An Unusual Creature: TWD

"I'm a man of shifting specifics, tastes in transition. I'm into tequila now"

AMC's Walking Dead was my gateway into the Walking Universe.  Since then I have read some of the comics but my best memories of the franchise lie somewhere in the mists of seasons four and five.  As the series has progressed the central story has suffered from fragmentation and a lack of direction but the work of the writers on individual characters and the performances of actor's in those roles have made the decline easier to watch.  Stephen Ogg's Simon was probably my favorite of the lot.  Simon fascinated me and during Ogg's tenure he consistently owned the scenes he was part of.  I still have a backlog of, "canon" characters to paint for All Out War but I recently got some inspiration and found a very good deal on a Morgan figure that would allow me to bring Simon to the gaming table.

Early Morgan mutilation.

A while back on the Mantic's Walking Dead Fanatics group Nelson Huang posted a picture of the Morgan figure along with a picture of Season 9 Rick.  I'm not a Rick fan.  I've been of the opinion the on again off again morality make for a ridiculous individual and as a group leader make for a largely directionless story as a whole.  No matter how small I wasn't building a monument to the moral lodestone that was dragging the show down (Not yet anyway.  Too soon.).  I'm very grateful to Nelson because his post encouraged me to consider the possibilities of the Morgan model while getting me to consider the rest of the cast as well.

Full assembly with greenstuff shoring up, and hiding joins.

As stated above most of Simon comes from the Morgan figure.  I thought his face would be a good substitute for Simons once the thin beard was shaved from his face to narrow the jaw a bit.  Morgan's clothing is ubiquitous and easily doubled for Simon's wardrobe.  I removed the rifle from his back and removed the right arm completely and the left above the elbow.  Simon sported shorted sleeves and Ogg's whipcord forearms were a feature that the model required.  Morgan was easy the rest of the parts required some scrounging and included a Warlord Games Soviet arm, pistol and hand,  A TWD walker forearm (the fat cut open cadaver; I have a few and could spare one), A GW ghouls forearm that I joined to Soviet the pistol hand and upper arm, and lastly a bit of styrene to pass off as a radio.

Uniform priming obscures a multitude of sins.

With the components gathered and roughly fitting together I had to clean up and hide the worst of my carving with some sculpting.  None of it was perfect but I thought it was a reasonable result working with a single application and no undersculpt.  If I was more patient I might have applied another layer to the cloth of the shirt to add some more volume to the folds.  The material intensive areas were the clean up  of the chest and back after removing the bandoleer and the sizable gap under the right arm.  I'm happiest about the hair.  I find myself tempted to sculpt hair very fine with a number seven blade but it never looks quite right because it is too fine.  I switched to the sculpting tool and worked a bit looser and produced more of a gesture of the hair that accomplished what I needed.

 

I chose a simple palette for Simon based on his appearances over the course of the series.  I settled on the green pants and khaki top.  The combination seemed to place him between a jackbooted thug and the foreman from hell which was an ideal vibe for the figure.  I considered giving him a gray top to keep the figure dark but I wanted to draw attention directly to the head and face and the similar colour found in his hair would have diminished the pull.  I painted the body quite quickly and focused my attention on the face.

Simon sold sub prime mortgages prior to the apocalypse.  While a brutal figure particularly when thwarted, his manipulative nature and playful control of situations made him more of a tactician.  I felt he would have excellent nerves, be a good generalist, and be pretty tough to boot.  Be more afraid of Me... seemed a reasonable choice that suited his menacing demeanor and penchant for violence.  I also thought Executioner pilfered from the Governor might be an appropriate skill choice.  While he wouldn't benefit from the Governor's leadership skill that stacks with Executioner Simon getting a "charge" from offing someone defenseless fits him nicely.  Right hand man is a Martinez skill that I poached and switched to apply to Negan.  I liked how it enabled Simon to morph from Be more afraid... to Merciless like a promoted Derek (Scavenger Leader).  I'm happy with how the design of the card went and I have the template so I can always built more custom survivors.  I'm not so happy about the point totals.  Simon is arguably only better than Derek and then only situationally (One of these being in a survivor group that already lost their Negan!) and costs at least 15 points more.  I stopped the count at 50.  I reached 47 prior to factoring in the cost of excecutioner and right hand man.  The inflated point costs for custom survivors need to be reexamined.  Simon might be fun to have in an AMC styled scenario but to put him on the table with a points cost like this would be foolish.

But you people?  You still didn't listen.  You wanted to fight!  Us?!?