I just finished painting my walkers from Mantic's The Walking Dead: All Out War Core Set. I ordered them shortly after Christmas and they arrived early in the New year. It's a sleazy trick but it's my contest so these models bought and paid for in 2016 don't contribute to the shame pile but put 12 bloody swipes in the, "Colour Me Done" column for 2017. I still have a few more temporal shenanigans courtesy of the order but I am going to have to be more diligent and conservative with my projects if I intend to stay out of the red.
Speaking of red there is quite a lot of it on these models. I slicked them up after most of the painting was done. I applied a mix of a GW nuln oil wash and Tamiya clear red to simulate gore on my herd. Zombies films and shows are quite generous with nasty effects so I didn't follow my less is more if at all rule (Maybe I'm just getting worse at following it). Aesthetics are one thing but I also laid the blood on thick to give me one of two markers during game play. Zombies look disheveled but so can survivors. By opting for very stark pallor and liberally showering it with bright red the walkers stand out. I hope that choosing this scheme will make it easy to separate the living and the dead at a glance.
Every walker in the dozen is a unique one part model. I had great fun painting them because every sculpt suggested a tale of how this person might have come to their end in the zombie apocalypse. The materials are another matter. I'm not a fan of this kind of plastic. I find that it carves well enough when removing mold lines but doesn't shave well at all. Carving is a dirty activity and unless I am being very careful there is a high probability I am going to end up with detail loss or or a cut line that is nearly as nasty as the offending mold line. I removed the offending lines that caught my eye and am certain I missed a few on the way but they are walkers/fodder. I will be more careful when I paint the survivors.
The price tag on the entire core set was $50CDN and well worth the cost. In addition to the walkers there are 5 survivor models, the rules, associated cards, dice ,a paper play mat and thick card components. $50 for 17 unique, well sculpted models is a good deal to me. Once I get all models in the set painted I will allow myself some more things from the range. In a particularly strange departure from my MO I actually gave the rules a once over. I liked them quite a lot. There are some interesting mechanics and the die rolling doesn't appear to get in the way of the action. I'm curious to see how the building stress/tension would affect game play. This one actually has solo play so once I have everything ready to go at the very least I will return to TWD for a playthrough and do a game review (? What?!).
In closing I was really hoping this would be, "My Zombie game". I'd been following Bryan's reviews on zombie tabletop systems over the last year (on his excellent blog Vampifans World of the Undead) and tried to understand his ATK reports for much longer than that; I'll admit for the most part I just wanted to look at the nicely painted models. I don't enjoy games that involve a lot of lawyering and referencing of modifiers and my hopes were very high for TWD. I have never followed the comic but I really enjoy the show (Carol is my favorite, Goblyn likes Shiva) and hoped the game would be able to deliver action and fluidity more than numbers. At a casual glance I think they accomplished what I hoped for. Enough chatter I have things to paint and need to make some models to replace those card counters if I intend to show you a battle report in the future.
These are all excellent. You really can't go wrong with Tamiya Clear Red for gore effects. I have played all of the solo missions and found the rules highly enjoyable. I hope you get round to doing a review of the game. Batreps, of course, are always welcome. All the best, HP.
ReplyDeleteThanks Bryan. I like the clear by itself as fresh or arterial blood. Do you ever tint yours with washes? Depending on the amount added it's pretty good for old/dried blood as well (w. brown/black washes. Additionally I'm not sure if there is something happening but mixing in washes seems to cause the clear to almost curdle so it can be applied thicker (almost a paste consistency). Oh well, I'm an amateur painter not a chemist :) .
DeleteI often add a drop of black to my TCR for darker and older blood stains. Sometimes I'll add a dab of red or crimson for brighter and more opaque effects. The thing to do is just experiment and have fun. Plus, with zombies, you can get away with a lot more than on "normal" figures.
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