TWD - Glenn and Maggie

Hi all

The TWD project continues with 2 more long term characters from the TV series.

To start we have Glenn Rhee.   Glenn's voice is first heard using a radio to talk to Rick when Rick is hiding in a tank in the city of Atlanta. Glenn uses the radio to rescue Rick from the horde of walkers surrounding the tank, and guides Rick to the location of his group, which consists of Andrea, T-Dog, Merle Dixon, Jacqui, and Morales, hiding in a department store. Glenn is agile and quick along with a flexible but logical thought process making him ideal for foraging and scavenging in the post apocalyptic world.

I have depicted him here with his trademark baseball shirt and cap as well as the baseball bat he uses in earlier shows.  I have made him up from the now familiar WGF male survivor boxset with a simple arm swap.

Next up is Maggie, daughter of Hershal and sister to Beth. Initially, Maggie is inexperienced and ignorant of the apocalypse, being largely sheltered at the Greene family farm, but once Rick's group arrive, Maggie quickly grows into a fierce and skilled fighter, becoming proficient with weapons and participating in supply runs for the group. Maggie forms a casual relationship with Glenn after becoming aware of his crush on her, but insists it is purely a temporary arrangement, until she later realizes after a series of events that occur that she has fallen in love with him, eventually leading to their marriage. Their relationship is tested in numerous ways over the course of the series and is currently the longest lasting pairing in the show, as is Maggie's brutality and has been shown to be perfectly willing to kill people threatening the group.

Maggie is a straight up build from WGF female survivor boxset, however the trick was trying to decide how to arm her?  in the TV series she has carried just about every firearm that can be represented on the sprue.  In the end I plumped for the shotgun she has brought from the family farm. In the series she often wears her pistol holster low down on her thigh, so i did the same for her to try and bring some character out.

enjoy 
dGG

16:23 (+7)

figs bought:painted (difference)

TWD - Daryl and Carol

Hi all

on to the next offering for my TWD project and here we have an unusual pairing. Before the apocalypse it would have been highly unlikely that Daryl the redneck biker misfit and stay at home mom Carol would have been moving in the same circles.  Now after all they have been through as a group the two have them have formed an unlikely bond.

Daryl is the younger brother of Merle - a bullish, racist and unsavory character who very quickly puts himself in opposition to Rick Grimes who as a cop represents his checkered history of crime and imprisonment.  Daryl on the other hand although superficially seems the same, shows loyalty to the group and becomes a trusted friend and capable tracker/fighter for them.  An interesting point of trivia is that the role of Daryl wasn't in the comic or in the original script for the TV series but was added after Norman Reedus, the actor who plays Daryl read for the part of Merle and blew the writers away.

Daryl was a straight build from the WGF male survivor set with xbow arms from a different fig attached.  I also used the chubby guy's head as well as it has a goatee beard plus the slightly longer hair.  The paint job is simple as he tends to wear unrelieved black, but he does have a distinctive jacket back patch, which i have tried to recreate.

Carol evacuated her home with her abusive husband Ed and her daughter Sophia in hopes of a safe haven in Atlanta. Nearing their destination, she came into the company of Lori grimes and Shane Walsh, who had evacuated the city. The Peletiers then joined a camp of survivors. Following the deaths of her husband and daughter, Carol formed a close bond with fellow Atlanta camp survivors Lori and Daryl, and she became the adoptive mother to Lizzie and Mika Samuels after the death of their father, Ryan, and formed a close, but complex bond with Tyreese during the fall of the prison.

Carol, along with Michonne are my favourite characters in the TV series as they are just totally badass.  In the comics the apocalypse gets too much for Carol and she ends up become more and more neurotic eventually killing herself.  I made her up from the WGF female set and painted her up in her reds and browns.  As Carol goes further on in the apocalypse the more heavily armed she becomes, here she has dual pistols. I was thinking of adding either a shotgun, BA rifle or an assault rifle but decided not  to overload the model.

enjoy
dGG

16:21 (+5)

figs bought:painted (difference)

The Walking Dead (TWD) project - the beginning

Hi all

There's lots of excitement/negativity/chatter about the new "the Walking Dead" game soon to be released by Mantic.  I've seen a lot of comments good and bad about what the game is going to include, game type - will it be RPG? will it be a board game? etc etc. I know some of the people who read this blog are backing the Kickstarter and that's great, they are adding stretch goals all the time and smashing them constantly which can only be good. I personally like Mantic minis and have loads of them, bulking out my Orcs and Goblins WFB army and hundreds that almost completely make up my Vampire Counts WFB army (one day I'll photograph them and show them!) so I'm looking forward to the game.  More to the point, I absolutely love the TWD franchise and watch it religiously. I did read quite a few of the comics but unfortunately my daughter fell out with her friend who was supplying me with them! 

So to the point of the post, which is I'm starting yet another mini project which is based on the characters of TWD. Yes I know there are bespoke 'not' TWD minis, some really excellent ones by Studio Miniatures and Hasslefree which normally I would be all over, except I've got to conserve the gaming tokens for Salute, which is just round the corner in April.  So I decided to be a bit frugal in a tribute to one of my favourite blogs, now sadly stopped - "a year of frugal gaming" by Frugal Dave (I really loved that blog, shame Dave no longer blogs, it was because of him and a competition he ran that I turned away from GW and started gaming other genres! But I digress....) I decided to use my existing resources to come up with the goods. The challenge of the project is to be completely cost neutral, to only use resources i already have. To this end I raided my Wargames Factory sprues and came up with my starting survivor group.....The Grimes family. (My apologies for the poor quality of photography, hopefully Rich will offer up his services and I can show them properly, but you should get the idea!)

For Rick I had already used up the cops figures from the Male Survivors box set so needed to source a different pose/body, in the end plumping for the cricket bat wielding male. I chopped the hand that had the bat off and replaced it with the hand of the little girl survivor from the female boxset, this gave him his big ass revolver that is trademark Rick Grimes. I was going to give him the head with the deputy's hat but wanted to save that for Carl. Painting him I used Vallejo Khaki for his shirt and citadel Mournfang brown mixed with black for his trousers and tie.

from season 1

Carl was based around the boy from the male boxset but was given the cowboy hat wearing head from the females boxset. For his pistol, I chopped the machine pistol that comes with the fig down to resemble a simple pistol and added the end of the sprue to represent the home made silencer Carl uses later on in the programme.

home made silencer

To round out the Grimes's I put together everyone's favourite mom (yeah right) Lori together as a pretty much standard build from the female set. The Lori trademark, apart from being a mopey b**ch is the checked shirt which I made a half decent attempt at using purples.

a much villified Lori

Although not part of the Grimes family , I also put together another survivor that joined one of my recent ATZ groups, armed with a BA rifle he later found a SAW when he killed an Army Officer and I add him here as I painted him up at the same time....lol The SAW I constructed from a Bren gun on the Bolt Action WWII British Sprue thay i have for that game and chopping the Ak47 that came on the fig in half and glueing the two together.

Enjoy

dGG

16:23 (+7)
figs bought:painted (difference)

Immediate medevac required....roger that, Helo 568 is inbound...

Hi all

A little while back as you may know, I purchased a model helicopter kit 1/48 version of the Westland Wessex. A venerable old aircraft it was used extensively by the RAF and the Royal Navy for search and rescue as well as anti-submarine warfare duties back in the 70's and 80's. This model took me right back to my childhood and I was very easily persuaded to paint it up as I remembered it.

Eventually I decided to do it as the Navy version as I had the source material on the box as well as plenty of online pics. Also there is a Wessex in the Spitfire museum less than 5 miles from my house. So please find my version below...

next to my BA downed RAF pilot

Firstly the astute purists amongst you will note that I have not attached the ASW modifications to the aircraft, this was deliberate. I wanted a sleeker look plus I figured any useless additions would be jettisoned by the crew in order to preserve fuel in an apocalypse, I mean zeds don't drive those subs do they?!? Plus there were some slight issues with me mixing the variants up a bit to produce a chopper that was pleasing to my games.

I painted the model using Citadel paints and washes, the interior was painted before final assembly so I could get the detail done. The extensive decals really make the model and I'm pleased with the way it looks. It was fairly easy to put together and overall I would rate the model as really good.....however......it does look a trifle big! 

Measured against a 28mm mini, the cockpit and bench seats and indeed the whole model I'd say are spot on. But then you compare it to my buildings and it starts to look very disproportionate and way too large, in fact it is too big for my helipad I put on my hospital. When I put it next to my 4ground buildings it is the length of 3 terraced houses! Now it is in reality a big aircraft, but not that big! So I'm not sure what to do, I like it a lot and have already used it in an ATZ scenario but I may have to get another chopper to fit the scale a bit more and be a bit more aesthetically pleasing......oh well

oops!!

enjoy
dGG

16:20 (+4)
figs bought:painted (difference)

Coppers

A long while ago I was looking for some paramedic miniatures to start to go with the hospital set up I was looking to build. Some time back, Bryan aka Vampifan recommended a range of models from Warmacre. So I duly looked them up, loved the set and purchased them. Very shortly after I had them painted and posted them!

Now in the same set came these crackers, that until now had been sitting on the paint table with only a primer coat on....

The good ol British Bobby! With no firearms these guys enforce the law using their persuasive powers, pepper spray and a good old fashioned truncheon (well ASP!) British coppers are a great set of people and I have nothing but admiration for them and the job they do! Literally they have saved my skin on more than one occasion when I've been working. So this is in honour of them.....thanks lads and lasses of Her Majesty's Constabulary.

16:19 (+3)
figs bought:painted (difference)

TMNT - mutated muscle!

hi guys, sorry i couldn't wait till Friday to post this (I'm going to have a mid week post for a little while as i have 9 posts backing up as i'm getting loads of gaming time in!)

Following on from my TMNT posts, the last reinforcements for the Foot Clan faction have muscled their way in.  Thought to be two original protaganists of the Turtles, Bebop and Rocksteady didn't make it into the lineup until the Turtles cartoon had taken off in 1987 and were actually a marketing ploy as the manufacturer of the TMNT action figures -Playmates told Peter Laird (co-creator of TMNT) that they needed more mutants to oppose our heroes.

Rocksteady and Bebop from the live action film due to be released

Bebop and Rocksteady were introduced in the series as part of a human street gang in New York City that was employed by Shredder. Rocksteady was a short and stocky blond Caucasian man, Bebop was a taller African American man with a purple Mohawk. With the other members of their gang, they were sent out to stop a Channel 6 reporter named April O'Neil from doing a report about crime in the city. April ran down into the sewers while being chased by the street gang and met the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who then defeated the gang in a fight.
After this humiliating setback, The Shredder developed a plan to defeat the Turtles by mutating members of the street gang that Rocksteady and Bebop are a part of so that they would have abilities greater than the Turtles'. Rocksteady and Bebop both volunteered to undergo the procedure (though neither was particularly aware of what it would entail) first with the promise that it would allow them to exact revenge on the Turtles. As the result of being brought into contact with a common warthog and a black rhinoceros that Shredder had abducted from the zoo, Bebop mutated into a humanoid mutant warthog while Rocksteady mutated into a humanoid mutant black rhinoceros.
Although the transformation did make them larger and stronger, they remained incompetent simpletons and were completely inept at stopping the Turtles or carrying out Shredder's plans. Throughout most of the series, they tried to attack the Turtles with brute force, without applying knowledge and strategy.

Before I show my humble efforts I also need to introduce you to another addition to my Foot Clan faction - Warlord Krang!  Krang was a warlord from Dimension X. To punish Krang before sending him from Dimension X, Krang´s brain was stripped from his body and his body reduced to a brain-like form. Banished from Dimension X, Krang ended up on Earth.
While on Earth, Krang allied himself with the Shredder, who, along with his robotic Foot Soldier army, moved into the Technodrome. In exchange, the Shredder had to design and build a new body for Krang, a human-shaped exo-suit. Shredder lived up to his part of the bargain, in no small part because he was unable to deal with the Turtles and needed Krang's help. Krang's ultimate goal is to take over the Earth; it probably only became his objective after he was exiled on the Earth, but this point has never been made clear. Every plan Krang conceives is either aimed at that goal, or towards the short-term objective of powering-up the Technodrome. He does not share Shredder's obsession with the Turtles and Splinter; while Shredder sees them as mortal enemies, Krang seems to regard them more like annoyances to be destroyed when they interfere in his plans. He and Shredder are constantly bickering about tactics and often take pleasure in the other's failings.

from the upcoming live action film



Evil Inc, the boys from the Foot altogether

 So here's my version of Bebop, Krang and Rocksteady.  the figures are from Greebo Games and are part of their Fantasy Footbal range.  I've tried to paint them up with the original colours from the 1987 cartoon series as the mutants did not make it into the comics until afterward.

Rocksteady and Krang were fairly easy to paint up - Krang is citadel's Warlock Purple shaded with Carroburg Crimson and his robot body painted up in human flesh shades. Rocksteady in various shades of grey with Vallejo's German Fieldgrey for his combat pants and Vallejo khaki for his workboots.

Bebop was a bit more of a challenge as i wasn't really able to decide what flesh tone to for him, is he browns or greys? i went for both in the end with a Vallejo sea grey washed with 3x coats of reikland flesh tone to give a unique skin tone ;-P

All of the figures are multi-part metal models which is a major pain in the backside with lots of pinning, superglue, filler and swearing involved in their construction as well as the now obligatory polyfilla base.  Apart from the oversized hands on Bebop which are ridiculously big and heavy looking, these models and the other Greebo Games figs for this range are amazingly good.  Really decent sculpts, joyful to paint and look spot on for the TMNT genre.  Other figs that I didn't buy were a Baxter model and his mouser robots and the foot clan ninjas (i prefer the Crossover sculpts) The Turtles themselves in the range conversely, while still excellent sculpts, don't do it for me and i'm more than happy with the figs i got from MyWay miniatures and i said earlier i prefer the Crossover ninjas than the Greebo's.  The only problem I had with Greebo's, apart from the slow delivery (still within their promised delivery date though, just slow compared to what we are used to!) is the prices.  The minis are quite expensive, with the cheapest at nearly 7 Euros each and the bigger ones nearly 8 each so it can be quite prohibitive but I couldn't help it when I clapped eyes on the figs.

Now i've painted all of the models for each faction up I need to game with them and I intend to use 7TV2 as the system as a bit of a trial and see how we go.  I will report back to you to see how it goes.  In the meantime.....

enjoy

dGG

16:15 (-1)
Figs bought:figs painted (difference)

This is April O'Neil reporting for Channel 6.....

Hi guys

*please note the pics of the miniatures are my own feeble efforts and not the much better quality of Rich's*

Last time I showed you some TMNT stuff it was members of the foot clan, that shadowy criminal organisation of ninjas that provide the majority of the muscle for a certain sinister, armour clad master of ninjitsu - Oroku Saki aka The Shredder....

the shredder

Oroku Saki is the younger brother of Oroku Nagi who had been killed by a fellow ninja Homato Yoshi (the owner of Splinter, the Turtles' mentor) in a feud over a woman named Tang Shen resulting in Yoshi fleeing with Shen to the United States.

Angry at the death of his older brother, Saki joined the Foot Clan and trained to be a ninja. He quickly became one of their deadliest warriors and rose up the ranks and was chosen to lead the Foot's American branch. Operating in New York under the name of The Shredder, Saki used the opportunity to avenge his brother by killing Yoshi and Shen. Under Saki's leadership, the Foot participated in variety of criminal activities, including drug smuggling, drug running and assassination.

Shredder was mostly represented as a Japanese male dressed in stylised samurai armour, enhanced by bladed bracers, Sode (pauldrons) and Suneate (greaves). in the 2014 movie he became more mechanised by Michael Bay (Transformers Director) and imho a little bit ruined, I enjoyed the film but much prefer the traditional image of the Samurai.

robot Shredder.... :(

Anyway this is my interpretation of the Oroku saki, the model is from Greebo Games, an Italian firm.  There was a little bit of stress getting the figures shipped with a bit of a delay, but he was well worth it! A little bit pricey too....

I painted him in the traditional purple - Citadel Xeres purple and shaded with Leviathan purple ink.  His breeches were Fenris Grey and inked with Drakenhof Nightshade.  The rest was Runefang silver and Shining Gold.  the base is one i've scratched up with polyfilla (spackle).

Facing off against the Shredder and his dark minions is Master Splinter

Splinter was the pet rat of a ninja named Hamato Yoshi in Japan. Intelligent for his species, Splinter was able to learn his master's art by mimicking his movements while he practiced. Without a home, Splinter was forced to run away and live in New York City's sewers. Due to a traffic accident, four baby turtles and a canister of radioactive ooze were sent down into the sewer, where they mutated both Splinter and the turtles. Splinter named the four turtles Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo (after a book on Renaissance artists that he found in a storm drain) and trained them in the arts of ninjutsu, so that they should take revenge for his dead master, while still raising them as his own sons

from the 2014 movie

This is my intepretation of Splinter, the miniature again from Greebo Games part of their Fantasy Football series.

I've painted him up in a red kimono, which is the one he seems to be wearing in most of his incarnations, whether it be comic or cartoon or film.  I thought I would use a yellow trim instead of black as it gave the mini a little more colour and set the kimono off better. The base i tried to get to look like a sewer grate.

Lastly for this post I bring you some much needed allies for the turtles - Casey Jones and the glamorous face of the franchise April O'Neill...cue pics of a hottie!! oh and a pyscho....

Casey Jones played by Stephen Amnell of Arrow fame

Megan Fox - yum yum

When Jones was young, his father, Arnold Casey Jones Sr., owned an auto shop. A group of Purple Dragon members (led by a young Hun) burned the shop down, killed his father and took his mother and sister hostage. The badly beaten Casey refused to lay down and take Hun’s blows. He attacked Hun with a knife, stabbing him in the neck. Enraged, Hun had beaten him to within an inch of his life. It seemed that the beating he took from Hun as a teenager resulted in several mental and emotional disorders, explaining his often violent and erratic behavior.

New York City, where Jones is from, was overrun by criminals. Enticed by examples from TV, Casey decided to do something about the crime in the streets. After equipping himself with a hockey mask and various sports clubs, he began his vigilante campaign.

He started his career with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when he ran into Raphael beating up a pair of muggers. When Raphael let them go, Casey proceeded to "finish them off," but was stopped by Raphael. The two clashed but eventually helped each other take down additional muggers that appeared after their fight.

In the original Mirage Comics storyline for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, April O'Neil was a skilled computer programmer and assistant to a famous yet nefarious scientist Baxter Stockman. She helped program his MOUSER robots but, after discovering Baxter was using them to burrow into bank vaults, she fled his workshop. Robots chased her into the sewer where she was promptly saved by three of the Turtles. The Turtles later successfully fended off a MOUSER invasion.

After leaving her job with Baxter, April decided to open an antique shop. The shop was subsequently destroyed in a battle between the Turtles and Shredder and the Foot Clan. April and the Turtles retreated to a farm house in Northampton, Massachusetts to recover and during this time she suffered recurrent nightmares about the Foot Clan's attack.During the mid-1990s, April became romantically involved with the violent vigilante Casey Jones, and the two of them eventually adopted a child named Shadow.

In later incarnations and the films she is portrayed as a journalist and news reporter for Channel 3

So here are my efforts, again from Greebo Games, Casey Jones is listed as Hockey Joe but it is definitely the vigilante.  April O'Neill is sculpted with bare legs for the football game by Greebo but I painted her with black leggings as i did not see it as practical for a reporter or computer programmer.....

Casey was painted using a series of greys and grey/blues for his clothing with white hockey equipment.  April I used Citadel Inyanden Darksun and shaded with Sepia.

More to come but for now enjoy....

16:12 (-4)

figs bought:painted (difference)