Showcase: Zombies and Skeletons!

 

Today's Halloween, so let's look at the spooky zombies and skeletons!

Way back in the day you may remember me reviewing Wargames Factory's Zombie Apocalypse figure sets, as well Mantic undead.

Of course a few things changed since 2012. Warlord Games took on WGF's figures, the zombies got a major overhaul, the last few Apocalypse related sets (military and bikers) got released with Warlord's Project Z boardgame. Then it all vanished again, and recently it's reappeared, albeit only for a brief production run, as far as I read.

The fact remains, that you'll wanna get zombies at some point. They are great generic bad guys for any period or setting. Whereever there's people you can have and mangle zombies.

My own zombie collection is based on a modern setting, to fit my 'survivors'. In hindsight the urban road bases possibly weren't the best idea, but I had a reason at the time and at SOME point I'll also have proper fitting terrain, just you wait. 

Last year though when started running solo/coop games of the excellent Sellswords & Spellslingers (here's my review and a bunch of battle reports by yours truly) I realized the requirement for lots of generic Fantasy baddies. So I cobbled together a rather odd-looking family of fiends:

The above oddities consist of bits from Mantic's zombies, Wargames Factory's zombies and 'zombie vixens', some hats from ACW and ECW kits, Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors, and even some bits from Warlord's Roman legionnaires. All of that, plus a bunch of green stuff to cover up missing flesh on the zombie parts. These here are supposed to be baddies from beyond the known parts of the woods. Odd poses (mostly thanks to Mantic's expressively posed zombies) or some inconsistencies in limb lengths aren't much of a problem on these guys.

Around the same time (and since I was digging into the zombie bits box already) I decided to finalize some modern zombies I had built back in 2012.

I really like that 'zombie vixens' set, but I decided to get out the green stuff and put some pullovers and pants on some of them. It's almost November, going out in your undies just isn't clever, no matter how undead.

One unfortunate truth we all have to deal with sooner or later is that we'll turn into a skeleton. Believe it or not, but there's a lot of skeletons in my closet, all of them - again - by Wargames Factory (also sold by Warlord Games now, I think in a slightly reworked fashion and a decidedly reworked price tag). I got two boxes way back in 2011. Almost ten years later I managed to put some of them together, again to serve as generic bad guys to face fantasy heroes:

These are my favourite plastic skeletons to date. Delicate, well-proportioned, and not a thread on their bones. I know that there's various opinions on this, but I prefer my skeletons to be just that. Harryhausen-style. They come with multiple weapons options and hoplite shields. Maybe I'll add the shields at some point, so far I haven't. Still taking bets on when I add the shields. The downside of this kit is that the skeletons are incredibly fiddly to put together.

Between the re-relase of these skeletons, Wargames Atlantic's and the Oathmark ones, we've been spoilt with new skeleton kits in recent years though. I'd love to do something with those newer kits as well, but I still got so many of these WGF ones lying around....

Well, that's my musings on skeletons and zombies. I guess all that's left to say is this:

See you soon!