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.

Zombie of the Week #36: Leo

Leo

Development of subjects after enhancement procedure has improved  to the point that area effect firearms are feasible issue.

Dystopian Warrior

Leo was assembled and painted some time around the turn of the century for use in to some 40K games along with Mike.   The reasoning behind a zombie carrying a flamethrower is spurious, but there you go.

In retrospect I should have converted a zombie in mid-projectile vomit for use in those games as a “counts as” flamer.  You live and learn I suppose.

Sin Eaters Brother Chaplain Bakul

 

Not very Xmas-y, but what can you do?

Brother Chaplain Bakul of the Sin Eaters (note the eeevil Rosarius)

According to the 40K fluff, all of the original Chaos Marine Legions bumped off their Chaplains during the Horus Heresy.  The Word Bearers held onto their guys (they became Dark Apostles if memory serves.  Big into their false idols those Word Bearer scamps). While I understand that GW wanted to give the Chaos Marines their own identity and feel, I do think that the idea of a eeevil Chaplains of the Dark Powers leading Space Marines into battle is potentially fun.  With that in mind I put this guy together on a whim in 2001 or so.

Lots of Skulls on the Shoulder Pad and the Backpack Nozzles

Brother Chaplain Bakul is entirely plastic and is covered in enough skulls to make a rocker blush.  It reinforces the Chaplain skull motif I suppose, although spiky skulls are perhaps my least favourite element of GW Chaos stuff.

Yet More Skulls on the Shoulder Pad and on his eeevil Crozius Arcanum

I don’t like the way that GW have canonised the colour schemes for Chaplains (black), Librarians (blue), Techmarines (red), Apothecaries (white) etc.  I think that the additional colours can ruin a palette and are often unnecessary. 

 Additionally, GW policy seems to be to cover the relevant miniature in that colour when perhaps just a little of it would suffice (for a good example check out the jarringly blue Librarian that features with the Blood Angel Terminators in 3rd Ed Space Hulk.  It ruins the effect in my opinion.  And don’t get me started on the Blood Angel yellow helmet=Assault, blue helmet=Devastator thing.  Ugh). 

The Chaplain is the least offensive of the marine specialists in that regard as adding some black to a scheme isn’t as disruptive as adding an actual colour to it.  Still, when I added a Chaplain to the Sin Eaters I wanted to use the minimum amount of black to make him stand out a bit without ruining the army uniformity.  I think that it worked fine.  Not brilliant, but not awful in my opinion.

“Bakul” apparently means “sweet smelling”.  Ho, ho, ho etc.

Zombie of the Week #7: Mike

"Mouldy" Mike

Mike doesnt really know what is going on.  He knows just a little more than the horde of plague zombies that follow him around, but not that much more.  The battery in Mikes bionic eye still seems to be working, but it is questionable as to how much Mike even uses his eyes anyway.

Zombie Hero

“Mouldy” Mike was painted up with another couple of zombie figures in 2001 or so.  He was intended to be used as a zombie leader for a squad of cultists that were at the time a legitimate part of my Sin Eaters Chaos Space Marine Army.  Although I used the cultist stats when gaming I figured that using a rabble of zombies from my collection would be in keeping with the Nurgle theme in the Sin Eater force.

A leader zombie is a questionable concept really, but at the time it was a concept that I was willing to accept in order to make my army (already shackled in terms of unit selection due to theme) that little bit more competitive.  And so the min/max slide continued, paved with good intentions…mostly.

As the rest of the zombies that Mike was “leading” were pretty generic I decided to “sci-fi-him-up” a little.  Hence the addition of the silly but fun bionic eye.  Mike also allowed me to use one of the zombie bodies from the GW sprue that looked the least feasible in a modern or sci-fi setting.  Reasoning that Mike is in a position of authority and the he needed to be easily identifiable on the tabletop I used the body with that tatty looking tea-towel like “cape”.  Regal, no?

Sin Eater Terminator Lord Zarak

Lord Zarak

Lord Zarak is pretty ridiculous looking really, but I like him all the same.  I had had a chaos terminator captain figure for a while but hadnt got around to painting him.  He was an older figure than those used in Squad Romero and was a little more slight.  I wanted to give him something that would make him stand out dramatically from the other Terminators, but didnt know what.

It dawned on me to use parts of the whip arm thing (cant remember what it is called) from the parts left over  from the Brother Rhinox kit to make the inner “thumbs” of his scorpion-like Lightning Claws.  The larger, totally OTT parts of the claws are made from bits of a plastic dozer blade from some Imperial tank bit or another.

3/4 view showing some arm detail.

The piping coming hanging below his arms is a bit crude but whatever.  It was simply made from bent paper clip.  The Nurgle logo on the shoulder was made from bits of styrene rod and strip.  The trophy pole is a bit taller than the poles on Squad Romero which helps to identify Zarak as the boss while simultaneously making him that much more ridiculous looking.

His name comes from the binary bonded nebulan partner of the Transformer Scorponok.  Scorponok himself invariably has big scorpion claws for hands in all of his iterations, so obviously that is where that comes from.  The original G1 Scorponok also had a sunglasses type look that I crudely emulated with a green stuff “visor” over Zaraks eyes.

I painted Zarak about a year or so after I painted the other Sin Eater terminators.  By then the painting method I was using to get the base colours was slightly different.  In the context of the grubby look that I was looking for it doesnt really make much difference.  I have always found that when painting a large number of miniatures with the same scheme that the style changes as I progress, usually in an effort to speed the process up.