Lead Legionaries: Zombie Horde Grows - 10 Wargames Factory Zombies

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Zombie Horde Grows - 10 Wargames Factory Zombies

First batch of Wargames Factory plastic zombies - they look fairly close in size to my previous ones

My only purchase at the Historicon 2024 flea market was a box of 30 Wargames Factory zombies for $15. Eyeballing them, they seemed close in size to the 3-D printed ones that I'd special ordered from JS Wargamer Printing. Getting them home and opening the box, I was a little dismayed by how many pieces the figures came in. There were heads, torsos, arms, and lower section with legs. I will happily admit that I am fairly incompetent when it comes to assembling miniatures.

Luckily, my friend Keith is a whiz at it. He doesn't seem to mind assembling the odd box that I buy that requires assembly. It took him little more than a week to glue all 30 together. What's more, he based them on MDF 1" round bases for no charge. The bases were a bit thicker than the plastic ones I was using for the other zombies, but that's my fault for not thinking of getting him bases to put them on. Once all painted up, the difference in base size thickness won't really be noticeable. What's more, the following Sunday he showed up at our game night with a box of 10 female zombies from Wargames Factory all assembled for me. For free! Keith's a generous guy normally, but sometimes he goes overboard!

I like the pose in the lab coat -- a nice touch, I think

Anyway, I pulled all 30 males out and separated them by pose. Keith had done a great job mixing and matching heads, arm positions, etc., but there seemed to be about eight basic torsos, as best I could tell. Once I'd sorted them, I picked out one of each plus a couple extra (I loved the ones in lab coats!) and got them ready to paint up. I decided to treat them exactly like 3-D printed miniatures, as some of the hands and arms seemed a little thin and liable to snap. Readers of my blog know that method begins with Krylon Fusion acrylic black spray paint followed by brushing on a 50/50 mixture of acrylic black paint and water. Hopefully, this gives the miniatures a bit more strength to face handling on the tabletop.

I normally don't paint in batches of 10 figures, preferring smaller lots. However, zombies don't have a lot of equipment (well, none actually, except for one guy carrying around a foot in case he starts to feel peckish). So, I can handle a bigger number of figures and not feel overwhelmed. Sometimes, I think back to my 15mm days when I would try to paint an entire army of 50+ miniatures all at once, doing all the flesh, then uniform color, etc. I can't imagine painting that way now. It would be too much like work! I like smaller batches as you are more frequently rewarded with the accomplishment of a new batch of minis completed.

The pose in the middle appears to have a leather vest, so I gave him a biker logo on the back

I began with the flesh, as normal. For zombies, I use a craft paint called "Wild Rice" for their skin color. It is way too pale for living humans, but when given a black wash at the end gives it a nice, decaying, grayish tint. Next up were the pants. There were a number of zombies with shorts in this batch, so I did those in lighter colors. The long pants were done as blue jeans, gray or khaki dress pants, or "Carrhart" brown paints. Once the base color had dried overnight, I went back and did a dry brush highlight on each.

The were a lot more decisions to make on the shirts. I would love to jazz up every single one of the shirts with something special, but considering the number of zombies I need to paint, I unfortunately don't want to take the time. I did make one of them a leather biker's vest, another shirt was given a couple stripes, and a third was done as a kind of flannel. Otherwise, they were basic shirts (that is, if they were wearing shirts -- two were bare chested). As mentioned before, I really liked the poses in the lab coats, so did two of them in this group. I think on the next batch of these Wargames Factory zombies, I will try to do more special details in the shirts to give them a little more personality. I'd love to be able to paint one zombie up as each of my Sunday night gaming group, if I can find a post that matches...ha, ha!

One of my favorite poses is the guy in shorts and salmon colored muscle shirt in the center

Otherwise, I did these exactly like the 3-D printed zombies I ordered from JS Wargamer Printing. The shirts and pants got highlighting, the obvious wounds were painted in blood red, and the eyes were done with no pupils or irises. Just black with a white area in the center. I made the mouths and hands a little bloody, and smeared a couple places on their pants and shirts with dried blood color, too. I liked how it looked on the hands. This was the first batch I did that way, so will likely do it some more on the forthcoming batches of zombies.

So, you may ask how many batches of zombies do I have in line? The 10 female zombies Keith gave me are up next after these guys. As a bonus, a couple of the female poses look like they could be used as "runners." I think I need to come up with something more distinctive on the bases to make the runners stand out. I should probably go back and re-flock the other three runners I did and just simply use a different color of flocking like I did with the "nasty zombies." But I was counting zombie batches, wasn't I? Well, after the 10 female zombies, I have two more batches of 10 from Wargames Foundry. And I also have 9 more JS Wargamer ordinary zombies and 7 "Infected" ones. And then there are the six child zombies I bought at Historicon from Brigade Games! So, that means I have 52 more zombies on the way?? Wow...methinks I will be tired of painting zombies before I complete all of those! Stay tuned and see, though...