Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Zombicide Arrives Today

My postman is a hero today.  No bills, but a package from VampiFan and from CoolMiniOrNot.  I was unusually lucky and won VampiFan's contest a little while back, so he sent me a wrecked car by Armorcast.  I am looking forward greatly to putting it together and fielding it. 
     I also got my Kickstarter copy of Zombicide, by CoolMiniOrNot and Gullitine Games.  I am quite pleased with it.  For some reason, my dashboard did not come up with the photos link.  The whole dashboard is different and I can't put up pics. I will add them if I can figure it out or the old style comes back.
  The game itself is a rather beer and pretzels affair. You can see the whole rulebook yourself.  It has no mechanics for a campaign.  Each game is stand alone, and has a definite start and stop.  I'd think it would be fun with some friends, but is not the tabletop skirmish game that ATZ is.   The rules are simple, and fairly quick to learn. I played the tutorial and then game 1.  The system has a mechanic that makes the zombies more numerous and meaner as the game goes along.  I played with four survivors.  Two made it off the board.  Your mileage may vary.
     The minis are fantastic.  There are tons of them.  There are 4 sculpts for the walkers, 2 for the ragers, 1 each for the fatties and Tank.  The survivors look good too.  I look forward to painting them all.  They are all built on pretty skinny lines though.  These are all supermodel thin.  Except the Fatties.  I want to paint Gaming logos on those guys shirts.  At least one.
  Guess that's it for now.  I will post pics as soon as it will let me.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Model Tech Studios Review

Hello again-
    I am going to review an accessory pack from Model Tech Studios.  I was looking for some things other than buildings to flesh out my board for Zombie gaming, specifically for ATZ (All Things Zombie).  I have some zombies and some survivors, some o scale buildings, and some 1/43 scale cars.  I wanted some stuff, you know stuff.  Model Tech seemed to fit the bill.  I ordered the Alley Trash pile.  I also got the jersey barriers (everywhere in Atlanta it seems) and the Industrial Shelving.  I will probably do those later in another review, I have to paint them first.  The Trash pile came painted.  Here are the pics.  On the right is a VF zed, and on the left a swat team member for size comparison.







What I liked about the product:  It give an area of difficult terrain that is spot on for a suburban/urban environment.  It came prepainted.  The sculpting was pretty good.  The ease, in short.

 What I didn't like so much:  It has to back up to a wall, as it is not sculpted on the back side.  It is a bit on the large size for the items in question in some cases, and not in others (scaling isn't consistent). The paint job is of slightly less than tabletop quality as far as I'm concerned.  I will have to touch up or just repaint in some places.  My painting skills are not wonderful, but this is worse than what I would accept to put on the field. 

I will order more from them.  I will not pay the extra for prepainted stuff though.  It doesn't cost much more for the paint job, but I will end up doing it over anyway.  They shipped quickly.  It came well packed.  Overall, I am pleased with my experience and would recommend them to other hobbyists.  The one thing I'd like to see from them is a size comparison.  The industrial shelving is too tall to fit in a one story O scale building.  I will just use it for outdoors, but I wouldn't have bought it on that basis.

On a completely different note, I just got my tracking number for my Zombicide Kickstarter. We'll just say I'm excited.  Hope to be able to show it off to you guys in all it's glory.