Boobs, birthdays and blogging

Happy New Year!  Welcome to da Grotto 2016.

Last year, or at least the last part of last year from when I restarted this blog, I had been heavily into zombie war gaming and there doesn't seem to be any abatement in that enthusiasm for the genre going into this year either.

Over the Christmas holiday I was mainly working night shifts on and off for the whole two weeks, but I was fortunate enough to have Christmas Day, during the day at least, off. Even more fortunately I managed to persuade the family to join me in a festive family game of Zombies!! Using the tiles from game 1 and game 3 (the mall version). Even Mrs dGG was in a festive enough mood to join us.



nothing says festive like zombies!



the full board!

 I had a fantastic haul of shiny toys over the festive period, which for me not only includes Christmas (obviously) but also my birthday! I will be painting up and showing on this blog the whole bally lot.  So a few things to look forward to (or at least for me anyway....) below is a picture of my haul which include the excellent Grekwood hospital zombies and beds to finish off my hospital project, a box of Wargames factory zombies, a couple of cool Studio miniatures survivors, a certain gang of pesky kids from Hasslefree miniatures (by the way amazing customer service from these guys and obviously corking miniatures - what a great company!) and a certain group of teenage mutants from MyWay, a Russian firm and an entire faction for Bushido from GT studios as well as buildings from 4Ground to complete my last terrain tile. Like I said all will be painted and reviewed in due time.

the haul! sans ninja turtles and scooby gang

On the subject of Hasslefree though and the first miniature to be reviewed from the haul is the boobs part of the title.... 

May I introduce Violet, so called due to the colour I chose to paint her skimpy outfit.  She is listed by HF as Jade but I liked the purple colouring I chose so the name Violet seemed more appropriate. In the HF blurb Jade is from Las Vegas and is a former showgirl who found a katana from somewhere.  Violet has a similar background, being an exotic dancer from Spearmint Rhino (a UK based strip joint...sorry gentleman's club chain) when the apocalypse began she fled the club with a katana that was kept behind the bar for protection from amorous punters.



take a twirl Miss Violet



as always i apologise for the poor lighting of the photos as i use my iPad, not having a camera or indeed any skill with cameras.  Violet was undercoated white and painted with GW Tallern Flesh, washed with GW reikland flesh and highlighted with raw Tallern then lighter highlights added using tallern/white. The top, shorts and shoes were painted with a 50/50 mix of GW Xerus purple and white scar and washed with GW purple ink. the stockings were white scar washed with the 50/50 mix purple/white and then highlighted pure white. the base was a polyfilla (spackle for you north americans) cover with the cobbles picked out with a toothpick.  Im going to start doing all my bases with a bit more care and thought from here on out and even rebase a few of the older zombies/survivors as it is an area of the modelling that i have largely ignored in the past (criminal, i know!) 

I'm still on nights, in fact i'm writing this on my meal break at 04:00hrs after being on shift for the last 9 hours straight so i hope that it's coherent.

Happy new Year guys and here's to a shiny, happy 2016 filled with games and toy soldiers!!