(Lead) Mountain Musings - "Future Wars" November 2020

"Future Wars" WIPs - This Zombie Trooper is having his weapons, rifle and legs repainted

This month's themed attempt to reduce my mountain of metal, plastic and resin models will be somewhat different than my normal overly-optimistic projects, as I essentially plan to just continue working through the number of Undead related miniatures I had hoped to complete over the past few weeks as part of Zomtober. However, rather than tackle anything new, my initial goal will be to simply complete repainting/restoring a handful of old zombie sculpts by "Copplestone Castings", and then take things from there...

First up will be a Zombie Trooper from Mark Copplestone's "Future Wars" range, which not only required rebasing, but also a major repaint, courtesy of its decade old predominantly all-black colour scheme. Resultantly, I have already 'picked out' the soldier's heavy firearm, some of his ammo pouches and his trousers with some base layers ready for shading - tricky stuff to be honest as I'm having to pigment over the PVA glue I used to apply to protect my paint-jobs.

"Crooked Dice Game Design Studio" WIPs - The Alien Pets are all at different stages of completion

I've previously used my rebased models from "Copplestone Castings" to replace the rather disappointing softly-detailed plastic sculpts found inside "Resident Evil 2: The Board Game" by "Steamforged Games", and hope that by finishing a few more of the walking dead it'll encourage me to get the rather enjoyable "cooperative horror board game" back out the cupboard. In addition, I do still own quite a few other unpainted zombies from the "Future Wars" range, so could possibly be encouraged to make a start on them too...

Alongside my restoration work though I'll definitely be cracking on with some more of the colourfully characterful Alien Pets by "Crooked Dice Game Design Studio". These diminutive sculpt's from the company's "Colony 87" range have really helped restore my somewhat flagging mojo recently, and got me back to the painting table after a short sabbatical.

October 2020 - "Alternative Armies" enters my Top Five favourite Manufacturers for the first time

Productivity wise, it is difficult not to see the past month as something of a major disappointment. Apart from a single post-apocalypse survivor, self-sculpted using "Hero Forge", I didn't manage to complete any of the other zombie-related models I had lined up for the Zomtober challenge, including three Justice Department brain-hungry cadavers which were already both assembled from different converted body-parts and even partially-painted.

True, I did manage to finish off the remaining (Fire) Elemental unit for my 15mm "Hordes Of The Things" army using "Alternative Armies" miniatures, leaving just the force's wizard residing far back in my painting queue, and additionally scratched my persistent "Doctor Who" itch with five shape-shifting Zygons by "Black Tree Design". But none of these monsters or aliens were particularly planned, nor frustratingly really helped motivate me to crack on with my intended project.