Plague Zombies

So, I’ve been insanely busy and done very, very little with Paperhammer or even just general Warhammer 40K stuff.  Those Ogryns were supposed to be done months ago, and I’d actually wanted to get back to basics and build a paperhammer tank.  To be honest, I really don’t even have time to post now, but I’m about to do some more shameless pandering and I figured I should at least make it worth your while...

My book, Ex-Patriots, was re-released by Broadway Books this week. Check it out.  Superheroes, zombies, mad scientists, super-soldiers... it’s got pretty much everything.  And a ton of people think it’s actually good.  You can even get it in audiobook form, which means you can listen to it while you’re building little toy soldiers and zombies.

Resident Evil 40,000

Hey, speaking of the shambling undead...

This is an easy little tip for zombies.  I use it for my plague zombies in 40K, but it would work fine for Fantasy zombies, too.  I started my plague zombie collection way back during the Eye of Terror campaign.  Under the current rules (with Typhus) I’ve got about four solid squads of them, plus one little group of zombie specialists who I just set loose as distractions.  To help keep them straight when they’re in big mobs, I have zombified Catachans, zombified Asgardian Rangers, the citizens of Hive Romero led by the Seven Dwarves of Nurgle, and the Tanith Last and Final.

The zombie Tanith are what sparked this post.  I think it’s safe to say one of the defining elements of the Tanith, visually, are their camo-cloaks.  Now, one of the standard zombies has a little bit of a shredded cape on his back, but it’s really short and doesn’t really sell the big, sweeping cloaks the First and Only are described as having.

So, here’s an easy way to expand them a bit.

Get any little bit of thin plastic.  I used some 1/4” strips I already had, but this would work with just about anything.  Cut up some blister packs, plastic signs, soda bottles, plastic jars... whatever.

However you get it, cut some pieces that are about 1/4” by 3/4” long.  The length doesn’t have to be exact, and as you go along you may try some different lengths for variety.  Once you have your pieces, cut them diagonally, corner to corner.

Take these long, thin triangles and cut up the short end.  You’re trying to make them look a bit frayed.  I usually make three or four length-wise swipes with my knife, then maybe hit it from the end to make the gouges stand out.

There are two ways to glue them on.  The simplest way is just glue them to each side.  The thin end goes at the top, and I try to place them so they seem to flow naturally off the shoulders.

Apologies, by the way, for all the glare from the white plastic.  It's rough with my setup to get a good balance between the white and the light gray.

For variety, on some of them I glue one of the triangles in from the edge a bit.  This makes them look like big wrinkles or folds in the material.  When I do this, I sand the thin end down a bit so it flows up into the top of the cloak better.

And that’s it.  Bigger zombie cloaks just like that.  A green base with a few colors on top of it and I’ve got a really distinct group of the undead.

I'm going to be at a couple of horror conventions over the next few weekends, but starting next month, I swear... the Ogryns get some ripper guns, some urban scenery, and a way to make very cheap and distinctive Stormtroopers.

Yet Another Shameless Bit of Pandering...

 Hullo, all.

I’d really hoped to get the second half of the Ogres to Ogryns post up, well, about three weeks ago.  Then I’d hoped to get up a half-assed version that just went over how I built the weapons for my first set of conversions, the ones I use in my Penal Legion army.  As you probably noticed, neither version of these events happened.

I’ve just been swamped with final edits on the third book in the Ex series.  Plus going over layouts for the second book.  And tons and tons of publicity stuff for the first book, Ex-Heroes.  It’s in stores everywhere starting... well, today.

So, for the moment, please check out that big link down there on the right side, just past the end of this post.  And then, I promise, in the weeks to come you’ll see a post on how to build a ripper gun for these Ogryns, a new paperhammer tank, and zombies of both the undead and mechanical variety.  Plus a very big, very Orky unit for Apocalypse that I'm building with Marcus from Atomic Warlords.

But, in the meantime, the folks at Random House would be very happy if you bought the first book in the series...

Ogres to Ogryns

There’s some old stories in the Catachan fluff about how the Catachans like Ogryns.  There’s something about the straightforward, no-nonsense approach both groups have to warfare that make them bond.  They’ve even got more specific stories, like how Nork Deddog served with the Catachan II for years.

So when my Catachan army started coming together, Ogryns were kind of a no-brainer.  What army can’t benefit from a pile of brainless muscle that shrugs off damage and hits like... well, like a pile of brainless muscle?

But seriously!  Twenty-two bucks per model?  That’s $66 for a bare-bones squad of three.  And even with the drastic remodelling, the Games Workshop Ogryns still look... well, a bit goofy.

So I started looking at other options.

A box of Fantasy Ogre Bulls is just forty dollars for six models--less than a third the price.  If you’re willing to go with fewer options, you can buy them piecemeal online and save even more.  Ogres are big and beautiful, in a modelling sense.  They’re so big there’s lots of room for modifications and modelling.

First thing is the feet.  The soles of the ogre boots are metal, but they’re also pointed.  It goes with the whole Mongol tribesman look that you can see all through the Ogre Kingdoms line.  I snipped off the pointed tip and used a file to round it down.  The Imperial Guard isn’t going to have anyone prancing around in pointed shoes like Mr. B Natural.

On the torso, I used a knife to carve down the edges of the gut-hole.  They’re just a bit too sharp as is, and reach out a bit too far.  I don’t mind Ogryns looking big, but they shouldn’t look drastically overweight.  Then I filled the hole with little scraps of plastic sprue and put a few drops of plastic glue on it.

Once that dried, I made a little ball of green stuff (about half the size of a pea) and pressed that on top of the scraps.  A little work with the sculpting tool made it match up with the rest of the body.  I was even able to sculpt really simple abdominal muscles.  It’s not that hard, honest.  I did it while splitting my attention between sculpting and watching reruns of Firefly.  Just make a cross in the green stuff and smooth it out in all directions.

That’s a good point, actually.  One nice thing about the ogre bodies is that they’re so big it takes a lot of the pressure off me as a modeler.  Like I mentioned above, I’ve got space to work, and on these guys tiny mistakes are... well, tiny.  It’s not like when you’re trying to put hair on a Space Marine and one wrong pass with the sculpting tool gives your veteran sergeant a reverse-mohawk.  When it comes to green stuff I’m a mediocre sculptor at best, but even I could pull these details off.

Then I took a sliver of green stuff and rolled it into a tiny snake.  This got flattened across those new abs to make a continuation of the belt. Just like above, I used my sculpting tool to smooth and blend it into the belt on the model.  It got topped off with a little 1/4” piece of plastic for a belt buckle.

I also rolled a longer snake and used this to make a strap across the Bone‘ead’s chest and over his shoulder.  It gives me a little something more to make him stand out.  I’m not worried about it being perfect because I’m going to stick gear all over it.

One more detail on the Bone ‘ead.  I used a spare icon/ clasp from the Space Marine Commander set on his belt buckle.  The way I see it, his belt was probably a packing strap on a Baneblade that some Techpriest gave the Bone‘ead as a thank-you present for pushing it out of the mud or something.  It’s a small, simple detail that helps the Bone’ead stand out a bit more.

I wanted to give my Ogryns pouches and bandoliers to help sell their military aspect and also to distinguish them from Fantasy Ogres.  The best thing to use was Space Marine pouches.  If you play any type of Space Marines, you know there’s that one double-pack pouch that’s just a bit too big.  It’s tough to plant it anywhere on a Marine and not have it look like a little bit of overkill.  But on an Ogryn, scale-wise, it’s perfect.  It looks just like an ACU belt pouch would look... if you were making them for nine-foot barabrian giants.

Next time I’ll show you how I built some ripper guns for these guys, and also look at the Penal Legion Ogryns I built a while back that were the unofficial test run for these guys.