These models are heavily kitbashed. I've made two versions of the miniature, since the steeply discounted Zombicide box came with two variations (the survivor version and the zombie version). The cleaner miniature is based on the normal model, and the battle-damaged suit is based on the zombified version.
This would be a good pair of minis for running a two-stage boss battle.
With them, however, is a lone infantry skeleton. He's more dangerous than that would imply, however, because he's armed with an RPG-7 rocket launcher! Look out! When asked why such a creation exists, the only answer given was: "The rules state that the summoned skeleton can be equipped with any hand-held weapon."
A new box of Stargrave miniatures was recently released with what it calls "Automatons," though the figures are far more cyborg than the robots I originally expected from the name. My first thought upon seeing the drill arms on the sprue was that I could---nay, must---craft a gentleman with the right to bear drills. This guy is kitbashed from four sources:
As noted in the title, Drillman is set to be a supervillain. It feels like it would be difficult to be a hero with the "drill arms" powerset. He has a traditionally secondary-color costume of orange with green accents. With the bright orange sunglasses, it's a distinctly '80s vibe. This is very easily the kind of comic book character that the '80s would have created for a single issue, not to be seen again for decades.
(Note: No relation to the Mega Man robot Drill Man. That name has a space in it.)
The five gangers are built primarily from Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder, except for the heads. Their skulls are from the Citadel Skulls box while the four Drone skulls are Wargames Atlantic (which are a little larger). I once again removed the front parts from the Cannon Fodder rifles to make them a reasonable size and remove the "bayoneted lasgun" vibe.
Gray Matter is another figure from the "Sentinels Tactics Miniatures:
Minions" box; the character is listed as The Broker. Once again, it's
soft PVC, and the sculpt isn't great. I stuck a giant's skull from the
Citadel Skulls box onto the front to tie it into the gang's aesthetic.
Then, I just drybrushed and washed most of the figure in greys to hide
the doughy sculpt and imply that she's hidden in the shadows. It works
well enough, but I'm not entirely pleased with the finished product. A
series of mistakes led her to be placed on a tall spaceship stand, which
I installed into a custom-designed 3D-printed base; it was a lot of
very unnecessary frustration, but it did lead to the idea for the drone
swarm surrounding her.
The bases, either flat or textured, had a base layer of Vallejo Heavy Violet (72.142), then a drybrush or stipple of FolkArt Imperial Red (4669).
The "drones" can also be used in D&D as undead Flameskulls, the namesake for the gang, or as floaty magic skulls in anything that uses my skeleton horde.
The name, "braincase," just means the skull, but it's close enough to "headcase," which is defined as a "mentally unbalanced, unpredictable person, especially one who displays aggressive behavior." This is, in the broadest sense, a pun, or play on words.
One of the reasons Braincase isn't a top-tier villain is that he's not particularly distinctive. He's got a red hoodie, a skull mask, some nice sneakers, and that's pretty much it. He's probably more of an ambush hunter than an actual fighter, too.
The model is built primarily from the Male Survivor sprue of the Project Z game, but the normal head options were ignored, replaced for a skull from the Citadel Skulls box (much like the Devil Mayfair). Not much else to say here. I didn't have an orange I liked for the chainsaw, so I mixed (far too much) Vallejo Bloody Red and Sun Yellow to get the right shade.
The base miniature is "Borin Ironbrow, Dwarf Fighter" from Reaper Miniatures. The right-hand shield is a Skaven shield, with pairs of spikes clipped off of old Skaven spears. The mindflayer head is an alien head from a Stargrave sprue, chopped in half and extended with green stuff. The dragon head is some skull from... a box of skulls, which was extended with green stuff; the horns are the tips of Skaven tails. There's a surprisingly large amount of Skaven on this model.
You can never have too many generic thugs, and Gingerbread has rung in the new year by recruiting a few more dastardly goons to her criminal empire. These are painted in the same basic colors as the previous generic thugs, though this grey has a slightly greenish hue (Vallejo "German C. Extra Dark Green").
This batch also adds another special lieutenant, Mr. Mistletoe, with a heavy anti-superhero weapon. The missile weapon Mistletoe is towing appears to be an AT4 (from a Project Z sprue). According to Wikipedia, "the AT4 is a Swedish 84 mm unguided, man-portable, disposable, shoulder-fired recoilless anti-tank weapon." Technically, it's a recoilless rifle and not a missile launcher, but honestly, I'm just going to call it a rocket launcher.
So, this brings Gingerbread's gang up to 13 members:
That seems like a decent-enough criminal organization for a supervillain. (This does now outnumber the next-largest specifically supercriminal group, Redcoat's gang, which has a total of 11 members.)
On the left is the Impa TAV (tracked assault vehicle). Hailing from a heavily-industrialized nation, it is well-armored, can be heavily armed, and has some bells and whistles that other basic tankettes may not. However, unlike the Steed and KGJ, it lacks a turret. Well-engineered and beloved by its crews, this lack of a turret means that getting fully-tracked or otherwise immobilized renders the Impa TAV nearly defenseless. This tankette can equip a machine gun, a heavy rifle, a light cannon, or even a medium cannon (the only tankette to be able to do so).
On the right is the KGJ-7. In many ways, it sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Impa TAV. Cheap and mass-produced, it does not have any bells or whistles, simply meant to do its job reasonably efficiently. However, unlike most tankettes that can only fit two crewmembers, the large KGJ-7 has three; it's still cramped, but if a crewmember becomes a casualty, the other crewmembers are cross-trained to take their place. The KGJ-7 is also remarkably tough; their simple, rugged design and redundant systems can sometimes survive damage that would cripple other tankettes. This tankette's turret can equip a machine gun, a heavy rifle, or a light cannon, or it can go weaponless with a recon hatch.
In addition to the tankettes, which I designed, I also kitbashed two tank crewmembers (Ⓣ) from plastic kits. The main bodies are Wargames Atlantic French Resistance, the heads are WA Cannon Fodder, and the arms and revolvers are either WA French Resistance, WA Napoleonic British Rifleman, or Warlord Games WWII SAS. The colors are primarily Ceramcoat Burnt Umber (02025), lightened with FolkArt Coffee Bean (881), and Vallejo Heavy Blue (72.143), along with a Nuln Oil wash.
With several tankettes to choose from and a pair of crewmen, I finally have an actual, finished unit for Tanker. I should probably work on getting some infantry squads put together.
I don't really have any plan for this model, but the wrench implies mechanical skills and the dapper chapeau implies people skills. Maybe a high-skill character to even out the little pistol? Maybe just a memorable NPC. In any case, I'm happy with how she turned out, but I doubt I'll be putting together any more Belospians any time soon.
I think I'm going to call this model of robot the A.R.D., or "Automatic Roughneck Drone." Is this just so I can call this specific figure BurnARD? Yes. Yes, it is. But I think the name is pretty nice.
Have you seen this mech before? You might not have recognized him because of the red arm.
Only seven models left to finish off this little army. (It's 50/50 that they'll ever get done.)
Originally, I sculpted little turnipy plant people out of greenstuff, but the end result was despairingly bad, so I turned to kitbashing. The rootlings are built from Reaper Bones kobolds from the Bones 4 Kickstarter. The leaves and flytrap on the rootlings' heads are from a two-decade-old box of Catachan Jungle Fighters. I cut off the horns on each kobold head, drilled a hole in the center, and glued in the base of the plants. The leaves and final drybrush coat are Vallejo "Goblin Green."
These guys aren't great, but they're both interesting and "good enough" so I'm happy to move on.
The six figures with rifles are half a unit of Fodder. They're the basic line unit. These guys are made from Wargames Atlantic Napoleonic British Riflemen. I used green stuff to make their weird, leathery bag masks. They have tufts on their back, which got a shade wash to matte them down.
The other two models are what I'm going to be using as Toadies, which are kind of like the lieutenants in the game. The one on stilts was a test for a kind of unit called "Lopers," who are drunkards on stilts. However, it was a complicated little kitbash, so he's just a one-off now. I even tried to do a little "object source lighting" from the lantern. The shorter guy with the 12th GMPR flag is an armored fellow from the command sprue of a Landsknecht box. The flag is paper.
Here's the list of paints that I used on the 12th GMPR models in the general order that I used them:
And here's the basing stuff:
The model used for Fiasco is a regular zombie from the Zombicide "Walk of the Dead 2" box. The posture really sold me on the character, and there's nothing too overtly zombie-ish about it. With this paint job, he looks a bit beat-up (appropriately), but basically human.
The two Fiasconauts are Wargames Atlantic French Resistance (like many of my henchmen these days), armed with Warlord Games Project Z arms (my go-to source for modern weapons for these bodies). The heads are from the Wargames Atlantic British Riflemen box. I went back and forth on the domino masks, but I like leaning into the whole "comic book" fashion sense.
The figures are primed black, then painted with a base of Heavy Brown. The orange is a mixture of Vallejo Orange Fire, Heavy Orange, and Craftsmart Dark Orange. This orange is washed with Agrax Earthshade. After this, the main grey detailing (and the warden's uniform) is painted Basalt Grey. The weapon haft is Luftwaffe Uniform WWII. The blades, shotgun, and warden's helmet are Heavy Charcoal (simulating carbon fiber materials). Wash with Nuln Oil on the non-orange parts. Serves five.
This warden is entirely made from Anvil Industry pieces. The prisoners are a bit more diverse. The main bodies are Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder. The arms and weapons (bardiches!) are from Perry Miniatures Agincourt French Infantry. The heads are from that Warlord Games WWII British Paratrooper sprue, but I think they're big Polish airborne berets. Taken altogether, I think it makes a pretty good science fiction prisoner conscript uniform.
So this is 1.5 points of an approximately 3 point squad for one player. I enjoy the concept of each player controlling several "units" in an RPG, but I'll need to see how it plays out.
The parts for this little chariot come from all over. The cart itself is a Reaper Miniatures Pig and Cart. I've previously posted the pig. The cart came filled with molded-in vegetables like pumpkins and such. I put a bunch of bone bits over them from the Wargames Atlantic Skeleton Infantry sprue and the Citadel Skulls box. The wizard himself is largely Wargames Atlantic, but the hat and hourglass are from the Frostgrave Wizard II sprue. The left arm is from the Frostgrave Cultist sprue. The wizard is rising from the pile of bones like he's a part of it, perhaps suggesting a regenerative ability. The skeletal horse is from the brand new Wargames Atlantic Skeleton Cavalry box. Finally, I printed the base on my 3D printer. It's 50 mm by 100 mm to match the size of the Corpse Cart in Warhammer. That's a hefty kitbash!
The Skeleton Horde is now 54 models.
The bodies are Stargrave Troopers, the arms are Frostgrave Cultists, the helmet heads are Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder, and the Rudulian head and the shields are Anvil Industry. That's a lot of sources.
This force is good to have for sci-fi or even modern RPG games. In Stargrave, they could be run as a crew with Tekker Captain (Grenadier), Veteran First Mate (Rudulian with Shield), Gunner, Sniper, Trooper x3, Recruit x2, and Chiseler/Hacker (Setla with pistol). Maybe I'll add one more model so that they're a perfect fit for a 4x4 storage tray, but currently there are 15 members of corporate security:
The model stands 75mm tall from base to the tip of the sword. The attached giant rock he's standing on helped with that lift. I mounted it all on a 40mm base, then added a bunch of skulls from my trusty Citadel Skulls box to fill in the space and make it more dynamic. That box of skulls is a gift that keeps on giving, but I think this might be the first time I've used it for basing—which was its intended purpose by Games Workshop.
I used some of the last of my "old" Agrax Earthshade as a wash for this figure, which is why it looks nicely blended instead of shiny and pooled.
Totaling everything up, I now have 45 units for the Undead Army. This puts them just shy of the Embers of Alexandria Cultists' 48 units. I get the feeling that the Undead are going to have reinforcements before too long, though.
Publius became quite a spy over his career, but in 1995, the team undertook a covert mission to intervene in the Yugoslav Wars and all five members of the Bright Stars were either captured or killed. Agent Publius was kept sedated by his captors until he was moved by the leader of Gorskaland, Lord Auctoritas, to a secret prison in his country. Publius was kept prisoner in a windowless cell for eight years as Auctoritas' scientists took his blood and did other tests to try and determine how to replicate his abilities. The United States never mounted any rescue operations and denied that the operation ever took place, claiming that the Bright Stars were killed by an ambush during a humanitarian mission.
In 2003, a lapse in security protocols allowed Publius to escape his cell. Leaving a trail of death in his wake, he managed to escape the Gorskan facility, and then the country. Feeling betrayed, Publius refused to return to government service and became a free agent. With his teleportation abilities, he became the ultimate getaway driver, able to teleport up to two others at a time as far as he could see, and chaining teleports together to moves miles in moments. As a mercenary, his skills are highly sought by criminals, governments, and rich individuals, and he commands a high price for his expertise.
Side note: Publius can also teleport through live video, but even a brief broadcast delay prevents him from using the stream to teleport.
So, the model: This is a Stargrave Scavenger body and arms, with an Anvil Industry head and a set of binoculars (and hand) from a Warlord Games Bolt Action British Airborne sprue. Under his brown leather longcoat is at least a hint of his old superhero costume in red, white, and blue.
The arms/claws are Wargames Atlantic Harvesters. The melty head is what I think is supposed to be an alien egg, also from the Harvesters sprue. The jumpsuit body is from the Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder.
The jumpsuit is painted a base of Vallejo Extra Opaque Heavy Charcoal (72.155). The gray portions are Vallejo Basalt Grey (70.869), and there is some lighter gray on the zipper and other highlights with Ceramcoat Rain Grey (02543). This is also a test of this scheme for some planned scifi survivors.