Zombtober 2017 Finale: 15MM Mordhiem Warband!

Happy Halloween folks. 

I hope you are having a ghoulishly good time. Yet again Zombtober has drawn to an end in a flurry of rotting flesh and undead gore. And what a zombtober it has been! It has been great to follow everyone's blogs and see how their zombie hordes (and survivors...lots of bloggers did survivors this year) have blossomed. The world of wargaming is now a considerably deadlier place. 

My humble efforts have seen me complete an undead warband for my 15mm Mordhelm project. Three zombies, four ghouls, three dregs, a necromancer and a vampire have all made it off my work bench. 

Today I have completed the Vampire Thrall who will be leading my warband. This is Ivan von Drak, an agent of the von Carstein family, whose business in the ruins of the cursed city of Mordheim is dark and mysterious. 

And here is Ivan von Drak with his warband (minus one zombie who is still waiting to have his base re-done after his little accident).

15mm Zombtober Ghouls

OK, not actually zeds, but close enough. These are four ghouls for my 15mm Modhiem undead warband. These miniatures are by Oddzial Osmy, and are very nicely cast and sculpted. Ghouls in Mordhiem are a rank and file troops type that serve their dark masters in return for a chance to engage in a bit of cannibalism. They are faster than the shambling zombies, but are not as tough. I also plan to get some more of these to use as ghouls for my 15mm Vampire Counts Warhammer army. 

In addition to the ghouls I have managed to repair one of the Dregs whose sword snapped off while I was painting it. This is unusual for a Demonworld figure are they are normally surprisingly durable. Anyway, I filed off the sword hilt and added a brass spear I had left over from my English Civil War pike-men. I also added a shield off a skeleton warrior (also from Demon world). This Dreg is Vlad "the Impaler".

15mm Chain of Command Battle Report

I managed to get a game in with Vlad at the Earlswood Wargamers last week. We played Chain of Command, using Vlad's 15mm scale figures. I played an american rifle platoon supported by a couple of M5 Light tanks, and Vlad played panzergrenadiers. 

For this game we plated on a 6x4 table and kept all ranges etc the same as they are in the 28mm scale game. this gave the game a different feel than using 28mm figures, as the perspective was altered to make the battle field feel much more open. it has other advantages to, as vlad was able to offer a vast choice of support options for me to choose from, from Shermans to M10s, to artillery and antitank guns. the low cost of 15mm tanks compared to 28mm scale means that you can pick and choose freely, so each battle will be quite different. 

Vlad's scenery was lovely too, and this was the first outing of Vlad's complete set. 

We played a strait forward meeting engagement, with my infantry platoon advancing up a lane in Normandy, and running into the Germans coming the opposite way. 

Here are some photos...

An M5 Light tanks moves rapidly up the lane, scouting out potential German positions...

 Sneaky Panzergrenadiers emerge form a french farm house ready to sping an ambush. 

Having spotted movement in a ruined farmhouse the Yanks deploy along the hedgerow. 

German MG's pin the Yankee gun team in place while a squad of Panzergrenadiers assaults their position breaking their moral and driving them off.  

A German NCO directs fire from the ruined farm house...

The lead M5 uses its co-ax MG to rake the Panzergrenadiers behind the hedge. But what is this coming around the corner of the lane?

A German Panzer IV comes in to view and opens up on the M5....the plucky little tank is damaged but continues to rake the German infantry with MG fire. 

The American GI's move up to support the tanks, one team throws smoke to try to protect the M5 from the Panzer IV.

One of the American GI sections breaks under sustained fire from the Germans. 

The M5 was eventually knocked out by Panzerfaust, having survived two shots from the Panzer IV and a Panzershreck from the Panzergenadiers command section. 

This battle ended in a victory for the Americans...but only just. The American force was down to one force moral when the loss of a junior officer drove the Panzergenadiers force moral to zero...you couldn't get a close fought battle. 

Second Zombie for Zombtober 2017

A week late, and with a tale of so much woe it will make you weep... Here are two more undead for my 15mm Mordhiem warband. The first is a Dreg called Fester, who serves the necromancer by gathering up body parts to make zombies. The second, as it is zombtober, is one of the walking dead. 

I painted these last week but only got round to photographing them today as the light has been so poor all week. I also painted another Dreg (Igor) but managed to break his sword while basing him, and so he will have to have some more work on him to give him a spear or something. What is more While bringing these two figures in from the garden I managed to trap my finger in the door, then as I jumped from the pain dropped these two and broke them off their bases! ARRGGGH!!! I think I am cursed this week. 
Anyway. this is what they looked like before I broke them...

 

Back for Zombtober: Back for Good!

You have, I am sure, noticed that I have not been blogging for almost a year. I won't dwell on the reasons why, but would prefer to be more positive and look forward now. My friends Leon and Simon have asked if I would participate in Zombtober 2017, and I said I would. Having something of a shortage of zombies on my work bench I decided to bend the rules of zombtober just a little and have chosen to paint up an undead warband for a 15mm Mordheim game I am making. This will include some zombies, but also some ghouls, a vampire, a necromancer and a few dregs (the Egor and Renfield type characters). I will also cobble together a few bits of 15mm Mordheim scenery that should give them the right feel. If funds and time permit I might get some more suitable minis later in the month and add them to the collection. 

This resumption of bloging will not be limited to Zombtober as I have a lot of other ideas for wargaming projects, and I will be showing them off soon, along with pictures of a few of the projects I have been working on slowly over the last twelve months. This will include more Sharp Practice figures, some more 15mm Warhammer, Home Guard for Operation Sealion, and some 3mm(!) scale WW2 stuff for Rommel. 

Without further preamble here is my first entry for Zombtober 2017 (a few days later than planned). These are 15mm figures from the Demonworld range by Ral Partha Europe (RPE)...

Renfield (A lowlife Dreg)

Close up of Renfield's face...impressive sculpting for 15mm!

Zombie number 1

Zombie number 2

The Necromancer

Zombtober 2016: Final Halloween Round Up

Happy Halloween fellow Zombtober followers and other readers. I apologise for not posting yesterday but I have been swamped at work and so on, but I have finally got round to finishing my final Zombtober entry for 2016. Looking back at my goals for the month I haven't done too badly- I have painted 8 stands of 15mm zombies (including two unit fillers), which is the equivalent of a regiment of 48 zombies in Warhammer. I have also painted six scenery pieces, with a couple more in progress, which is great, as I now have enough 15mm terrain to at least get started with games of minihammer, although I want lots more. I have only painted one vampire so far, but as I have been concentrating on zombies for Zombtober I think that is excusable. 

The best bit about Zombtober for me is seeing how well everyone else progresses over the month. Most people seem to have opted for modern zombies, which is interesting, and zombie survivors.

I have thoroughly enjoyed Zombtober this year, and the extra motivation it provides, and I am already thinking about what I can do next year. Happy Halloween and congratulations to everyone who finished the Zombtober challenge! 

Here is a picture of my completed zombie regiment- at eight ranks deep it will have some staying power even if it lacks combat potential. 

The scratch-built Corpse Cart came out rather nice

Marcus von Drak, my vampire thrall, in heavy armour looks suitable imposing. 

 These three zombie 'skirmishers' were left over from the rest of the project. I plan to make some 15mm Mordhiem warbands in the future, so these three, and the vampire, will form the nucleolus of an undead warband. 

This is my unit filler- The tree and grave marker were from Peter Pig

Here Marcus Von Drak is exploring the site of a desecrated temple

This is a field for my Sylvanian peasants to scrape out a merger existence from. I was going to have a crop of pumpkins for Halloween, but alas I have been too busy to make them- may be next week?

And here is my undead 'army' so far...

Zombtober 2016: Bring Out Your Dead Part 5

 I will have to confess that the zombies I am showing this week are actually the ones I painted last week but never got round to basing because of a shortage of brown paint. Anyway, due to one reason and another I never got any more zeds painted this week, but I did base them up, so here are the zombie regiment so far, including the unit filler. 

The main reason I haven't been able to paint more zeds is that I have spent my spare time making and painting scenery for my 15mm Warhammer game. I usually spend more time painting figures than making and painting scenery, yet I enjoy both aspects of the hobby. I find when the terrain muse strikes it is best to go with it or I end up with lost of half finished buildings and terrain. The theme for this terrain is the Vampire Counts homeland of Sylvania (so it does tie in to zombies and zombtober, all be it in a tenuous way). 

First up, this is a tester for a swamp- Sylvaina is full of zombie infested swamps and marshes. This is a test make, and I am not sure about it. I might have to come back to this idea and try a different approach. 

I am more happy with these two testers. These are my Sylvanian peasant's hovels. Sylvania is a poor land, and its benighted common folk live in squalled conditions, constantly struggling against famine and disease, while living in abject terror of their dark masters, the Vampire Counts.

I built these models without removable roves as it was much easier, and in warhammer a building like this would normally count as impassable terrain, so their is no need to put models inside. My earlier trial houses were more 'realistically' scaled to 15mm figures but were too big for the battlefields, so this is a compromise. 

Finally, to go with my Garden of Morr, I figured that a ruined Temple of Sigmar was needed. Sylvaina was once a part of the empire, before the Vampire Wars, and there have been several attempts to 'rehabilitate' the region and bring its people back into the Empire. Attempts to re-establish the state religion in Sylvanian have not been successful and the region is home to more that one desecrated Sigmarite temple. 

Scum and Villainy: Mother Agnes

Mother Agnes is a wretched figure, typical of one of the countless billions of human refugees who fled the destruction of their home-world, Earth, during the Slythian War. She can be found living rough in a spaceport in the rim, eking a living by begging and steeling. Most travellers in the spaceport walk past the pitiful old woman without even registering her existence, which is a mistake, because the wiser traveller knows that Mother Agnes sees and hears many things, and is more than happy to divulge what she knows for a few creds or a shot of rum. 

Zombtober 2016: Bring Out Your Dead Part 4

Another week of Zombtober is over and it has been going well. I have been looking over the other blogs that are participating in this zombtober and I have seen lots of icky zombies and desperate survivors. It's been great fun to see everyones zombie hordes taking shape. 

My own zombie horde has expanded (I painted another 12 this week), but sadly due to a shortage of brown paint i haven't managed to get many based up ready to be photographed. I did, however, manage to get this little unit filler painted and based, so I will submit this as my entry for this week. I am going to Games Workshop to pick up some more paint later today, so hopefully I will be able to do a midweek update when I get the latest zombies based up. 

The grave stones came from Peter Pig, and the zombies are from Ral Partha Europe. 

Here is my unit filler ranked up with last weeks Zombies. 

 
And here is my new 15mm Garden of Morr.  This is my new pride and joy, and having spent the best part of three or four evenings on it, it is probably the most work I have ever put into a piece of terrain. Although it is not an exact replica of the Games Workshop Garden of Morr, I think it has captured the essence of the original model.

The 15mm skulls and gravestones are from Peter Pig, while the other bits are scratch built of are from my Games workshop bits box. 

Scum and Villainy: Halson Nax and Crew

Work continues apace on the 15mm zombies for my mini-hammer Vampire Counts army, but in the mean time here is a post of some figures I slapped some paint on last week. I painted these for my Scum and Villainy range. This is an ongoing and occasionally-added-to collection of Sci-Fi figures that I paint purely for fun. As with my Frostgrave collection, the Scum and Villainy collection features figures from many different manufactures and games: basically anything that I think fits with my image of my Sci-Fi setting. I haven't really got any hard and fast rules for what I can include in the collection, but if it helps you can imagine it as something of a cross between the inhabitant of Mos Eisley and the cast of Serenity. 

 Halson Nax is a well known face in the outer rim, where is plies his trade as a salvage on board his ship, Scuttlebucket. He has a reputation for taking risks in pursuit of the prize, savaging valuables from wrecks that even other salvages think are too dangerous to tackle. According to rumour he took the bejewelled Star-crown of Assislis from the wreck of the Assisli battle cruiser Fireheart just moments before the vessel was crushed in a black hole. Whether this is true or not remains a subject of much debate in the drinking holes of the rim, but what is certain is that the Empress of the Assisli has places a sizeable bounty on Nax and his ship.  

Nax is the only human crewman of the Scuttlebucket, and is assisted in his endeavours by a host of droids, many of which he has previously salvaged from wrecks. Droids have advantages over living crewmen because they use less life support, don't ask for a share of the profits and, perhaps most importantly, they are both expandable and easily replaceable. 

Yell-Oh-One is a standard Mechdroid, although he is a somewhat out-dated model. He has been serving on the Scuttlebucket for longer that any of the other droids and Nax tends to treat him as a favoured pet.

Nax uses Chompers to access parts of wrecks to dangerous for other droids. The use of Chompers has been outlawed in many civilised parts of the galaxy following the incident on board The Excelsior, but out in the rim such regulations are not enforced.

 Banquo is the latest droid to be added to Nax's crew. It is an old Lillian battle bot Nax 'rescued' from a Slythian pirate. Its heavy armour and EMP shielding makes it useful in the hazardous environment often found when exploring  wrecks, and Nax has retooled it to carry a quad-las cutting tool in place of it's usual weaponry, which makes more useful as a salvager, but still deadly at short range.