Project Cornetto

* Please note, I have slap dashed this together to show it off. I have taken no time or care in what I write, and my mobile can be a pain sometime. I will go back at some point to correct spelling and grammar, but for now, I just want to get it published **

Skip to the end for pictures of the cornetto project in all its splendour. I will also do a thread at the end listing websites and places I have bought stuff from.

“When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth” – Peter – Dawn of the Dead.

“Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for this all to blow over” – Shaun. Shaun of the Dead.

These two quotes resonate with me and have done since I was first introduced to the respective films. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s was a great time for any geek. The 80’s gave us great movies, both action and horror and the 90’s gave us great TV that poked fun at the 80’s. I will always hold SPACED dear to my heart as we eked forth from 1999 to 2000. It was the perfect comedy with, so many references to things I enjoyed about my own life.

The episode with Tim playing Resident Evil all night to the point he hallucinates the zombie apocalypse around him, was sublime and a wonderful precursor to Shaun of the Dead. “Hey deadhead, take a bite of peach.”

I’ll never forget my first experience of playing Resident Evil on the PS1 and playing for hours on end. I digress.

I have always been a fan of zombie related material. As end of the world scenarios go, the planet slowing dying out from things that are already dead makes for a relevant story. Though I like films with intense fast zombies, there is something so much more threatening about the slow nature of a zombie virus and just being swarmed by hundreds of slow-moving reanimated corpses. Like you have a sense of hope that you can outrun it, but no matter how fast you are they will always catch up to you. Inevitable death.

Whatever the reasons, I love zombie things. Original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favourite films of all time and I have always loved the idea of turning a Mall into a fortress during the apocalypse. The we were graced with one of the finest comedies ever written with Shaun of the Dead. Again, Shaun of the Dead ticked all the boxes for me as did all the Cornetto movies. The works of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are just sublime and an inspiration for many things in my nerdy life.

Later down the line, I was hooked into Walking Dead, however I watched the series before I read the comics, so for a spell, I was blind to the stories lines and characters of the comics and how much grittier the comics were over the TV show. Either way I loved them both, so to see it supported by a game back in 2016 was a no brainer buy for me. (No brainer pun was not intended but totally left in now that I have written it).

I went full in on backing the Kickstarter on a whim that the game had solid rules. I was so pleased to find the rules were solid and fun and held massive replay value. The core box is a perfect little set for taking on holiday and just throwing down on the table. It’s certainly one of my favourite games to play straight out the box, especially for value. However, title of best boxed game for value, I still feel belongs to Flames of war and Open fire/Hit the beach sets.

The game set me on a path to collect all I could collect for the Walking Dead All Out War following the campaign and I achieved this over the following years. It’s one of the only games I still play on a regular basis, along with War Cry and Flames of War. I have plenty of others to dip in and out of, but AOW belongs in my top 3.

I picked up spare sets over the years and increased my Walker collection to gain over 150 Walkers.

I am incredibly pleased to hear its return was announced, as I was a little crushed at the news it was ending and no longer going to be supported. I totally understood why and that there’s really not much more to be released, as all worthy additions and expansion had pretty much been covered. It made sense that the last outstanding set would be the final comics set in the commonwealth. What I felt was the biggest shame was an end to production on what had been released. I didn’t want the community to die out with no new players coming in, as it was no longer supported. Let’s hope the revival sees the next generation of gamers being hooked in.

Following its initial release, I got to painting my models for AOW and saw my Ronnie walker featured om the Mantic page. I had painted it whilst watching the Beasts of War Boot camp. I really wanted to go, but timing and money would not allow. However much of what I watched planted an inspirational seed in my mind.

The layouts and tables on the boot camp event, were stunning and possibly some of the best gaming set ups I had seen to date. It spurred me to pick up a lot of 4ground stuff, but money being an issue in the past, I only picked up a select few items to play with AOW. I wanted to achieve what they did on the boot camp but was far off from doing so.

I was also very keen on the idea of making my own character, as having the option to make your own characters for AOW was a lovely addition. I spent a lot of time thinking of custom characters I wanted to see introduce to the game and naturally through this process, I was keen on bring in Shaun and Ed from Shaun of the Dead.

The idea was now in my mind that I wanted to play AOW but set in the same world as Shaun of the Dead, with a ‘get to the pub’ scenario. Essentially base the game to a familiar UK setting.

The journey began not long after AOW release, where I started to buy up building and mats to suit the post-apocalyptic zombie world. I put together a fine collection, but it was all very USA themed. Not a terrible thing as the main game is set in America. I still had the idea to set it in the UK. I always kept a look out for a MDF pub or kit that bared resemblance to the Winchester, with the idea to kit bash to convert. However, there was a lack in the department back then.

The closest we came at the time was a model from Antenocitis Workshop when they expanded their apocalypse range. This only appeared before they closed, so I missed the window to buy it. The loss of Antenocitis was a big one as it was a source for many resin pieces, I picked up for AOW.

So, I spent a few years picking up bits here and there from TTcombat, Sarrisa Precision, Antenocitis and Debris of War. Lots of other bits from Salute events. Anything that looked like it would be in place in a Walking Dead world, I would try and pick it up.

Skip forward a few years and I had made no progress of my Shaun of the Dead All Out War. However, with the advancements in the hobby, we had entered the age of the 3D printer. “The age of MDF is over, now is the time of the 3D printer”.

I avoided buying anything 3D printed. I didn’t like the look of printed models at the beginning, but it has come on in leaps and bounds. We had also seen improvements on Contrast Paints and Speed paints in the last couple of years, which has really helped me improve my painting game/batch painting.

I have learned so many new and different techniques thanks to YouTube and I am finally settling with a refined version of SLAPCHOP that is allowing me to paint many a grey model that has been sat on a shelf and put colour to it in such a way that it is table top worthy with a few brush strokes. It has spurred me to ramp up work on my grey AOW collection.

But my biggest hobby inspiration came in the form of Martin Krasemann and his YouTube channel The Solo Wargamer. It ran under a different name back in 2021, but the Solo Wargamer was an unexpected blessing born from the Covid years.

The Covid years were a traumatic time for most and the impact continues to resonate to date. Those who were able used this time as a massive boost to hobbying for xyz reasons. It also brough many outside folk into the hobby world, but let’s face it, a real pandemic killed a lot of people. It was a dark time, and I can only hope those who it impacted on and survived have begun to heal mentally and physically. Same to those who lost someone during this awful time.

My family, YouTube and hobby got me through this time. As a member of the emergency services, I still worked all through the pandemic, which was a lot of pressure. As many can sympathise, having a hobby is a great outlet to relieve those kinds of day-to-day pressures.

I got more into solo games (Naturally), and I had more reason to work to making my collections and terrain collection look good. I spent a lot of that time buying up wild west stuff.

Then The Solo Wargamers channel appeared. A hobby god appeared to me and said, look what can be made in your own home. Martins work was a hobby epiphany for me. His work overwhelmed me with inspiration that has left a lasting mark. His Dark Ops saga based on The Division and his series of modern war videos, just propelled me to achieve similar terrain and models. I loved the idea of modern warfare game set in a division like setting. I loved the Spectre Ops rules and started buying up modern war stuff to copy The Solo Wargamers work. Thankfully, he posted many VLOGS that details where he buys things and how he makes his terrain, which became my base line.

From Solo Wargamers work, I was inspired to make a city scape that mirrored his own. I even began work on writing my own modern warfare combat rules. I completed this recently and I’m ready to test with friends, but that another story.

Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of other inspiring hobby enthusiasts out there that I follow and have aided towards my venture, but it was the Solo Wargamer that lit the match.

I have always loved Mel (Terrain Tutors) works, Ash Barker (Guerrilla Miniatures), more recently with Lee at Tabletop Skirmish games and of course the Beast of War. The VLOGS over the years have spurred me to make much of my own terrain, particularly for Blood and Plunder.

I now had it in mind to build a town. Once I was settled on this idea, the dormant Shaun of the Dead AOW blend sparked into life again. So, in 2021, I concluded that I wanted to build a cityscape that was generic enough to be used for both American and UK settings.

So, I scoured eBay for 1/43 scale vehicles and began to collect both American and UK vehicles, primarily looking at emergency services as this is where the real visuals change on a tabletop when involving vehicles. Any old car looks good on the road, but the distinctive differences of UK and American emergency vehicles really set apart the local. I opted to focus on NYPD stuff and UK police. NYPD stuff seemed quite easy and cheap to obtain. I got quite lucky with some UK stuff in 1/43 and every so often a decent model pops up for cheap. However, I did find that UK stuff was more scarce or overly expensive.

Other vehicles I just picked up over time via eBay bundles or Amazon. I checked on a weekly basis for 1/43 vehicles to start stocking up.

Now following suit with Solo Wargamer, I picked up the terrain tiles from TTcombat as a base to building on. This is sold as a 4×4 or 2×1. Just due to my finances, I started with the 4×4 but over time bought more 2×1 when I realised what I was trying to achieve with custom bases per 1x1ft. I closely followed the Solo gamers designs and layout, but then wanted to add my own touches.

Furthermore, following Solos VLOGS, he advised of mistake made when making the pavement tiles and finding them hard to fit together as the sheets of MDF he used were too small. I find similar issues as I could find no 3mm sheets that cover the entire 1x1ft tiles. There would always be a gap. I resorted to using A3 size MDF sheets from eBay and then having to cut small slithers to fill the gaps.

To change things up from Solo. I used Vallejo texture paint over sand and grit. I found this to create the perfect tarmac surface that didn’t act as sandpaper for models. A pot from eBay cost a £10 and stretched to cover quite a few tiles.

I was then hit by a curve ball. The announcement at the closure of 4Ground. I love their kits and was devastated to hear the business fold. I had my eye on the shopping mall since it was announced and then seeing videos of Justin and Gerry playing AOW on the layout, just made me so jealous. So, I bit the financial bullet and during their closing down sale, bought all I needed to create a massive Mall.

I wanted the Mall due to my love of Dawn of Dead and I knew I would be able to incorporate the Mall into more games than just AOW. One of my first test games of the Modern Warfare rule set I have been working on, involved a diamond heist at the mall. When I finished playing (Spread over a few days due to time and testing) I was left with a sense that A) The rule worked. B) That was F***king epic. My own rules created such a narrative drama, with vehicles driven at Police, Officers pinned by automatic fire, human shields grabbed, lucky shots from beat cops taking down suspects, taser deployments, suspects surrendering at gun point and one van almost escaping with the loot. It flowed so well. But again, this is another story and I will post pictures explaining some bits. I came up with the DRP system which is my own dice mechanics to simulate the possibility of fully automatic fire and mag dumping without it being too overwhelming of everyone was to suddenly shoot and entire magazine. I’m quite proud of this mechanic.

Anyhow… I bought the Mall and spent a lot of time building that over the past couple of years in tangent with my city. I ended up buying another 4×4 TTcombat tile set to blend with the city I had already begun work on. At this stage it was only an idea to have 4×4 running into another 4×4 to create a town and a Mall on the edge of town.

I then ended up buying more tiles to create more unique tiles and this resulted in a further 2ft extensions. Theoretically if I put all the town stuff together, I have a 10×4 city table and mall.

Now with the idea leaning more toward UK based town, I started buying up small scatter pieces unique to the UK. Train modeler and new 3D places on eBay provide so many options now. I found an eBay site that sold O and N gage scatter but also had an option for 28mm. This gave me road works, temporary traffic lights, BT boxes, phone boxes and post boxes. Mix this with Debris or war and the rubbish stuff and I could create small scatter pieces to blend into the terrain.

Now Solo recommended using magic cards to put scatter together as a single piece to make it easier to deploy on a table. This was genius, but I changed from card to thick clear card protectors. This allowed me to create a see-through ridged base that would blend with any surface it was placed on. This would also give me an idea later.

I was now becoming more comfortable with the idea of 3D printed protects and they looked so much better within the past year, that I began to look for models to represent UK homes. Again, I followed recommended 3D prints from Solo which led me to designs by Corvus Terrain. Corvus appears to the lead for modern 3D printed buildings.

I found a local printer team who produced a bunch of terraced houses and bunch of shops for me. Not only this but *Insert hallelujah choir here* The Winchester public house in all its glory. Yes, finally I could have my Shaun of the Dead project fulfilled.

So, this arrived to me in December 2022. Just in time for me to injury my back and be off work for a couple of months. Injured back, bad. Immobile time at home, good. I spent my immobile time well and painted up all my houses. I put extra time and effort into the pub, but as I was stuck to a chair, I made use of this time to smash through so much painting.

I as a nerd, did all the research on the original pub and terraced houses local to the area. I found the best colour match the brick work using colour forge Trench Brown.

I used sand and grit to give texture to all the flat roofs on any building that had a flat roof. All greys were from Standard Grey spray and Matt Black for everything else. Colour forge is my go-to for sprays and my FLG sells for a decent price, so happy days.

So, to take things a nerdy step further, I researched a lot about Shaun of the dead and ended up finding little bit to enhance the pub and make a decent replica. I used phonebooths, I found the brand of jukebox and coin game used by Ed in the film, I stuck them all inside the model and used mantic terrain to flesh out the interior. I freehand made the bar from spare bit and card parts from Battle systems. I made lots of posters and fridge stock images to make bar paraphernalia, including hog lumps. I went full on.

I then had the same idea to make one of the terraced houses Shaun’s home. So back to research, I found the number of the property and studied the film to get the door colour and garden layout. It’s actually a massive corner house, but the 3D models were fine to represent. I picked up a small 3D printed shed, and hand made a fence system to connect the houses with 3 gardens and 3 front gardens. Just MDF and coffee stirrers. Bit of paint and flock and the gardens and houses were complete.

To enhance the houses to fit the theme of an apocalypse, I took the idea from Solo again to board up the windows with newspapers. Similarly, to what is can be seen in 28 Weeks later opening when they return to the UK after the outbreak. It’s a nice idea and works well for hiding interiors. I use thin sheets of clear A4 thick paper to glue in as windows and then PVA’d on random section of homemade newspapers on photoshop. I even stuck in some Sainsburys bags and Tesco’s bags, shrunk down to suit the size.

This then inspired me to create shops for the area. I didn’t want to copy Shaun of the dead exactly with a corner shop as I wouldn’t be able to find a suitable building to represent. So, I instead opted to pick up some Sarrisa stuff to create a local Tesco’s, like expresses local to me, Again I made a custom print sheet of signs and posters. Fitted the windows and glued everything in place. Again, Standard Grey sprays help so much for urban environments.

As I became a bit more mobile, I moved onto working the street tiles from TTcombat. I had my layout designed and carved out to create the pavements. After applying the texture paint, I coated the tiles in cheap black spray then a dusting of standard grey. The cheap black stuff was a mix of £5 local shop and £1 Poundland spray which worked well but you get only a £1s worth. Did enough to act as a good base for the grey to cling to as the MDF absorbed a lot of the black. The grey over the black over the texture paint gave an almost perfect tarmac colour.

I then used light grey through an airbrush on the pavements and then lightened the further with dry brushing administratum grey followed by fine dusting of Ushabiti bone from Citadel. I gave the roads a light dry brushing of just Ushabiti bone but primarily wanted the roads to remain dark.

I used paint pens to add in road markings and highways maintenance signs and lines. I chose not to go for UK street markings such yellow lines or give ways on each tile to ensure they were generic enough to be used for both UK and US settings. Due to having several tiles to add to the 4×4, I used these to create unique roads. I added in pedestrian crossings and road works using the depth provided by the raised tiles. I made a couple of construction site tiles following a similar design to Solo Wargamer, taking a step further, I made a hidden trench on one of the constructions sites to be used as a further burial area, hideaway.

I did face one issue. The shape of the Winchester. To fit the Winchester on a tile, I had to redesign the roads, and this had an impact on any connecting tiles. I had to fully redesign the entire layout to fit around the Winchester. Doh.

Never mind. I had enough tiles to swap in an out many pieces. So, when not using the Winchester, I had plenty of road tiles to feature without the pub.

Eventually I ended up with plenty of tiles to fit a large city scape and then some. Plus, a large shopping mall.

Having finished the tiles, I went back to some old café kits and small shop and spruced them up to fit the area. I turned one into a pharmacy and used 4ground stuff to kit out the insides. Same with the café. I copied Solos idea of Starbucks as its very recognisable.

The UK shops I had 3D printed, I chose to go with local food and hardware store. I already had America buildings, so I was happy to have pure UK stuff for my UK set ups.

All the pieces were falling into place and much of the scatter I copied straight from Solo or was lucky enough to have bought from Antenocitis before it closed.

I told my friends at work who are also hobby nerds that I was working on a city piece and teased images. I lovingly dubbed the project ‘Cornetto’ to keep them interested and teased.

Skip ahead to this year and I was stocked up on Cars, building and tiles. As a side project, I have always had fun turning faux fur into grassy mats. I created a 4x 4 mat a few years ago as a test and it still features in my games. I bought fur for a 6×4 mat which actually ended up 7×5 when cut, but this sat in the attic for years festering.

Thanks to a warm summer, I decided to get the mat out and turn it into fields. I did this spurred on by the idea of

1. A) 15mm games.
2. B) Warlords Epic Napoleon.
3. C) 02 hundred Hours in 15mm Scale and lastly
4. D) have a fur gaming field mat for both 15 and 28mm games.

I had a boost after watching A field in England and had an idea to make an English Civil War Skirmish Game. I wrote some rules for this too and a warlord’s spur gave me enough 15mm to fulfil the warbands for two forces.

Using the mild weather, I got to work trimming, shaving, cutting, painting, spraying a faux mat.

I used caulk to make the dirt road and paths, followed by sand pressed in to give it texture. Thanks to the unprecedented hot weather in Autumn. It dried super quick. So now I had a rural 7x5ft gaming mat.

Perfect.

Now for some pictures of the progress so far.