"...It Might Have Originated In Outer Space."

"Remember, no touch pod. Could be dangerous."

These three 28mm metal models by “Crooked Dice Game Design Studio” are a mixture of the two well-detailed sculpts which make up the Lincolnshire-based company’s code SKU: Deal 87 Spawn. They have all been painted up as part of my growing horde of Krynoid plant-zombies for Zomtober 2015.

Fashioned by George Fairlamb each model was initially given an undercoat of “Vallejo” Heavy Grey before being arbitrarily washed with “Citadel” Thrakka Green and “The Army Painter” Strong Tone Quickshade. Having finished this rather fun, albeit messy phase, I then dry-brushed the meat-eating space invaders with more “Vallejo” Heavy Grey and then painted all of their eye-balls, bulges, crustacean-like pincers and bloated blisters using either Heavy Kakhi, Heavy Sienna, Heavy Brown or Heavy Red. Afterwards all of these areas were treated to an appropriate “Citadel” coloured wash of Carroburg Crimson, Thrakka Green or “The Army Painter” Strong Tone Quickshade. Lastly I applied a final dry-brush of “Vallejo” Heavy Grey over each model, making sure to miss all the ‘detailed’ work I had done on them.

I still have another four of these ‘Walkers’ to finish before I have enough for my “Doctor Who And The Seeds of Doom” inspired game of “Zombicide” at the end of Zomtober. But they should be finished within the next few days. In the meantime I have been pottering around with some of the scenery I want to use to represent the scenario’s location – the somewhat dilapidated grounds of Chase Manor. I’ve purchased a Scenery Upgrade Pack from the “Mars Attacks – The Miniatures Game” by “Mantic Games” for just this purpose and have so far managed to finish painting a couple of pieces of wooden fencing, two piles of rubble and a small ruined corner.

The plant-zombies of the Krynoid slowly shuffle their way across the ruins of Chase Manor 

Unsurprisingly for someone who dislikes painting scenery, their paint-jobs have been extraordinarily simple. The fencing has literally been undercoated “Vallejo” Heavy Sienna, washed with “The Army Painter” Strong Tone Quickshade and then dry-brushed with more “Vallejo” Heavy Sienna. Whilst the brick piles and wall were all painted using “Vallejo” Heavy Red, more Strong Tone Quickshade, and a dry-brush of more “Vallejo” Heavy Red. Everything was then treated to a coat of undiluted PVA glue, as I find this really helps hold together my scenery and give it a rubbery protective layer; very useful for protecting my speedy work as I tend to treat terrain rather roughly both on and off the tabletop.

Lastly I have been pinning and gluing together a number of “Crooked Dice Game Design Studio” miniatures to use as ‘Runners’. These infected minions are great little castings which are asking to be converted into ghastly-looking semi-human nightmares. I’ve somewhat splurged and actually ended up making seven of these hapless staff members in the end, including the tragic botanist Arnold Keeler and a second laboratory assistant. But in the main the models represent some of Harrison Chase’s blue-suited security guards.

Infected WIPS - Plenty of malformations to paint on these hapless minions of Harrison Chase

 “Crooked Dice Game Design Studio” sell a cracking separate malformed head. But I didn’t want all of my minions to have the same face, so in the end I decided to give a couple of them a normal helmeted head and will simply paint their faces partially green. In the 1976 British Science Fiction television program Chase’s men actually wore blue baseball-cap type headwear, similar to that seen on “Captain Scarlet”; which “Crooked Dice” actually do sell. However as I have a ‘Battle The Mysterons’ project in the works I didn’t want another ‘force’ using those rather identifiable selfsame heads. In the end I therefore went with the rather generic ‘mining helmet’ look which I thought looked fantastic on Blofeld’s goons in the James Bond motion picture “Diamonds Are Forever”. As I don’t want my grounds staff to contain too much blue though, I’ll be painting my guards’ hats a light(ish) grey instead.

In addition I also disliked the idea of having all of my minions wandering around with just a crab-claw or tentacle, so having pinned a couple of these in place, I visited my local second-hand gaming store and managed to pick up a couple of “Games Workshop” plastic malformed arms (presumably from some Chaos sprue) which hopefully are plant-like enough to do the trick…