TWD - Sasha and Gabriel

Hi all

A little bonus post before tomorrow's regularly scheduled one, just cos it's a bank holiday.

To continue my TWD posts I give you Sasha and Gabriel. Now before people kick off i know that it should be Sasha and Tyreese or Sasha and (potentially) Abraham but I wanted characters to fit the games I play and ones that I can source frugally i.e within my already massive collection.  Using WGF models I have made several different TWD stars and now I needed some snipers.  

Gabriel is a deeply religious, generally well meaning but also severely traumatized man. He is shown to have had extreme difficulty adapting to the nature of the post-apocalyptic world and instead retained his old ways and Christian faith.

Gabriel was initially shown to be a coward as instead of helping members of his congregation by giving them shelter in his church he refused to let them in (possibly out of fear), resulting in them being devoured alive by the walkers. This event has had a lasting effect on Gabriel and he is extremely damaged and remorseful as a result of it. He believes himself to be a bad person, smitten by God, initially even believing that Rick Grimes' group was sent to punish him.

When he meets Rick's group, Gabriel begins to see the reality of the new world, but remains in disbelief of certain attributes such as that cold blooded murder and even killing of the walkers is a necessary means of survival. He still retains his religious faith even as a result of witnessing true horrors, and is one of the few members of Rick's group who still holds religious faith.

I chose Gabriel after putting together my civilian - Isiah with his bible and crucifix, however I wanted Gabriel to be armed with a bolt action rifle as it fills a need among my survivors for my ATZ games.  Gabriel has a shaven head in the TV series, which isn't on the sprue so I needed to sand down the hair from one of the heads before attaching it to the suited body.  This figure is also armed with an assault rifle which i had to snip off before gluing the BAR in its place.

Sasha Williams was a former firefighter before the apocalypse, Sasha belonged to a small group led by elder brother Tyreese, trying to find a safe haven, and soon became one of the newcomers at the prison acting as a council member. After the downfall of the prison, she formed a relationship with fellow newcomer, Bob Stookey. After the deaths of Bob and Tyreese, she suffers from severe distress and trauma, resulting in isolating herself and refusing to invest in the community of Alexandria, believing its concept of trying to re-establish normal life to be false and an avoidance of the harsh reality of the apocalyptic world. Eventually, she comes to an acceptance of the community and wanting to live and thrive following her grief. She is currently the last surviving prison newcomer, and only known survivor of her family and previous group.

Sasha was a relatively straight up build from the WGF set except for a quick weapon change from assault rifle to BAR, again to fill a spot on my survivor roster.

hope you enjoy

dGG

16:26 (+10)

figs bought:painted (difference)

TWD - Michonne

Hi all

Carrying on with my TWD project which had started to gather some momentum in the Grotto, but must come to a temporary halt due to university commitments. But who to do next? well it had to be one of my favourite characters in TWD, the katana wielding Michonne!

Michonne's backstory is slightly different in the comics to the TV show, in which she appears at the end of season 2 as a mysterious wanderer who saves the life of Andrea - part of Rick's group who got separated from them following a zombie attack.  Using two mutilated zombies (her former boyfriend and his best friend) as a mask from being attacked by other zeds as well as loading them with supplies and using them as mules, she has moved around a great deal before coming into contact with Rick's group via Andrea.  Suffering from the trauma of losing her son and lover in the apocalypse has meant that Michonne preferred to keep to herself or with Andrea rather than joining the main group until later on.

from the graphic novels

from season 2

ok so how did I do her.  First I made up the obligatory WGF plastic female survivor, the have a number of heads and one particular head fits the bill almost perfectly (just needs a bandana, which i didn't do, wish i had now though...) arming her with the biggest blade on the sprue, it's a shame it's not a katana but needs must when you are living within your means lol. I wanted Michonne to come with her trademark chained zeds so I then mounted her on a 60mm round mdf base I had left over from my Bolt Action crews, I added a polyfilla cerb and path as well as female zed that has been sliced and diced.   The zeds themselves were from the male zombies boxset from WGF and I just either did not add arms or chopped off arms at the elbow!  Mrs Gobbo had a broken necklace that I used as a chain to shackle them to Michonne, it just needed rusting up using citadel "rust".  Michonne was painted using citadel Mournfang brown and black mix for her skin and hair, washed in brown for the skin and black ink for the hair. Her leather vest was painted Vallejo Saddle Brown and the pants were Citadel administratum.  To round off the base and to cover the integrated bases of the zeds I hand painted some newspapers as street litter.  The headlines are quite shocking "Apocalypse" and "NHS sold to Big Pharma" says the Sun, "It's Poor People's Fault" screams the Daily Mail, with the sports pages filled with events being cancelled.....

this is the last of my TWD posts for now, however if there are fave characters that i've missed then let me know who they are and i'll have a go!

the gang in action!

hope you enjoy

dGG

16:24 (+8)

figs bought:painted (difference)

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)