Soliders of the Queen WIP

Well this is not Monday, but on Monday gentle readers I brushed aside much needed domestic chores in favor for prepping my Warlord British infantry for The Zombie Incident of 1888. I managed to get some decent light infantry skirmish poses out of the Warlord British Line Infantry plastics. The kneeling poses which are really more indicative of the aftermath period where British troops restored "order" to London. These kneeling skirmishers will figure into "The Battle of Whitechaple", where in the government forcibly disarmed the women of that district. Whom through various means had amassed a considerable supply of firearms during the course of the Incident. I'm not so happy with the major clean-up job I'll have to do to the metal figures that came in the box I hope all this work will pay off in the end.

Another Work Table Peak

The elusive Werewolf of London in Hyde Park after a donnybrook with a pack of zombies. Figure by Reaper Miniatures.

As slow as a shambler

Work on the horde and associated characters for The Zombie Incident of 1888 is moving slower than a shambler but there is some small progress. As you may have noticed I'm trying to clean up, convert & based  all the figures I've got earmarked for this project so far that's 40+. Hopefully things will start speeding up (or at least look like they are) once I've gotten some of these ready for priming. And I'm going to need to get a move on as I've just placed an order for the Warlord Games Plastic box set.

24 more figures for use in zombie conversions and some as anti-zombie forces which will need to be cleaned up, converted & based!!!!

 

This is the bride from the Studio Miniatures "Till Death Us Do Part" set she is getting her dress Victorianized (Yup made a new word.) the bustle is beginning to shape up, I need to do something with the veil though maybe give her one of those tiny hats? Well what do you think of the progress?

 

Mr Cross in the back is by the irrepressible scallywags of Lead Bones he's a modern vicar get the joke?  I think with a slight re-sculpt of the collar I can paint him up as a laborer (no offense Padre).

Zombie Nun also by Lead Bones no conversion needed.

Little boy zombie from the same Studio Miniatures "Till Death Us Do Part" set. You can never have enough zombie children in a horde.

The "Hopper" is a leftover from a long defunct project he is a "Hanged Man" ghost(?) figure from Wyrd Miniatures originally he was floating above the earth but I bent the feet so that he's now hopping along as it where. He is all tied up and still has a noose around his neck maybe someone took the law into their own hands and tried to end his life before they realized he was all ready dead? There is a story in it somewhere when I find it I'll let you know. Stay tuned for more progress next Sunday.

This blog isn't even 2 years old yet but its now over 20,000 hits this is due entirely to all you nice people following my miscue efforts. This blog would have most certainly been abandoned were it not for those of you who post comments so thank you. And speaking of thank yous I'd like to give a warm thank very much to all these Google Plus followers who I haven't thanked before:
Julia Morgan, Congtan Huynh, CJ Kilbride, Tom Candlin, Matt Eastwood, Kevon Downs, Fred Jackson, James Baldwin, Stephan K, Bullcher Feb, Ken Reilly, Mark G, Danny Jeurissen, Shay O'Shea, Uber Toten, Alexander Noorlander and Thrym of Thrym's Table now on the blog roll her at Feinds in Waistcoats.  I suspect that even with this new list I've overlooked someone if that is the case I'm sorry.

Tiny Work Table update

Some hasty shots of some of the things I've been working on this weekend. More to come next Sunday.

New Member
I would like to welcome Evan Hughes the editor of the next issue of WBQ (Wargame Bloggers Quarterly) to the blog.
Correction Dave Docherty will be the QBW editor for the November issue not Evan. 

Not Really a Horde More Like a Crowd

 As you can see 16 figures is not much of a horde and most of it remains unpainted to boot. I have a handful more of unbased zombies in the bins but I'll have to acquire many more before they resemble anything that can be called a true horde. So far the "horde' consists of Westwind, Lead Bones, Studio, Wyrd and Horrorclix figures.

ATZ is a game of characters not factions in ATZ players play a "star" character who leads an ever shifting band of "grunts", other survivors who look to the "star" for leadership or even hope through the zombie Apocalypse.  So with this in mind I've been gathering a cast for the Zombie Incident of 1888 which will include; Her Majesty, the Great Detective and the Dr., the Gentleman from Norwich, Sister Agnes Zombie Hunter, Sir Francis, the dog Buttons, Jim the milk lad, the White Rabbit, Roundhouse Ray the Prizefighter and Professor Pratt just to name a few. Some of the characters mentioned about will be heroes others villains while more will be innocent bystanders or victims if you prefer. I want this project to be a showcase of sorts of the Gothic Horror/Steam Punk miniatures I've been collecting for the past 2 years so the Werewolf of London and other oddities will make appearances in the game.

Left to right the dog Buttons, Jim the milk lad, Professor Pratt.

New Members

More new members Sander of "mon cher Alava, Marmont est perdu!" and "Modus Reg Magni Momenti" and Navin of The Painted Figs Projects Blog. These new member welcomes so far haven't included all of you lovelys following with that newfangled Google + thingy like Evan, Millsy, Darrell, Ray, Paul, and so many others but I welcome you all as well. I haven't been paying much attention to this Google + thing but I promise to use the +1 button in the future. 

Paint Table Saturday #14, or acutually Sunday

My hobby progress has been admittedly slow. There are very few figures on my work space. The majority of my hobby time has been devoted to the Swamp Monster conversion here you can see I've attached the front reaching tentacles. You can see some GW LOTR figures in the background for Slumming in Goblin Town.

The Beast is finished for me his owner has taken him to paint him up so he will now slink of to the bog he came from.

Hopefully I will begin work on the Lledo horse drawn fire engine next week.

Sofie's Sculpt Table Saturday?

 

Working on the Beast.

Tiger oversees the work.

Sculpting not painting was my hobby activity this Saturday in fact I didn't get the paints out at all. I was goaded into trying to complete "the Beast" a second hand favor for a friend. The "Beast" is a Hordes miniature form Privateer Press called the swamp monster.

This is a random image of the miniature painted I took from the internet.

Its a large figure on a 40mm base note the tentacles form a leg-like base for the miniature and they are in 2 pieces a right and left side. Well my friend didn't want his swamp monster to be run of the mill. He saw some enterprising modeler modify his like so.

This is what he wanted it to look like.

Now I've nicknamed this hefty miniature "the Beast" because this multi-part figure fits together about as well as your average Games Workshop monstrosity. A lot of filing and filling with milliput is required to simply fit it together the way it was intended and to that the need to saw in to little pieces the tentacle legs and you can see why I've named it the Beast.

My efforts with the tentacles blue-tacked on.

The body is finished and the tentacles have been assembled from the bits and sculpted into shape. I had to make the tentacles from cut up bits as you can see in the photos below.

In the end I've found this to be time consuming and I have to re-sculpt over them anyway so if I where ever to do something like this again I'll sculpt the tentacles a new.

Most of my Saturday was taken up helping a friend complete his art school assignment by posing for him. The upshot of this is that i may have a new profile photo what do you think?

Paint Table Saturday

T

I've joined Sofie's Paint Table Saturday and movement that's sweeping the blogger community. Sofie of sofies-paint-blog has inspired the blogging community with one simple idea, every Saturday post your painting table. Off and on I've posted things I'm working on in my Work Bench series of posts.
 Now I don't have a permeate painting station I have to set it up each time I want to paint the picture below might give you a hint as to why. My poor artists daylight's on/off switch is no longer working thanks to being knocked from the table once too many times, but it soldiers on. I've recently cleaned off the kitchen table once my regular painting spot before it became a repository for random junk. Well its cleaned off enough to get some work done. So I unpacked the paints & brushes and dug up some LOTR miniatures to paint then to my surprise I gained a helper. 

Tiger! the curious kitty, she is the most curious cat I've ever had. For more on Tiger's miniature antics see here.

I will however post a painting table/work bench picture every Saturday from now on. Maybe I'll even get some painting in like yesterday.

What's on the Work Bench

With the holidays and everything I haven't had much time to finish a project. But shinny syndrome being what it is, I've dived into my lead pile with ADD abandon, that is to say I've begun cleaning, basing and painting many figures but I haven't finished any of them. My hope here is by throwing all these half started projects up here I can force myself to focus on finishing them. So here they are:

 Order of the Sacred Blood: London Expedition

The Heresy Miniatures posing vampire and West Wind EOTD brother.

The Wolf Pack

This is the simple name I've chosen for my Lycan faction. I've been adding to the original starter set to flesh out the pack I'm very happy with the extra wolves I've sourced.

Wolves

From right to left. 

OOP Ral Partha Werewolf the Apocalypse wolf, West Wind EOTD wolf.

From right to left. 

OOP Citadel 1980's wolf, West Wind EOTD wolf.

Sourced wolves next to EOTD werewolf for scale.

 Werewolf

 

  From right to left.

OOP Ral Partha (late 80's?) Werewolf, West Wind EOTD werewolf.

Horrorclix

 I have a number of Horrorclix figures I picked up while waiting for my EOTD miniatures to arrive. I apologize for the the very poor picture I didn't have proper lighting. Mr. Fright is mounted on a 40mm base and he is close to being finish though you couldn't tell it from this picture.

Re-purposed Figure

OOP Ral Partha Werewolf the Apocalypse giant wolf.

I had originally intended to use him as a werewolf in my LOTR games when they put out the SBG rules for werewolves. GW never did put out rules for werewolves. I didn't get the Hound of the Baskervilles when I participated in the Requiem KS it was a separate figure not part of the 221 B Baker Street set. But now I discover that the Hound is part of the Great Detective (221 B Baker Street) faction in the new rules as written and I'm without a Hound so guess who's my stand in.

Hound stand in vrs West Wind EOTD werewolf for scale.

In addition I have 3 Lideo carts to convert, base and paint. I've found some brass rod to serve as an axle for the replacement wheels and some chariot bases. I need a driver for the 3rd cart but otherwise I just need to sit down and convert and paint them.

And lets not mention the half painted zombies moaning in the cupboard.

I still don't know which direction to move in first but hopefully if I stare at this mess long enough I will.

A Look At The Work Table 3 & Declaration Of Intent

As you may have notice I've been changing some things around. I'm happy with the picture but I fear my description "Victorian Phantasmagoria" can't be read. I'm happy with the post background color but not the general background color. I'll try another round of graphic changes in the near future. Please free to chime out when you notice a color combination you like.

I've been inspired to offer up some prizes to my readers, nothing fancy mind you, I've decided I can offer up one of my Liedo milk delivery vans, a Malifaux blister and some other odds & sodds laying around the flat. I was inspired to do this by the very generous Tamsin P from Wargaming Girl.
WELL before I can do that I'll need to add a subscription thingy. I know I have to add a 3rd party code to blogger for that, but as of yet I haven't figured out where to get it or how to set it up. If anyone would like to help me out you can email ageofbloodiron@gmail.com

I realize that this has been a very boring update so far so let's take a peak at the work table. First up the Horrorclix zombie puppeteer quick repaint.

I have several other Horrorclix figures but the will get a full re-paint as opposed to the touch-up this one got.
 

West Wind zombies in various stages of completion. The shuffling lads & lassies will do double duty as the minions of  Alasdair Sinister and the Sinister Six, my hellfire club gang, and as members of the shambling horde in "The Zombie Incident of 1889".

The Ghoul King, he was a very successful gang leader during our Mordheim days. We used a different figure during our games. I converted this one at the end of our Mordheim period thinking we would start again. I have a bunch of painted GW old school ghouls to go with him. But they are all dressed like Tarzan so I'm working up a Victorian gang for him.

So just to be clear gentle readers I'm working on two versions of Empire of the Dead; A regular campaign featuring Alasdair Sinister and the Sinister Six (hellfire club), Lunatic R's Brotherhood, The Ghoul King (Vampire gang), as of yet unnamed Gentleman's club and I believe The Werewolves of London.

 And I'm working on "The Zombie Incident of 1889" a zombie apocalypse campaign.  Now to portray this properly we will need to play totally different factions. Apocalypse type ones! So far I have " The Ladies Auxiliary Yachting Club" (made up of those lovely Hinterland Sailor girls), and the "Fraternal Order of Angry Men". 

Yes gentle readers in time, perhaps a very long time, each faction once finished will be displayed here with their accompanying biography.

If you've read all the way though this mad late night ramble I salute you!

Robert

A Look at the Work Table 2

We will continue with a few more shots of what's on the table. I'm in the process of basing up all the zombies in the West Wind zombie box set plus an other zombie.

My camera is dying a slow death, I hope the pictures are clear. The West Wind zombies are superb and I can't wait to paint them up. The others are all ready primed and awaiting some paint.

Here is a chap from Horrorclix Carnival series. He has a pretty good paint job, but I plan to repaint him anyway. As you can see the Horrorclix are a bit taller then the West Wind figures. But not so tall that I feel I can't use him.

I just can't resist zombies. I'll be adding every vaguely Victorian liking zombie I can lay my hands on to EOTD. One day I'll have a Victorian Zombie horde. But The Hellfire club is allowed 1 zombie mob per game; no more. A zombie mob is made up of 10 zombie figures. The zombie box contains 10 so I'm good to go.

Speaking of Horrorclix I dug up this guy in my bin of random Miniatures.

He'll make a passable Professor Gecko until I get around to buying the offical one. Here is the artwork for the good professor. He is one of the many new characters appearing in the EOTD Kickstarter: Requiem. He will need a re-paint of course.

 
 Last but on least, or maybe he is the least? I've had this figure in my random miniatures bin for some time. I've now decided to paint him, but I'm not sure how I will use him in the games. I use him as a vampire guardian last year in my early games. I might use him as a sort of marker now.

I start actual painting this week. I'll try to post more next week.