Midweekish Madness

I got tired of waiting for the bulbs to arrive. Having been told it would be Friday, they arrived the following day, whilst I was out. Given the new delivery date of Saturday I purchased another bulb as I happened to be in a shop. Today was a good day for painting.

So I made some progress. I even tried to stick with the plan. My primary target was to finish off the remaining minis from short arse week and even a pig I missed from the week before. It would definitely have benefitted from being stripped and started again but what the hell. There are two left and these just need details.

Then I wanted to make progress on the Blood Bowl Skaven. These are still a long way off but I think I am a lot closer to having a finished first layer. There is still some tidying up to do and they are a bit bobby.

Looking forward I need a plan for next week. I have been looking at This Quar's War all week. The bingo plan calls for a complete army. Being the latest shiny thing, they could fit the bill. In reality I had kind of promised myself that the army, and probably enough figures to do two forces, was going to be Sludge. So I finally put them in the queue. I had done a few test paint jobs and these made it into the job lot. Plus a bodyguard. As this is an army paint scheme, I anticipate this will take a week. They are not short arses but I guess the surface area is a little less than most of the stuff I have painted recently. Then I have the urge to paint the Viking minis, especially the horses.

After I finished this I had a massive migraine. I suspect this is going to put me off painting and pretty much everything else for a few days.

Starting Short Arse Week

I am trying to clean house, as far as minis are concerned. Blah, blah, lead mountain, blah blah. I'm not sure I am in a hurry. The snakemen are Grenadier. The company and the shop they were purchased from have been ancient history for more than thirty years. For some reason they nag me to be painted every time I find them. There are some Oathmark dwarves, Black Tree, a Copplestone halflings and the rest are random acquisitions.

It's a busy week but I remain hopeful that I will get to ten figures and maybe a few more.

End Of The Week (32.5)

I started the week with a plan. It was a good one too. But no plan survives contact with children. So currently watching the little one running around a trampoline park. At least at the time I am writing this. I am claiming thirty and a half minis for the week. The half and some of the whole numbers being animals.

There was a twitchy sphincter moment when I didn't think I was going to get close to finishing what I started. I got some time after the little one went to sleep and more or less caught up/+. I am now nicely North of one hundred painted minis. So on balnce, I am happy and The New, New Cruelty fins the situation acceptable.

So there were a few bits that needed finishing from last week. The five armed civilians, which I think are Scotia, have been hanging around since last week so it was nice to get them done. There was also a female crossbow woman from  Northstar's Frostgrave range, that needed a few spots of paint. Other than the pigs, all the animals were started and finished this week, whilst the pigs just required a few details. Don't ask where they came from as they were a random purchase on the market. The darker animal between the bugs is a bit of a mystery. I was assuming this was a domesticated dog but it has some prominent brows which could be nascent horns, making it a goat. The treasure pile was given to me by a friend, in the late nineties. It had been sat in a bits box for some time after being purchased from a bargain bin so its probably a late eighties GW mini.

The main focus of the week was the guys in suits. These should work for any modern game and some sci-fi stuff. They are a mix of Future Wars and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang from Copplestone.

As I have the laser cutter up and running, this has been used for a bit.  I might be playing Midgard: Heroic Battles so I thought I would get ahead with some bases, counters and measuring gauges. I have also finished the one hundred and thirty of so hex tiles for the next terrain hex project.

I have prepped a fair number of figures. Most of what I got in York is now bases on textured bases. I was planning on painting these but they are not primed. This should give me enough figures for an ulfhunder unit for  Midgard. What's above is about half of them.

Next week is all about the little guys.

Can't Sleep

I am fog tired and wide awake. Insomnia is a thing for me. It is massively worse since I got ill. So here I am, at nearly 2am watching TV in bed.

I am making progress but it is stop.start. my energy levels are all over the place today. There are well over twenty minis in the queue. As I can't process stuff, everything I do I spend a few minutes on, then my brain goes into cat mode. So easily distracted, need to eat or doze off. It's something I am not enjoying. I would like to be back to normal and back in the real world.

Snack time.

There is progress but I can't find the mini from earlier. I think I am going to finish what I have stated but we will see.

How Not To Suffer From Hobby Inertia

As you can see in the picture there is a lot on my table. This demonstrates my current work in progress. There are a lot of separate projects. Somewhere deep in my brain there is some form of traditional idea that you should start a project, finish a project and then move on to the next one. It's some strange offshoot of the Protestant work ethic I thunk.

So this is my workflow. I like to have a few things going at the same time. If I paint a batch of ten minis I will usually opt to give myself some variety within the batch, a few sci-fi, some post apocalypse, a cowboy and top up the ten with some fantasy figures, as an example. Lots and lots of Copplestone magic. The variety keeps me interested and if It have ten random figures I can batch paint them with the same colours quickly and when I have done ten batches, none of the figures look the same.

Right now this is animal week. I have amassed a range of domesticated and wild animals and this is what is in the mix for the week. There are some that are already finished this week that didn't make it into the picture.

At the same time there are half a dozen or so near future/cyberpunk/sci-fi minis that I started last week. Tag onto the some Blood Bowl minis and this is the core of where I am at.

Over the years I have learned to love the dropper bottle. Most of my paint is in dropper bottles, even the G Dub stuff. Whilst so much better that the standard pots, every now and again I end up putting too much paint on the palette. Some part of me, sculpted by my parents and grandparents does not like waste. So if I end up finding an excuse to use it. So the number of projects expands. And expands. 

There are times when I get part way through what I have started and I get bored. Having painted a hundred Star Wars Legion minis I got bored. The BattleTech stuff has been there even longer. So rather than putting the work in progress stuff to a place that it out of site, and therefor out of mind, it stays on the bench. There are a few details (mainly) that need finishing and so when I find I have some spare paint, I can leap into action. That almost made me laugh.

I am certain that I will meet and exceed my target for the month this week,

Robots

My bench is currently full. It's mostly full of paint and part finished projects. There is a fair amount of space dedicated to what I call the "grey legion." These are figures that have taken the time to prep, glue to a base, cover the base with sand, prime and allow to be covered with dust.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty that have made it as far as work in progress. I found some old figures that I thought I could upgrade with all that I have learnt over the years. So technically they have been WIP for thirty five years. Still they are mostly at the stage where they still look a bit crap.

So the perfect thing to do was start to paint even more figures. So being geared up for Stargrave I decided to go back to the post-apocalypse. I think you can use robots in Stargrave too, but I didn't find that out until after I'd finished them.

Copplestone castings is one of my favourite miniature makers. I recall adding a few things in to make a price point. One of which was a pack of robots which were quite like Terminators. Rather than pairing them as shiny death machine I thought an aged look would fit my post-apocalypse better.

So here we are. A quick and dirty paint job. Looks fine to me. A few more bits to do, washes, varnish and a bit more debris on the base and they are done

Twice In A Month - Well Almost, Time For Painting And Terrain

For the second time in about a month I have found myself on involuntary lockdown. This time there has been nothing wrong with me. So stuck in and away from work and family I have tried to make the most of it. There was even a little bit of progress.

I am still not really feeling the urge to paint. That said I have managed to get a load of stuff primed. This includes not only my recent purchases but some stuff going back decades. In some cases more than two of them. It's a real mixed bag of stuff. Big guys, small guys, very big guys. I have ordered a load of fantasy stuff. Most is for the Viking Game. This included a load of female vikings. I also got hold of a load of female dwarves to round out my desire to be able to do at least one of every race, class and gender. I got somes elves too. Not quite so many though. The dwarves and elves are all from Bad Squidoo. I have wood elves and dark elves but want light elves. My plan calls for a slightly more ornate dark age armour so I settled on Romano-British / early Saxon. This might just happen this year.

I have some much loved, very old GW hobbits. I spent good money buying them up off eBay almost twenty years ago. Sadly, they just don't do it for me in what I have planned. There are only a few poses and no female figures. If I want to stick with the plan then I needed an alternative. So I looked to the stuff done by Mark Copplestone. This includes the Copplestone Castings stuff and the stuff he did for Grenadier. I have been waiting for these since December. I've already done some conversions. With what is on it's way I may even convert a few into Titansgrave. There is also some stuff from Macrocosm in there.

I don't really do D&D so I don't have a need for a whole range of odd, made-up, races. That said I don't include gnomes in this. Thinking back I don't know anyone who have played a gnome on tabletop. Ian played lying cheating, thief of a gnome illusionist (aka Tim the enchanter thief). This is even harder although I do have a plan.

The variety seemed to motivate me last year. Excuse me, the year before last. That said I am really having a hard time finding the head space to do this as family life is getting some most of my attention. No bad thing. 

Big battles have always been what I have aimed for but I am beginning to see that this isn't really on the cards for me. Even the games I have been buying have been skirmish games. A lot of the figures I have purchased in the last year or some have been post apocalyptic / sci-fi / cyberpunk. Withe the Cyberpunk game coming out closely followed by Reality's Edge I thought 2021 might be the year Cyberpunk as a genre came back to the fore. I would really like to give Malifaux a try to but nobody is remotely interested.

Still thinking it may happen but I am personally feeling This Is Not  A Test and Last Days. All of these are skirmish games so I am pepping enough terrain for this. This will hopefully include some 3" by 3" boards (well given how I have it planned its more likely to be 93cm by 93cm). I have a lot of boards planned so they need to be fairly thin and lightweight. If I have it right in my head these will be double sided.

Another thing in my head is to do suited terrain. Obviously a green board is the place to start but I can see winter, deserts, bare earth and a few post-apocalyptic boards to start. There are about another dozen or so ideas floating around in my head. 

When the shops reopen I will get on with this but in the meantime I have spent looking at terrain. I have some trees brought years ago. These all need basing so some woodland bases with detachable trees seemed like a good idea. 

Bushes are also something I want to do. I think bushes were the first bit of terrain I ever tried to do in the form of gluing lichen to flocked card. I have hated lichen ever since. Thanks to YouTube I have a few ideas. Not convinced I will get what I want out of it but I will give it a try. I was prepping some bases on my mini-band saw and I have managed to bust it. I think the band has just come off so I am hoping it will be an easy fix.

End Or Start Of The Week

This has not been my most productive week of miniature painting. It's still Easter weekend so I am calling this the end and start of the week and my habit is to review the week.

I only managed to get four figures finished from last week's roster. This fell short of my usual target of five figures. Given that I am repainting an titivating some figures I had much higher expectations. That said it has been an exceptionally crap week. Stuff has been going on this week and it's not been good. It's also a bad anniversary for me which has caused me to have an almost total lack of focus. Still there is a chance that I can catch up this week as a lot of the other figures I started are pretty close to being finished. The New Cruelty is not happy.

Assuming that I am going to get somewhere with these figures, there is another bunch of figures to do. Whilst I was having a sort out the other week I came across a bunch of mutants which I think are Mongoose Miniatures Judge Dread Muties. These were done well over a decade ago and are pretty bad, hence the picture being at a bit of a distance. These should improve quite nicely.

On the health front I have managed a 5k run this week. Not my fastest performance ever but I managed it. The second one I have managed since taking my health a bit more seriously. After all that I can safely say that I am the lightest I have been this decade. So on balance I have managed to get through the week.

So The End Of The Week (Is Nigh)

So I have painted some more Future Skirmish Savages and I am quite happy with them. They are nicely complicated models which have given me a whole load of ideas. Whilst I have been painting them I have also been writing up a bit of a background for them as well. I am mainly thinking about my sUnderdground background as I have been going along. This has also inspired me to do a similar background for the Cultists I did a few weeks ago. Which in turn lead to ideas about raiders, cleansers, bygones (mutated neanderthal/chimpanzee ish throwbacks), crazies and wilders. These should all fit in with my figure painting plans. I have also been painting some other Grenadier figures. Sadly I am not so happy with them.

My plan is to get some more but money is a bit tight at the moment so I might have to put that plan off for a bit. Another five or six of the right figures would be enough to have all the savages I might want.

During the week I was doing some sorting out and found most of the rest of the Copplestone / Grenadier figures I have. I have started work on some of them and have some more for next week. This has given me a bit of a first world problem. I have started using old GW plastic bases for sci-fi stuff lately but all the older stuff is on 2p sized bases. This is kicking me in my aesthetic core.

Anyway The New Cruelty is happy. I have finished eight figures this week and there are a load of figures very close to being done. I also have some stuff I want to work on now. I have managed to get most of my health goals done with the odd near miss. I haven't spent much, if any, time playing video games this week. This has given me time to do the writing.

The post-apocalypse vibe is pulling me in again. I am looking at figures and even thinking in terms of terrain in a serious way. In part I am think about Summerland and Underground but even Fallout would be a nice game to get back into although that would have to be a different game than I originally had planned. My original game had involved a lot of big battles and I am not sure how I would manage to get hold of the number of figures (I think it was over two hundred) that I would need. That said, I have other projects on the go that I currently have figures for.

So next week is looking like more of the old Grenadier / Copplestone stuff and maybe planning some terrain.

Detailing And Moving Onto The Next Project

The Future Savages are doing okay. They don't seem to have gotten especially more detailed but I seem to have worked on them for ages.

Perhaps I have spent too much time trying to figure out what to do next. The background projects are still there but they are not really keeping my interest. There are plenty of figures available to paint, most of them are part of what I expected to be much bigger projects. I have a Skaven Blood Bowl Team but I am missing a load of players so I don't want to start it.

So I went ambling around trying to find some more storage space and I found some more Grenadier figures (and a few Foundry figures as well). These were painted quite a while ago. More recently than some of the other Grenadier figures I have put up on the blog. So I guess that I am looking at some more repaints. I seem to remember doing them in a hurry about five years ago. I am hoping that they will look okay with a bit more work and hopefully my skills have improved a little. At the time I was painting almost exclusively 15mm figures and I have learnt a lot about painting 28mm since.

Tomorrow I am hoping to finish off the Savages and more onto at least some of the above figures.

Future Savages

These are more of the old Grenadier (Mirliton/Moonraker) Future Skirmish Savages which I want to use in my sUnderdground game. I have decided that I really like the aesthetic and thought about getting some more. When I worked out what this would cost (along with what I would order from Copplestone) the cost came out to well over £300 for about 200 figures. So not a project for this year and the apparent shortages of funds.

The figures have progress nicely. I am already at the ink stage and have a few more colours to do. Then on to the highlighting. So currently reasonably confident that these will be finished before the week is out. Then it would be a case of working out what to move onto next.

Beginning The Process All Over Again

So I have eight figures from the old Grenadier Future Skirmish range to repaint. Not happy about the fact that they are repaints but I am hoping that might make it easier. Last week's experience says that there are pros and cons, maonly cons.

I like the figures and the Mark Copplestone sculpting vibe in general. Obviously there is plenty in this range and a lot of almost identical stuff in the Copplestone Castings Range. There is enough choice of figures for me to do a lot of what I want. I can see me revisiting these figures in the near future.

These figures should not take too long. As my plan has been  to clear my workbench I wasn't expecting there to be too much to do. It is clear that I am already developing a whole load of new background projects to fill in any gaps I might have.

End Of The (Most Productive) Week

This week has not really been about  painting 28mm miniatures. It's been about  me finishing of what I have started. Whilst I haven't finished off every half painted figure on the bench, I have come pretty close. Some are abandoned rather than finished but not in bad condition all the same.

A couple of years ago I got these Grenadier tribal type figures from a bring and buy. There are fifteen of them in all so these are the first batch. I am not generally a big fan of repainting figures but I thought at the time I could maybe strip them. Upon close inspection I thought that the paint might be enamel so I decided against it. Repaints rarely turn out especially well (see the Grenadier figures a few weeks ago) but these didn't turn out especially badly. From a distance they look okay.

The Blood Bowl troll has been sat around since the beginning of last year. I have fiddled with it every now and again. So in the spirit of what I am doing I decided to add some finishing details. I could go a lot further with this figure but I think it is time to call it a day.

There is a whole load of scatter terrain to finish off from earlier in the week. This is what I have finished so far. Most of this is relatively recent although I think the well was brought in the mid nineties. Some is Ainsty, some Scotia, some Midlam and some Ristul Market. Just glad to have them done really.

The stone monster (golem or construct) is a Reaper Bones mini. I have painted one of these before. It's a nice easy paint job. I got this at the last show I went to in December.

The de-bearded carrion crawlers came from a D&D boardgame that I got at a fete for a pound a couple of years ago. Realistically I think these were the only two figures worth having from the set and I suspect the rest of the game, with maybe the odd exception. The type of plastic is a bigger to paint but I have learnt a few new tricks since starting on this.

I painted four actual fantasy miniatures this week. Three dwarves and a human priest. The dwarves are two from Midlam and one from Northstar and I think the cleric is from Gripping Beast. Some of these were not actually on the bench and the blacksmith and king had only been started recently but in my head they still count. I guess none of these are more than three years old.

The Ver'men (not Skaven) priest was started this week. I found myself with some paint to spare. Just a quick no frills paint job. I have a few more of these guys hanging around and I am not sure that I am that inspired to paint them but I can see them on the bench already. I think I got these last year or the year before.

Finally there are four Cold War Miniatures zombies. Nice minis but a little bit small compared to some. They do however fit with a lot of newer minis and you cannot fault them for character. The figures are probable ten plus years old and have been on the bench for at least five years.

As far as The New Cruelty goes this has been my best week for ages. I would argue that I have completed the equivalent of twenty five figures this week. I have done a fair bit of exercise this week including my first 5k run in over 7 years. I have kept up on the less vigorous exercise and kept to my step count. I have played one boardgame and I have even managed to do a blog post every day this week, for the first time this year I think. The New Cruelty is satisfied. Ish.

It's Proving To Be A Far From Steller Week

Not the worst week in my life but I have been unhappy about the way a lot of things are going with my hobby life. This is the third attempt at this post as I have been blue screen of death'ed twice. I lost a whole load of work on my Viking game as well which I have had to redo. Mainly though, it's the painting.

Still work in progress

I started the week with a simple plan. There are nine figures, mostly part painted and what was left only needed a few bits doing to them. Having finished ten old Grenadier figures last week, I had some others that had been hanging around for years. As well as a few more soldiers, there were some agents and a couple of armed civilians. Most in a part painted state and the others were primed black. Experience tells me that figures primed black do not end up well but they were that way when I got them. So rather than create problems I opted to keep them in a black uniform. To be honest I haven't been overjoyed with the results. Still tomorrow is another day and I am hoping that I can bring them around.

But there is a limit to how much you can polish somethings

It is a little bit therapeutic in a way. These figures have been float around for a long time (1990 I am thinking) and whilst I was given some of these, I think they all came from the same shop about the same time. Because they are fairly generic, I can see a lot of uses for them. Modern is the most obvious use, but things like Fallout, Titansgrave, Shadowrun, Conspiracy-X and any number of post-apocalypse and sci-fi backgrounds are also out there.

There are some other figures on the bench, which I have also been playing around with. My secondary focus has been on these fantasy/dark age miniatures for the Viking/Skyrim game. I think one is Gripping Beast and the others are Westwind. Although there is still some work to do, I am much happier with these than the Grenadier stuff.

Keep On Moving On

I spent a little bit of time finishing off last week's Troopers this afternoon. They are still not really finished. Every time I look at them I find some new detail that is missing. So, I am doing a few more figures from the same range so I will keep working on them alongside those.

I am now contemplating getting some more of them. They are cheap enough. I have a few poses that are missing from this set and some that are being painted in an alternate pattern (which I will probably post tomorrow). This puts me in mind of some of the other stuff I want to buy (like gnomes, halflings and pictish dwarves) but the workbench is already quite full.

End Of The Week - And I Am Kind Of Glad

The painting of the Grenadier / Mirliton trooper miniatures has continued and whether they are used for Shadow, Cyberpunk, Fallout, Titansgrave or some other post-apocalypse, near-future or sci-fi background remains to be seen. I am enjoying painting them and I do like the Copplestone vibe about the figures but they are not done yet.

If you look carefully you will see that there actually are some differences between this picture and the last one

Sadly The New Cruelty will not be satisfied this week as I have only finished of the two Mimic figures this week. They are fairly close to being finished with almost all the blocking out and inking done and the highlights to go. If all I do next week is finish these off then I will still be well ahead of my goal. Until tonight I don't think I have done any work on them since Thursday. This is a shame as I was hopeful that they would be all finished by now. It's been a kack kind of week towards the end with the only highlight being getting out on Friday. This has not been helped by being ill for the last couple of days. I did manage to get to FabLab once although I didn't do anything. When I was there I did find out that it was going to be open more often so that might make things easier for me. I have a few plans for this but not so sure what I can do at the moment.

Maybe it has been watching The Vikings TV series but I have a feel for my Northmen, norse esque game at the moment. I have had another play about with adding some background again.

Health wise I am doing okay. I was thinking I feel fitter this week although I don't seem to have lost any weight. My fitbit is telling me that despite missing my calorie goal a few times it was not actually a bad week (not the best but doable especially as I have been feeling ill and a bit peed off). A while back I realised that I was lactose intolerant and just of late I have come to think I am gluten intolerant as well. As an experiment this week I have tried to stay of anything with gluten in it. It seems that when I have had gluten I have paid a fairly high price.

The Work (In Pogress) Continues

When I got up this morning I decided that I was going to paint ten of the old Grenadier (now Mirliton) trooper figures. Nice simple figures with an almost standard uniform that even if I do give certain aspects of it a camouflage pattern, should be done by the end of the week.

 Then I picked up the two D&D mimic figures I picked up last week. Then I thought what the hell, I'll do these first. So I did. When you have a small number of essentially similar figures, they are quick and easy to do so I just got on with them. I guess each of them took about an hour to an hour and a half to finish. In the round, and certainly on the tabletop, the look pretty good.

When they were done I went back to the troopers. They have progressed a little bit. All the boots, equipment and uniform are finished. To be honest I haven't made up my mind what I am going to do with the armour and helmet yet although I have an idea (does anyone remember Aliens). Given that a lot of what I am doing is vaguely desert, I think I will go for something like MTP/Multicam. I do like the Copplestone vibe.

These figures have all sorts of potential uses for me. Aside from the standard sci-fi, 2300, Stargrunt, Titansgrave Tomorrow's War ad Traveller, I can see a use for them in other genres. The armour would look pretty good for combat armour for Fallout. They have planned uses in some post apocalypse stuff as well. Maybe even as soldiers in a super hero game.

This is more for my benefit so I can go back and remember what colours I used if I decide to do any more

Busy Busy

I am starting and nearly finishing a lot of figures at the moment. So as I haven't finished anything recently, I thought I'd post this picture of something I finished a couple of weeks ago. There are Copplestone scavengers I think.

It's not much I know but there is a lot of stuff about to be finished so I'll publish them as and when.

Fire Engine

I was in Wilkinson's earlier and saw this fire engine. I had a look at it and thought it was about the right size for 28mm gaming. And in make a noise. You can see by the size of the pictures that it is a fairly good match. As it only costs £4 it makes it for whatever difference in size there may be.

The figures are some of my work in progress zombies from Hasslefree I think and a Copplestone Future Wars figure.

28mm Zombie Minis List

I started out with a few old fantasy tribe zombies and some old Citadel plastic skeletons in my first zombie game. For the most part these are on the small side. This was largely stuff I have had for years and some of which were the first figures I ever purchased. I had also picked up some Alternative Armies zombies along the way. This made a quick if challenging game. I decided quickly that I wanted more zombies. Lots more zombies.

I look at the zombie miniatures I own and worry that what I end up with will be something like the undead version Village People although I do need to find a motorcycle cop to make that happen. These are what I call feature zombies.

At the time I started buying zombies, there weren't too many zombies to choose from. A few manufacturers had a few small ranges. This quickly changed. You can look and minis manufacturers without finding something that works for a zombie game. Anyway, I thought I'd do a list of the zombies I have used and plan to use in the near future. Over time, I will add some more in. I know that there are plenty of zombie lists out there already. This one may be a little more subjective (in my mind that's a good thing) than some.

Copplestone – Sadly there are only ten of them. These are some of the best zombies available in 28mm. They seem to stand out in all the pictures of games that people post. Characterful without standing out too much. Copplestone are just on the heroic side of 28mm but their human zombies are not all that out of proportion with some of the smaller stuff. They have a lot of civilians that would make a nice addition to any range. They are reasonably priced and well worth the money.

Cold War Miniatures – Cold War has a nice sized range of zombies with about sixty five plus some survivors. Unlike Copplestone, they fit well with anything in the traditional 28mm scale. They have a nice mix of all the human type zombies you could want. Whilst American themed zombies are not all that hard to come by, old War have some British themed zombies too. They have a few kid and crawler zombies and even one that is on fire. I do like my feature zombies and this really dates back to the original dawn of the dead. This range has some nice ones such as Elvis, Hari Krishna (like the one from Dawn), a British Guardsman in bearskin and a whole range of others. They seem to be available through eBay at the moment. All in all a nice range. The odd figure in the range requires a little construction but nothing major. I am not sure if they still do metal bases but if they do, they are very good.

Eureka – Eureka have two nice sets of zombies and a lot of modern military types. The first pack of ten different eviscerated zombies. They look pretty good and fit in with the cold war stuff very nicely in terms of size if not style. They have a style all of their own. This makes them great as special types of zombies. I have seen these painted up very nicely as Glowing Ones from Fallout and their tattered look makes them look good for eviscerated zombie types. They also do a pack of zombies getting out of barrels that are similar in style to the first pack. I have seen these used as great terrain markers but don;t actually own any myself. What they d have in addition to this are some nice modern and cold war military figures. The have some Americans and Russians in NBC gear. The Americans really make me think of the early Romero films. Not a huge range but well worth putting an order in.

Hasslefree – These are a great company to deal with and they do some cracking miniatures. There range of zombies is quite small (about a dozen) but they do some nice miniatures. They are the place to get a zombie surfer. One of the most ubiquitous zombie miniatures on the is Ray (not Shaun). A zombie with a cricket bat. They do a nice zombie mutant/small tank. Again the great thing about Hasslefree is not their zombies but their zombie hunters. This is one of the best ranges out there. All are good characters. Again, these all fit in well with the traditional 28mm stuff out there. Their single figures are not cheap but are very nice. They do have a set of five zombies which is reasonably priced.

Studio – These started to come out about the time I was finishing my big push on zombies. If they had been available at the time this would be a lot smaller post as I think most of what I would have binged on would have been Studio. Sadly I only have a few of them. They have everything I could ever want apart from zombie dogs. Lots of female zombies which other ranges lack like kids and crawlers. They have a nice range for hospital scenarios and some of them look like the cast of Scrubs. They also have a lot if characterful stuff. There are zombies that seem very like the zombies from Left 4 Dead. They have a Santa, bride and groom, soldiers, police, clowns, superman and even Harry Potter.

Tengu – I like these minis a lot. They are a touch smaller than the regular 28mm zombies but are not so small in terms of body size that they look out of place with others. They just look slightly shorter.
If you look back I have posted some of their Grey zombies in the past and some of their regular zombies here. It is not the biggest range in either scope or size but it tends towards the small but perfectly formed. One of the best things about this range is the fact that they have female zombies, which many ranges omit. They also have a couple of mutant type zombies that really make me think of Resident Evil.

Wargames Factory – In general I am not a big fan of plastic kits, they take too much time to put together and tend to be fairly fragile. More importantly, they seldom seem to fit with anything else. I actually own two boxes of Wargames Factory Modern Male zombies and they do assemble into something that fits in very well most of my other stuff. Because they are plastic you can in theory get a huge range of poses but there are quite a few that don't work to well. That said there are thousands that do. They can also be turned into corpses and crawlers with a knife, some green stuff and about five minutes.If you are looking to build a new zombie hoarde or bulk out what you have already, these are the zombies to go for. Although I don't own them they do have a pack of female zombies which is unusual. They also do two plastic box sets of survivors, one male and one female. This makes a wide enough range that you could populate your entire game with these minis.

Black Cat Bases – Their range of zombies is not huge and it does not really stand of from the crowd. I have used some of them as glowing ones. I think they are all badly beaten up and largely naked. The poses are not my favourite but they are not bad and cheap for metal figures. I have painted some of the as glowing ones but I am not sure they look as good in this role as the one from Eureka. They have a range of modern ghouls which are really fantastic. Again, not a huge range but these are really nice modern figures. They look like crazed teenager in hoodies and with pointed ears. There is one I don't own where the creature is coming out of a sewer which looks nicely threatening. They look a little like hunters in Left 4 Dead. They fit well with all normal 28mm figures.

RFAM – This company do have a a nice modern range with a number of zombies. I think I am right is saying that these are the grandaddy of modern zombies. All are nicely detailed sculpts. I've been a fan of their for a long time and a huge fan since they picked up the old Citadel 15mm Traveller minis which have featured on this blog several times. I got a boxed set of zombies a few years ago but I only have a few of these painted. There are some nice zombie minis and some quite a range of civilians and zombie hunter types. On the down side, the bases are very chunky on some of the models. I have added matches to one wooden base to even it out. If, like me you add a standard sized base to each figure, this is going to make them look a little tall. This is about the worst thing I can say about the minis. Some of them look very human and have little damage, which is a benefit and a curse depending on which way you look at them.

Westwind Productions – These are nicely generic so could probably be used in fantasy and pulp games as well and quite cheap as well. They are quite chunky though and definitely on the heroic side of 28mm. If your game features big chunky zombies, these will do nicely. The range features some nice zombie hunters and red necks which work well as survivors. This range would not be first on my list but there is something of the completest in me.

Foundry – Not a huge range and they are cowboys. Cowboys may sound like a strange idea but for a game set in the American South, they do okay and as ever, everyone needs a feature zombie. I painted one up for Zomtober last year.  They may be an impulse purchase but they fit is as slightly (but not unworkably) bigger than standard 28mm.

Stuff I wouldn't recommend
I do like the Zombie Plague game and miniatures. I ordered the full set and all the survivors from the states several years ago. The miniatures made by Fortress look very good too and they are impressive in the flesh as it were. Sadly they are huge compared to everything else and are closer to 32mm than 28mm. Some of the GW stuff looks very nice but next to none heroic 28mm it is a little chunky not to mention the fact that it's a kit. The stuff from the Zombies!!! game is really small for 28mm and wouldn't be all that out of place in a 20mm game although their zombie dogs might be worth a look.