

Eddie remains the leader of my Sin Eaters Chaos Marine force, although they havent taken to the field very often since 2003 or so.  Of all of my Sin Eater figures, Eddie may have seen more tabletop action than any others.

Eddie is based on a Fabius Bile miniature that I got in a discounted lot in 1998.  His head is a plastic Marine Sergeants which had its nose cut off and has been reworked a little to look like his face is pinned on to his skull, but thats not visible in these shots.

Eddies shoulder pads are late nineties metal chaos pads.

Jump Pack, Lightning Claws and Shrunken Head

Eddies Lightning Claws were made from plastic power fists with Dark Eldar blades stuck to the fingers.  The right fist comes from the original RTB01 plastic Space Marine box set.  The cables running from his claws to his jump pack come are made from bent styrene rods.

Eddie broke a nail at some point in his travels (the left hand ring finger) and I never replaced it.  It is quite appropriate for avatar of decay such as he I think.

The jump pack is the old metal one that was released in the mid eighties.

Eddie has the honour of being the only miniature that I ever painted that featured in his own portrait in White Dwarf magazine.  As the miniature was painted a long time ago now, there are things that I would change if I painted Eddie again.  He looks just fine the way he is all the same.

Eddie took part in a very large number of games during an era when I was playing a lot and getting a lot of enjoyment out of it.  For that I salute him.

Zombie of the Week #43: Will

Will

Will wanders the Cursed Earth, his insatiable appetite driving him endlessly onward.

Cannibal Corpse

Regular readers will at this stage know already that Will is one of the rapidly prepared, making-up-the-numbers zombies that I put together in 2002 or so.  Like almost all of my zombies, he got a bloody facelift of sorts in 2009.

Sin Eaters Raptors: Squad Boyle

Sergeant Boyle and Melta Gunner

Squad Boyle was a pretty late addition to my Sin Eaters army.  They nonetheless got used in a tournament or two as well as in a number of casual games.

Jump Packs

My income levels at the time were pretty low (a perennial condition at sho3box towers Im afraid) and so I used a few components that up until that point I had been avoiding, in the interests of keeping things cheap.

Sergeant Boyles Head

Most notably in that regard was the use of the quite goofy zombie head with the beard and the tongue hanging out from the GW zombie sprue.  For the earlier squads I had avoided that head as I regarded it as a bit too wacky for my purposes.  Finances were low and I had a number of those heads sitting around so I decided to use one along with the new-at-the-time Space Wolf heads (and a Khorne head).

Bolt Pistol & Chain Axe, Plasma Pistol & Bolt Pistol

At that late stage of painting an army (roughly about 80 models or so into the project I would say) painting techniques tend to have evolved, usually in the interests of expediency.  In addition to that slighly more oddball units and concepts start to crop up, usually in my case in an effort to keep interest up.  Hence the heavily armed unit of jet pack-ing zombie space soldiers.

Plasma Pistol & Chainsword, Bolt Pistol & Chainsword

There has been some crazy talk about playing some small games of 3rd ed 40K amongst SOS and MT recently.  If my resolve breaks and I engage in some of those shenanigans it will likely involve games that include the more elite and oddball units like Squad Boyle.

Zombie of the Week #42: Craig

Craig

Craig spent years preparing for the worst.  He had his shelter, his canned food, his uncontaminated water, his rad-counter his guns and ammo.  Whatever was coming, Craig figured that he had what he needed to wait it out.  He was wrong.  Locked into his shelter Crag was just another type of canned meat to the infected cannibal corpses of his loved ones, against whom he had no defence.

Undead Survivalist

Craig is yet another hastily prepared zombie from the 2002 era, made mostly from leftovers from other projects.  While he fits in fine mixed in with the rest of the horde, he isnt going to win me any prizes or anything.

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Sin Eater Plague Marines: Squad Klaus

Sgt Klaus (left) and Plague Marine

Squad Klaus was the first unit that I painted for my Sin Eaters, waaay back in 1999.  As the Sin Eaters was going to be an exclusively Nurgle Chaos Marine force I decided to start with two ten man Plague Marine units, the first of which was Squad Klaus.

Plague Marines

Squad Klaus is made up of plague marines with bolters.  Half of the miniatures are the old plastic plague marine three piece plastics and the other five are old metal plague marines, including the original, very first ever plague marine model, Klaus himself.

Corrupted Defenders of Humanity

The all plastic plague marines are a lot cruder that the stuff that GW has made since.  In the interests of keeping costs down I squeezed them in alongside the nicer metal figures.

Zombie Soldiers

Like Squad Damien, I painted these guys a certain way.  As time went on and I painted more and more Sin Eaters the techniques evolved a bit.  The figures still look like they are part of the same uniformed force, but the paint application techniques changed.  Compare the white armoured areas on the marines in Squad Nemesis with these guys and you should be able to see the difference.

Plague Marine and Plague Marine Plasma Gunner

Squad Klaus hasnt had as much time on the tabletop as I would like, mostly because while carrying a bolter may be iconic in terms of the 40k-verse, in terms of gameplay it doesnt cut it (or it didnt when I used to play.  I dont know what its like now really).

I hope to remedy this with some skirmish games that feature Klaus and co at some point over the next year or two.

Squad Klaus Combat Squad 1...

...and the plastic Combat Squad 2.

Zombie of the Week #41: Jonah

Jonah

Jonahs career route went from underhive kingpin to scavenging bottom feeder almost overnight.  Not that night really even exists beneath Hive Primus.

Futuristic, Undead Serf

Jonah is an old Necromunda zombie miniature that I quite like.  He got painted in 1998 or so and has appeared in very many games since.  Like all of the 1998/1999 zombies he got a small painting “facelift” in 2009.

The old Necromunda zombies are still available I think and there are either 4 or 5 poses if memory serves.  From what I have seen they are pretty much the only sci-fi zombies around, even if they have a lot of that futuristic dark age prole look about them.

There are plenty of modern biters available from a lot of sources, but few sci-fi ones.  Personally I would love to see some jumpsuit/boiler suit/spaceship crew zombies with some sci-fi trappings in my figure cabinet at some later date.  Some raygun gothic, Adam Strange & Buck Rogers type zombies from spaaAAaace would be fun too.

Customised Claustrophobia

I waffled on about the Claustrophobia boardgame a few weeks ago, here.  Seeing as I have an affliction with regard to customising boardgames I inevitably did a little bit of that with my copy.

In my defence, the changes that I made to these were actually quite quick, easy and most importantly practical and useful.  In comparison with the usual purely cosmetic stuff (colouring in the edges of the board sections with a marker for example) these are functional rather than simply aesthetic changes.  Not that I didnt colour in the edges of the board and counter sections in my copy of Claustrophobia you understand, I did that too (of course).

Customised Claustrophobia Contingent

In an average game of Claustrophobia the human player will control either the majority or all of the figures shown above.  Some of the characters will also have “Object” cards assigned to them.

Six Objects feature in the Claustrophobia box: Blessed Hammer, Sceptre of Command, Blunderbuss (x2), Shield of Steel (x2).  Some of these can be carried only by select members of the force and only one character can end up with any of them (the Redeemer).

I found that I regularly forgot which of the almost identical Condemned Blade figures had the Blunderbuss or whatever during the game.  I decided to add magnetised Objects to the figures to function as a memory aid.  A cute, painted, magnetised memory aid.  Its a long time since I played with them as a kid but I still reckon that magnets are cool.

The Redeemer with his Sceptre of Command strapped to his back.

The Redeemer can carry any of the objects so the main concern was to ensure that all of the objects could be attached to this figure.  Although there isnt any visible strapping or anything, the objects can attach to his back, over his cloak.  This is of particular note when attaching his huuuge Blessed Hammer.

The Sceptre of Command ended up looking more like a Staff of Command in the end, mostly so that it was long enough to be attached to his back without looking too weird.  The staff is made from part of a Mordheim lantern with a ribbon and crescent moon thing from a High Elf sprue attached to the end to gussy it up a bit.

Condemned Blades with Blunderbusses

The Blunderbusses can be carried by either the Redeemer or the Condemned Blades.  Again, their isnt a visible piece of strapping or anything that could be holding the weapons on the Blades backs.  You will just have to use your imagination.  The Blunderbusses themselves come from the same Mordheim sprue that contributed the piece that became the Sceptre of Command.

The blonde Condemned Blade game card (courtesy of BoardGameGeek_

The Condemned Blade figures are distinguished by their hair colour only, even though the art on the fair haired Blades card depicts that character as wearing a blue scarf.  A quick lick of blue paint sorted that out.

Note that the figures from Claustrophobia are prepainted to a decent enough standard but mostly flat colour.  As a result I didnt go to town painting the Objects or the Blades scarf.  I didnt want those pieces to be highlighted or shaded or anything as then they would have looked a little odd in comparison with the figures themselves.

Condemned Brutes with Shield of Steel and Blessed Hammer.

Finally the Condemned Brutes.  These are my favorite figures in the set, which is full of cool figures anyway.  I like the leather butchers aprons, the lethal looking combination pick/hammer and the Hannibal Lecter bite mask.

The shields and hammer come from Terminator sprues.  The Maltese Cross look of the shields is very in keeping with the crusading feel of the game.

Zombie of the Week #40: Rivers

Rivers

V-gas exposed subjects have proven receptive to “Pinger” technology.  This allows for rudimentary manipulation of weapons, up to and including area effect anti-personnel weapons.

Undead Incinerator

Just like Mike and Leo, Rivers was put together in a cynical attempt to wring some more playability out of my zombies by making them feasible as a unit for WH40k games, hence the flamethrower.  Rivers still occasionally makes an appearance in games, but a lot less than his flamethrowingly challenged brethren.  Rivers might be getting on the gaming table again soon for some Incursion I reckon.