Rufus, survivor

I scrounged around and found the last figure of the Street Violence blister set I owned, a guy who I guess is supposed to look like Rob Zombie or something.  Since I'm Robb, I decided to go with "Rufus" instead.  Rufus is armed with a grenade, a knife, a gun, and a drum-fed shotgun.  That's a pretty solid kit.  Maybe it is the gut and the big belt buckle, but he's got a good "survivor" vibe going for him.

In my inventory of the miniatures I have that might work in this range, I discovered I only had about a dozen zombies, and they are all the Wargames Factory ones.  So I ordered a horde of new miniatures from Zombiesmith on Black Friday (he had a sale, 18% off).  It might be a while before they get here, but in the meantime I have a few more I can be working on.

Stephanie, survivor

In anticipation of launching my solo ATZ campaign, I've been going through my giant collection of odd miniatures in hopes of finding ones that can be, if you'll forgive the term, cannibalized for participants in the game.

This figure is one of rarest I own, and is special to me because it is one that I helped design.  Many, many years ago a friend named Steve Eserin launched a miniatures and terrain company called "The Figure Trader."  To support the line, he created a very interesting game called "Sabotage."  I was asked by Steve to provide some of the concept sketches for the game, and even got my name on the book.  Or rather, I got this accidental pastiche between my real name and my internet handle that Steve apologized for later.  Sadly, The Figure Trader lost a ton of money as a vendor in the meltdown of i-kore,which subsequently declared bankruptcy, forced their debtors to write off the loss, and then had the assets purchased by a member of their own staff who relaunched the entire line as Urban Mammoth.  (As a sidenote, one of i-kores disgruntled sculptors went onto be the guy behind Hasslefree miniatures.  If you ever look at the Void 1.1 line, you'll see his hand in it.)

Anyways, as a thanks for being part of the creation of Sabotage, Steve sent me a ton of resin sci-fi terrain which I still use, as well as a bunch of miniatures, including quite possibility the entire casting lot of this one.  Somewhere I've got about two dozen of this figure, whom I named Stephanie in honor of Steve Eserin.  She's got a little of the cheesecake look to her, but I'm thinking a blowtorch is an interesting option as an improvisational weapon against zombies.

As a side note, despite some health problems Steve still works for Terragnosis, which you should really go check out.

Berkeley, Survivor

Hard to believe I haven't done anything on this project since July, but I got sidetracked by some other things.  Now I'm back, and starting things off with "Berkeley" from Reaper Miniatures.  She's a great looking fig, but she's armed with two of the most problematic weapons in ATZ: a shotgun and a chainsaw.  Both work just fine against zombies, but tend to draw more zombies like flies to honey.

If you read my primary blog, you know I'm kind of kicking about some various projects.  Well, I've decided to come back here.  I've been reading and re-reading the ATZ rules, and I think I know what one of my biggest hang-ups about the rules was, and I've come to grips with it.  Now it's time to get some figures, both alive and dead, painted up and ready to launch.

Jolene

This is "Cyrise" from the Foundry Street Violence range, but I'm calling her "Jolene" which just sounds more Southern.  She's got a big pistol on her left hip, an SMG, and a knife and grenade(!) on her right hip.

Okay, I know there are a lot of zombie gaming enthusiasts, and I've got a question.  I need to bulk up my repertoire of zombies for my upcoming ATZ campaign.  I have the zombies from Wargames Factory already, but they look more like "zombie extras."  I'm looking for some front-row zombies, available in the US.  Suggestions?

Michelle, Survivor

I like this miniature for several reasons.  First, you don't get a lot of modern/post-apocalyptic figures that depict minorities.  Second, you don't find a lot that depict women.  Third, of the ones that do, many rely pretty heavily on racial stereotyping. 

So, this figure, which is actually from the old Dark Age miniatures game, depicts a minority woman who looks pretty bad-ass, and not like she's from a Krumm cartoon.  I named her after an old school friend with whom I continue to keep in touch.

Book Review: Autumn

Interesting story behind Autumn by David Moody.  Apparently Moody, a fan of such books as War of the Worlds and movies like Night of the Living Dead, wanted to write his own horror novel but lacking any literary credentials couldn't get picked up by a publisher.  So, with the internet hitting its own (2003) he decided to give away the book for free.  A few hundred thousand downloads later, and he's sold the movie rights, started his own publishing house, and cranked out several sequels.  The movie came out in 2009--I may have to go check it out.

The story behind Autumn is that a (unrealistically) rapid, lethal virus kills off over 99% of the human population of the earth in what appears to be hours.  Now I'm no epidemiologist or a meteorologist, but I didn't think air currents could carry a germ that quickly.  But hey, I'm looking for good science from a zombie novel.  In an English town the handful of survivors first have to deal with the shock and collapse of civilization, followed by the revival of a fraction of the disease victims as zombies.

At first, the zombies aren't even dangerous--they are just wandering, mindless corpses, but later they start to home in on the living, and they significantly out number them.  There's no suggestion of contagious bite/kill stuff at play here, the zombies just seem to want to destroy anything that lives or more specifically makes noise.

The main characters are three survivors and most of the plot revolves around their group dynamic (what with the zombies not being threatening until almost halfway through the book).  The story also has the usual zombie fare: the grocery store pillaging, the crazy guy lifted straight out of the movie Psycho with the zombie family member (the same guy appeared in Dead Reckoning too), etc.  I also noticed that the main trio also closely resembled the central three characters from the movie Shallow Grave, including having one of them go up into the attic and spy on the others.

It's clear by the time you get to the end of the book that the author wanted to leverage this into something more.  There's no real ending, not even a cliffhanger.  The story just stops, awaiting the next novel in the series.  What's more, the characters are more interesting in the beginning of the story but sort of fritter away in terms of personality.  By the end they are just generic individuals working towards survival.  [SPOILER FOLLOWS]



What's worse, the most interesting character doesn't even make it to the end, and even that is foreshadowed so heavily it isn't much of an event.  I can't figure out if I want to give Autumn: the City a try just to see if the author starts to get into the good stuff (stuff that maybe he didn't want to give away for free) or just let this series go.  We'll see.

Movie Review: the Horde

The Horde popped up on Netflix online recently, and as it had come highly recommended I thought I would give it a try.  The Horde is a French film, with English subtitles, with an interesting zombie story set-up.  Four police officers launch a nighttime raid on a local Nigerian crimelord with the intent of avenging the death of a friend of theirs.  While inside the hulking, decrepit tenement the gangster uses as a base, the world is suddenly swarmed with zombies.  The police and the criminals have to band together to survive fleeing the building in what feels vaguely like the plot of Assault on Precinct 13.

For those who care about such things, these are not "slow zombies" but full hard-on fast zombies (or "ragers" as we know them from ATZ), which is necessary because all the characters are so badass that they could waltz through a city full of slow zombies without losing a step.  Whatever makes the zombies also gives them a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs as well, just to add to their threat level.

Like most good zombie stories, the real story isn't just surviving the predatory horde but also the tension within the group, and not even each "side" gets along with itself.  The characters aren't terribly well developed, and oddly the criminals end up having more of their personality come through than the police (the theoretical protagonists of the story).  The huge, bleak, industrial building, surrounded by the city lit up by fires, explosions, and the sound of artillery does make for a great backdrop for the story.

A few notes for the zombie enthusiast.  Like many stories there is no "why" to the zombie outbreak, just the reaction.  Curiously, at the beginning of the story the zombies are merely people who die and then come back (the "hell has no room for you" zombie) but through most of the film are the contagious "get bit and you'll transform in about half an hour" zombie.  In an unfortunate and probably unintentional bit of cinematography one of the zombies is seen having their breath create mist on a window, so maybe they aren't really dead?  Who knows.

One picky thing I did like was that there is a "suspension of knowledge" in the film regarding zombies.  No one ever uses the phrase "zombies" and they are completely ignorant of the usefulness of head trauma, even though the zombies are only taken out once that occurs.  There's moments in most zombie films where some character has that "a ha" moment and then suddenly it is a head-shot-o-rama, but I realized that I was three quarters of the way through the film and the characters are continuing to pump shotgun rounds into the torsos of these guys.  There's no established qualities to these creatures, like there might be if they were, say, vampires or werewolves.  In fact, only one person seems to get how it all works, but he's so crazy that he is totally disregarded.  Touches like that are always appreciated.

The Horde was definitely better than your schlocky zombie movie, without succumbing to the jumpy, jarring cinematography prevalent in your "dark building" horror films these days.  Definitely a good pick for zombie movie night.