Collins builds the world of the walking dead

So i went to Penkridge wargaming jumble sale and someone was selling two MDF kits for cheap (i think £10). Being the good citizen i am i felt it was only right and proper to take ownership, add them to the pile o crap in the garage and then forget about it for a few years

yeah, so i went there… i gone done ruined two perfectly good kits.

Previously when ive made these tables/board (go back through this very project) i have used the entirety of the building. sometimes naratively for missions (the barn) sometimes because i liked it that way (petrol station).

This time you can imagine that in sub-urban Atlanta (or generic american town… Woodbury maybe?!) there are two families that live next door but absolutely hate each other. we’ve all been there, Karen and her arsewipe husband Kevin are just horrible, she’s got a screechy voice moaning about you parking on your drive instead of in the garage and he is always cutting the lawn at 7am on a sunday (heathen bastard), they’re both probably vegans too and aggressively moan about BBQs in the summer. So what do you do? Well the only reasonable thing to do in the zombie apocalypse, shoot them, feed them to the walkers and take all their stuff (except their food, there are limits).

now, the two gangs can face off starting in the houses or outside and make maximum use of the space rather than it being effectivly just blocking terrain. Less see how this works out as clearly the structural integrity has been compromised by the saw blade.

Here we go again!

back in the land of the walking dead to try and push through some more hobby in the unending pile of hobby.

first stop, B&Q for some materials and the ‘cut to size’ service.

Cue one massive sheet of HDF being cut down into 20×20 inch sizes in the matter of seconds. followed by a trip home and the handsaw cutting the strip wood into 20inc lengths all with mitrejoints. I’d quite like a mitre saw but cant really justify it atm.

why four boards?

well… firstly because i have several ideas…. and secondly because it’s cheaper to spend more money

Today was the Mantic open day / relaunch event for the walking dead.
I took along my boards and a small 150 point list to see what havoc I could cause…turned out not a lot of havoc but plenty of mayhem due to taking guns and using them quite liberally.

The boards went down a storm, people clearly loved playing on something so detailed and I heard nothing but compliments.

The ‘first’ grudge match between Ronnie and Paul was played using the gas station board and the brand new commonwealth models.

there was also a raffle with a number of ‘last of these ever’ prizes involved, mostly involving the fancy event only models and the last coreset in the current format. I added the gas station board to the prize pool and nearly won it back haha. I instead took away the super fancy brass etch token set.

Congrats to the new owner of the award winning walking dead gas station board

the eagle eyed among you will notice that the doors can still open over the top of the dead lady’s legs! I totally designed it to happen like that…

anyway, when looking at this it strikes me that something is missing!

blood splatter achieved using blood for the blood god and a stiff brush. flicking the paint onto the barn and ground nears the dead bodies.

adds a little more character I feel

I know that Georgia in TWD is quite a dry area when the group visit the farm but I wanted a few different areas, field, green bit, dry brown bit and also churned up mud. Wherever there is tractors and plant there is the opportunity for it to churn up the ground.

in steps the Vallejo thick mud mix. I bought this for another project and didn’t really like the results so its kicked around ever since. I threw caution to the wind and slapped it on hoping for the best. I used an old fat paint brush to get a random texture. I did try to get tyre tracks in the must but it didn’t work out. after that I placed and superglued in the tractor completely forgetting about how moisture makes the glue mist/frost/bloom….

continuing the gluing with abandon in the hope of finishing it before my son woke up I predrilled holes and dumped a blob of superglue in them before shoving in the corn stalks. there must have been moisture from unset/cured pva glue in the mixed herbs because this all bloomed too.

might fix it with a bit of brown paint unless I am happy to just accept it as is.

Im now gonna leave it for a while to fully dry and see how things are before adding in the final touches (dog and dead bodies)

so I got the dog house stripped reprimed and decided to contrast paint it up to make up for the faff. it doesn’t look like wood by comparison just due to the nature of contrast but it will do.

The German Shepard is something that I got in a mantic terrain crate blind buy and the details are soft but again, contrast on it and call it done. I think I’ll hide this guy in the corn field or under the trees or something just as a point of interest elsewhere, almost as if he is hiding from the undead monsters that roam around now.

the ground texture is the same as seen in my other project to build tables. basically baked soil and tile grout.

I added mixed herbs to the field area as I expect there would be some debris from the crops, although most fields are quite clean (or so google image search says, see here but also here)

the tractor I wanted to get done quickly and decided to try and use the airbrush. im not very familiar with this tool so practising on scenery is a good way to try it out and not worry too much about the results.

primed in rattle can gun metal silver then airbrushed on contrast red heavily to where I felt there would be trim or red paint (to make it faster, obviously, wargghh!) then I dulled down the metal areas left over with the grey and finally slapped black on the tyres.

its not an accurate way of doing a tractor but is is quick so it’lll do.

The cockup is that I forgot to wash the dog house before priming it so as soon as I started painting it I found myself rubbing the primer off…. annoying as its now got to go into the dettol and be started again after a scrubbing. c’est le vie