Anvil Zone Mercenaries

 Anvil Industries have recently released a Print on Demand range called Zone Mercenaries. with male and female figures.

They are equipped with reinforced armour, helmets and gas masks and AKM assault rifles.

The problem is, the weapons are rather large, partly due to the limits on the materials used for their normal resin ranges, but I suspect mainly to be in scale with their normal market of gamers who want something similar to but more interesting than 40K.

This is a bit of  problem as they do not look okay with my modern image type standard Empress figures' weapons.

However a plan emerged to use them as alternative figures for The Walking Dead: All Out War.

Size comparison between a female (left) and male (right) Zone Mercenary and TWD:AOW zombies.

Their weapons and equipment are a drop in replacement for The Commonwealth Trooper (you can probably build them using various existing equipment from the original range)

They are slightly shorter than the Commonwealth Trooper but look okay with the walkers and survivors.

To hide the height difference, I used Crooked Dice supplied slotted round bases and put a thin plastic card panel over the slot. It raises the head height slightly.

Crooked Dice Cold War Jeep - UAZ-469

Back in November 2021 I assembled and painted the Crooked Dice "Alien Jeep".

Comparison with other 1/50 scale vehicles showed that it was a bit large to be a proper UAZ-469 (even ignoring the two door design).

At Warfare this year I picked up one of Crooked Dice's new Cold War Jeep.

The kit comes in six pieces: A one piece body, four road wheels and a spare wheel.

The model has a fixed canvas roof.

Basic paint job:

Citadel Chaos Black spray undercoat.

Citadel Snot Womble Green base colour.

Windows are Army Painter Royal Blue.

Canvas is Citadel Death World Forest.

Tyres and windscreen wiper blades are MIG Rubber and Tyres.

As you can see, the Cold War Jeep is smaller than the Alien Jeep.

But scales a lot better with the Crooked Dice Land Rover.

T62 - Bovingdon

 T62 tank at The Tank Museum, Bovingdon.

Crooked Dice UAZ-486 - AKA The Alien Jeep.

 Crooked Dice have just released an "Alien Invader Jeep", which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Soviet UAZ-469 (though in the form of a two door variant).

Two Zone explorers check out the surroundings. Empress modern Russian and Universal Soldier.

UAZ-469 and Mighty Mite.

UAZ-469 and unfinished  M151.

HMMWV (Empress) and UAZ-469.

Tigr and UAZ-469.

Crooked Dice Land Rover and UAZ-469.

Spectre SUV and UAZ-469.

UAZ-469 and William Killian

Personal Protective Equipment part two - Zona Alfa

 Here are the two Empress Miniatures 28mm scale modern respirators:

Modern Russian and US Marine helmets.

Zona Alfa Zombies

 One of the Zone Hostiles encountered are "Zombies", it is not clear if they are flesh (or brain) eating corpses or deranged survivors transformed by The Event.

Vladimir chooses the wrong moment to change magazines while investigating a dacha.

Not sure what happened to Vladimir, but they are coming this way!

Studio Miniatures released a box set of plastic multi-part, multi-pose zombies  a number of years ago. There are sprue shots and a review here. 

I found one of the sprues (I had used one of the figures) so built three of them for Zona Alfa. Unlike previous builds, I left them on their integral bases and blended it onto a Renedra 25mm diameter base with Milliput.

Here are the three of them.

Now to build a lot more (though this Corporation Exploration Team will not be happy).

T-55 Soviet Main Battle Tank

The Soviet T55 main battle Tank was  one of the first MBTs to be fielded, and is still in service with may armed forces.

 The Empress Miniatures model is supplied as a multi-part resin and white metal kit.

The model is easy to assemble, with the following notes. the turret plug was slightly too deep for the socket, I had to cut about 5mm off with a razor saw. There are some mould lines on the auxiliary fuel tanks which are difficult to remove.

I replaced the white metal hand rails on the turret with 0.7mm brass rod for durability (being clumsy).

I also added the Coax machine gun and the stub of the aerial using 1mm brass rod.

The fore and aft mud guards were reinforced with green stuff and milliput to keep them in place.

A tarpaulin was added to the rear of the turret and another was added to the two auxiliary tanks. Strapping from Slater's microstrip was added to the tanks.

The model was assembled into four block, the complete turret, the hull and the two track units. After masking the hull nd the track units, the whole thing was sprayed with Citadel Chaos Black.

The turret and hull were then sprayed with Humbrol 86 Light Olive from a can.

The tarpaulins and the mantlet were painted with Citadel Death World Forest and the whole thing dry brushed with Citadel Nurgling Green.

The tracks were painted (before adding to the hull) with a mix of Army painter Black, Army Painter Chaotic Red and Vallejo Black Grey using a wet palette. This was also used on the exhaust. The wheels were painted with Humbrol 86 Light Olive.

Numbers were added to the turret side from the Rubicon Soviet Tank decal set.

The straps were painted with Citadel Dryad Bark.

The tank was weathered using Humbrol Dark Earth Weathering Powders, hopefully held in place by a combination of Citadel Lahmian Medium, Agrax Earthshade and Army Painter Strong Tone.