Zombie Hell Prologue

Zombie Hell

The Zombie outbreak came out from all around the globe, some thirty days ago, no one knows for sure as to just how many of us carried the initial Virus. You didn't know if you had it, for it seems everyone that may have had the virus had a cold, this virus this "Zombie Cold" acted very much like a cold, and there was a very bad cold virus going around at the same time has well and it wasn't until one died that the virus took over their body. Everyone had a cold or the sniffles at around that time, you could have just a cold or you could be carrying the Zombie Cold, now just how close you had to be to someone with the zombie cold no one really knew or if you had to have physical contact

Seemed that the spread of the "Zombie Cold" was only the slow means of the spreading of the virus which in this case stayed quiet and dormant until the moment of death, then it was a matter of moments until one turned, the other spread of the virus was after one was bitten by a full blown zombie in which case one would turn to a zombie with in an hour.

By the time anyone really knew what was happening it was too late, every city in the world was being over ran by zombies, hordes of them and their numbers were growing. The main cause for the spread initially is blamed on "Bystander Effect" everyone witnessing what was happening and believing someone else would step in to be the "Hero" to stop them.

Our Nations Capital, Washington D.C. was just one of many cities over run by the hordes, Andrews Air Force Base was initially over ran by civilians trying to find help but the hordes of civilians which in a short time turn like a rolling tide into zombies, as well as the Regan International Airport and along with any other airfield where one felt that the could fly to safety. so basically all
airports and airfields were just mere death traps

Hospitals as well were just as bad, those trying to find help only found themselves trapped and then mauled by the hordes, many of those who headed to the hospitals didn't realize that almost all of the hospitals had been abandoned by their staff seeking to find their own safety.

Law enforcement had their own problems, along with the Military as they tried to set up zones of quarantines to contain or to push back the hordes, with civilians caught in the middle they were either being over taken by the zombies or killed by gun fire from the military or law enforcement just because they were in the way, either way it just cause the hordes to grow even faster and just overwhelmed any governmental efforts

All the major highways and interstates are clogged with cars and trucks, abandoned or disabled, many ran out of fuel waiting for the traffic to move, and pushed aside into the emergency lanes, making it all the harder to go around. Many others were just abandoned in place once they realized the traffic wasn't going to move. The major cause was those trying to get out of the cities in a hurry and either ended up in an accident or causing one, which in turn either slowed traffic to a crawl or just plain stopped it. In a few cases deaths were involved and before anyone knew a small pocket of zombies would develop and those in their cars would just abandoned their vehicle in order to move to safety.

The "zombie" itself is just a cold creature, it would just stand there idle making them more dangerous like some landmine of horror. Once it hears a noise, a faint smell of the living, or movement it may see with in a few yards of itself, then it would start moving in that direction, at first it would just move in a shuffling manner like a drunken sailor, till it moved in closer to the location of it's prey then it moves much faster with more deliberate moves like a brisk not so unstable walk until it was upon it's victim then it would just lunge it self in a frenzy of horror. After an attack it will then just shuffle away in some random direction some move just a few feet then just stand there, others could stagger for miles before it would just become idle, standing there waiting until it's next victim

My story begins here in Minneapolis, I was at work when I was hearing of the first reports, of people just getting back up after dying and attacking others of the living, myself a sci-fi slash horror fan knew what was happening, in addition to being former military I knew what I had to do, I knew what had to be done "get home" where my family was and my weapons!

Strange Bedfellows

Seems out here in space on the the far edges of humanity strange things happen and where one can make a few extra credits. Is to have a detachment of Imperial Marines as passengers on your ship. For a Four year term, you ferry them from place to place, along your trade routes and the empire pays their passage.

The great thing is you have a steady flow of credits coming in and you still go on with your daily business moving on from planet to planet and from station to station conducting your own trades. The empire pays for the housing and meals of the squad plus extra expenses. Extra hands to help out if you need them and nothing like having a detachment of Marines to cover your back as well

The first year having them aboard is a little iffy, not sure as to who they really are. Second year things loosen up a bit as both you, your crew and the detachment start to know each other, third year things roll much better and the forth year you almost can't do anything wrong in fact they help so they can make a few credits on the side.
 
Drawback is from time to time you have to delay your shipment depending on what the Marines uncovered or investigating from time to time when your on some planet on the edge of nowhere. during such moments from time to time you can make
something extra on the side on those events too and your ship starts to get a name for itself as well, making some deals on cargo a little difficult, if you know what I mean.

The pros and cons balance themselves out and the extra credits flowing in is good, and added benefit is as well is you can get moved up in line for ship repairs and parts if and when you need them and a good part of that is covered by the empire. Seems it is cheaper to do business in this way then it is to buy, build and maintain a large fleets, when you can contract out smaller ships to have a further reach out the to outer rims.

Detachment break down;
1 Senior Officer
1 Junior Officer
1 Communications Specialist
1 Tech Specialist
1 Medic
1 Senior NCO
2 Squad Leaders
4 Fire Teams of four Marines each

Oh the adventures one will have

All Things Zombie

I just received in the mail today the rules "All Things Zombie Final Fade Out" thanks to my loving wife, I've heard a lot about it and really want to give it a good whirl.

http://www.twohourwargames.com/index.html

Giving it a quick look over the rules seem simple enough can't wait to dig into them more and get my first game going to better understand them.

 

 

 

Yes, while others plan for the zombie plague,

 

 

 I'll be rehearsing my plans on my military sandtable.



New Miniature Arrivals

RAFM recently had a 35% off sale and I, like may others got in on this sale. Of course I jumped all over the 15mm Sci-fi range, I  just got them a few days ago. I feel shipping was rather quick due to the size of my order and the nature of the sale.

So here's what I received (all images are from RAFM's site)

War Hounds of Sirius

Car Leonis Warriors

Dracos Warriors





Space Vixens

Space Pirates



Guerillas

Space Crew

Support Staff

Insolani Squad

Now I did order more the just one of  some and just one of others. After some time of looking at them closely I really like the style and see that I have to do very little clean up before painting, I know I'm going to enjoy them very much, and I would recommend them for others as well, I can't wait for things to start slowing down as work goes, so that I can get right down to painting them.... and get around to gaming with them!

If your a Traveller fan and need or want miniatures for your Traveller world then RAFM is the site to go to. http://www.rafm.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=RAF

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

Another area of gaming I like is Zombie games of all kinds. Board games, tabletop game to RPG games. Not to mention all the Zombie movies I love to watch as well.

Currently I'm working on getting all the things together to do a RPG Zombie tabletop campaign game.

So here's the beginning, you are a member of the Secret Service on the President's Detail Team during the Zombie out break, Air Force One has been compromised along with the rest of Andrews AFB. Marine One is out of commission  and sitting on the white House lawn, due to gun fire by mobs of those still living with the attitude of "You wont help or save me, then the hell with you too you can die right along with the rest of us."

Mission;
Move the President and the First Family (wife and two children) over land. (you can fill in the blank with what ever you feel best for your game from here on.)
To a strong hold location Code Name _______________  located in the State of_____________ near the town of______________  1,500 miles away

Spacial Orders;

1. The health and safety of the President and First Family comes first above any and all others.
2. Proceed with caution avoid major highways and interstates due to abandoned or disabled vehicle blocking these avenues. Plan on all major bridges being blocked by such vehicles, make addition plans to cross any such waterways in advance to reduce delays. Use back roads and byways.
3. Avoid all major towns and cities due to higher numbers of infected and mass mobs of Rioters and Looters. Militias and mobs may be setting up roadblocks. Again use back roads and byways to avoid such areas.
4. Avoid any and all outside contact with any and all locals and do not intervene or get involved with any local affairs.
5. Any vehicle in your group that breaks down or becomes disabled, any and all equipment or supplies needed will be cross loaded to the other remaining vehicles, and the disabled vehicle will be destroyed and abandoned in place along with any and all equipment and supplies not taken.

Additional Orders

1. Radio transmissions for updates will come at 0600 hrs and 1800 hrs.
2. There are as many as five save house/cache points along the corridor of the route.
3. Additional support will be provided when and if it becomes available.

Your Team;
Four Secret Service Agent
Six Marine personnel (two of which are pilots from Marine One)
Four Army personnel
(pick which ones as your players and the others as NPC or fodder you can add more characters as needed as well)


Vehicles;
Two Humvee (scout and recon)
each with 50 cal. machine guns mounted.
Three Cadillac Gage 450s  (main body)
two with dual mounts 1 50 cal. machine gun and 1 Mark19 grenade launcher, third has 90mm gun and coaxial 7.62mm machine gun,  plus 3 M240B for each of the rear deck hatches.

Equipment list below
Weapons;
16 - M16s four of which have M203 attachments.
2 - Remington pump shotguns.
3 - M249 SAWs.
2 - M21 Sniper weapons.
2 - M240B Machine gun.
14 - 9mm pistols.

Ammunition;
5,000 rounds 9mm.
400 rounds 12 ga.
7,000 rounds 5.56mm.
3,000 rounds 5.56mm belted.
800 rounds M118 7.62mm Sniper ammo.
10,000 round 7.62mm belted .
4,000 rounds 50 cal. belted.
200 rounds 40mm grenades.
1,000 rounds 40mm belted grenades.
10 AT4 Anti Tank rounds.
20 rounds 90mm HEDP.
10 round 90mm HEAT.
50 hand grenades.
10 Claymore mines.
20 pounds C4 plus caps and fuses.

Additional Equipment;
Communications equipment for each vehicle.
Individual communications equipment for all personnel.
Navigational equipment.
Medical kits.
Tool kits.
Food for six days.
Water for six days.
Sleeping bags for ten people.
10 Assault packs.
(Any additional equipment may be added due to your gaming needs.)

Now this may sound like a lot of equipment and ammo for your players to have but now you are a rich target to hit, and there are those out there that want what you have. You have 1,500 miles to cover, and you have to stop to find fuel,  hundreds of places to avoid or have to go through, rivers and streams to get across, and if someone were to find out who your cargo is, having a member of the First Family may not be a bad bargaining chip to have.
Hordes of zombies to get by, militias and mobs of all kinds.

How would your player act if a member of the first family is lost, or additional characters added in that hamper your mission, or other groups wishing for it's failure for their political gain and deliberately act to stop you and your teams mission.

Having two sections allows for smaller controlled groups of play. Playing out the recon of an area then playing out the main body passing through the same area afterwards. players can have more then one characters as well if they lose one their still in the game. Plus if the recon element gets in too much trouble you can move the main body in for it's fire power. In addition if you lose to many players you can parachute in additional military assets or other assets when made available.

Now there are a lot of Manufactures out there to get all you need for this. Many of them are listed in my 15mm links section.

Projects on Hold for Awhile

Funny thing happen on the way to work today.

Stop me if you have heard this one before.

This deer on the side of the road, lurking in the bushes, spied my vehicle and didn't like the body style of it and took it upon itself to change the look of the current style to a style of which it approved of. I don't like it's taste in style very much sooo!

So projects that require funding will be on hold till I get this mess paid for, but in the mean time the ideas will keep coming forth and I will toss them out there


This would not have happen if I had a jet pack that we were all promised to have now so many years ago

Lived in the country for years and had to move to the cities to hit a deer, go figure!

Shipwreak

Shipwreck

The idea came to me when I received my Mega Minis "Salvage Crew" and I thought they need something to salvage, duh that's a no brainer, So I first thought why not a crashed spaceship and how was I going to go about this. I figured it had to be in sections for ease of moving it around and then how big, after all it's has to fit on a small gaming table and what sections, so I came up with the idea of four sections, a bridge section, two cargo sections and an engine section.

Based off of this picture


Then what shape to make it in. A box or square sort of shape with square edges and an angled hull would be the easiest to make and to cover it in card stock, then it would to make a round rounded with lots of curves and bends, hey mama didn't raise no fool.

So something like this comes to mind but in four sections


I sketched up the sections on 1/2 inch grid paper to get a feel and the idea of size. http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/

Four separate sections, for the main hull and two wing like sections, each section could be used as stand alone terrain piece or put all six together as one big terrain piece with room to move between each section and space for movement in and on each section.

On 12x12 inch MDF board would allow it all to be on a 4 foot table or spread out over a larger table

I can dress up the shipwreck with tips from this link http://www.happinessismandatory.com/misc/Tutorial/  and download PDFs referring to scratch building.

Plus I can build up the interior walls using some of the ideas here http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/251905-scratch-build-bt-thunderhawk/ can make the inner walls looking something like this picture from the link above.

This site is more for  the War Hammer 40K stuff but full of pages of great ideas

A visit to my local junk shop where I can get all kinds electronic stuff cheap. should help dress it up nice, you would be surprise how a hand full of electronic parts can dress up a wall and make it look busy

Foam core board and card stock will be the main material, with lots of wire and wood dowels of different sizes plus different wood flat and round shapes, beads and bits from the local craft shop.

Craft gems from the craft store, based on size the square ones, the oval ones and round ones  make for great hatches and other odds and ends

 

 

Watch gears and parts for engine room stuff and other things as well.

 

 

Well this just the beginning, figured this would be a good practice run before I start the Star ship Project posted information about it earlier.

 

I'm hoping this helps give you all ideas for your own projects.



Twilight 2000

Yet another game I truly like as a RPGs, is to play Twilight 2000 using 15mm Figures.

Okay so many people feel that it's out dated as far as the "Cold War" goes for the "Cold War is over or is it?

We currently live in a time were a nuclear accident could trigger a limited exchange more so today then 20 years ago.

We almost went there not long ago when a missile being tested, almost triggered such an event, when a simple thing as failing to share information between departments. State departments were aware but military departments were not informed.

Plus with the numbers of countries that have limited abilities today that they didn't have then. So you didn't live during the time period of the "Cold War" why bother with such a game, currently there are about 3500 missiles right now! ready to launch! you are living in a cold war so to speak, you could call it the out of mind war, we don't see it, we don't hear it, and we don't talk about it, so therefor it's out of mind.

All the better for such a game just change up the situation, location and update it to today, what if your were a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan when such an event happens, how would you get home better yet how would you survive to get home.

Nice thing about this game is using 15mm figures for play, there are a wide range of modern figures one can use for what ever situation you would like from US Troops to Chinese Troops and almost everything in between to include vehicles and equipment, and the terrain can be what ever you wish it to be.

There are a lot of adventure add ons for this game as well.

Building a Starship

I got the idea when surfing this site http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/  and found a ship that was built for "Star Wars" using the larger figures for the Star Wars RPG games

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/competitions/entry.php?id=622

UPDATE (1/20/15)  See full build of this monster here
http://www.terragenesis.uk/showthread.php?tid=33

This thing is 12 feet long!! Plus it's 2 feet wide

Used to play 28mm or a little larger scale for the Star Wars RGP figures

So why not build one that's for 15mm play action.

I can get a lot more stuff built into it and maybe add taller bulkheads for catwalks or maintenance corridors of sorts that runs down the middle the length of the ship.

Okay the plan is to make it almost as long and widen a section to 3 feet wide then another to 4 feet giving it more of a wedge look and with all sorts of gizmo's.

Using the same materials used in the description of the ship that inspired this project will mostly be the same, using luan, foam board, card stock and plastic card and lots of other odds and ends.

It will be built in sections for ease of setup, moving and storage.

looking forward to the Traveller games, Alien bug hunt, and others scenarios

The gathering of materials has begun

Cheap shipping containers

Shipping  Containers

Everyone out there that has a Miniature company has a shipping container of one sort or another. With the cost of their models, a large area for a Post Apocalyptic world can add up in cost really fast and model train supply companies are not any cheaper by any means. Paper models can work but the draw back is they are very light and can be blown over too easy at times, don't stack well, plus they are not strong enough in my opinion to risk stacking minis on.

So I have been checking out 1x1x36 inch square wood dowel you can get one for less then $3.00 (USD) and the math is 15mm scale = 1/100 as general rule, it's not written in stone so don't blast me with comment as to it being other scales. So 1 inch in 1/100 scale would be 8 feet and 3.3 inches so a 1x1 inch square would be 8.3x8.3 foot, the average height and width of a container, so a 20 foot container would roughly be 2 and 1/2 inches long.

I should then get 14 container. So one can also get 7 containers at 5 inches equaling 40 foot containers 

That's 14 containers for about .21 cents each! Plus time to fix then up to look like containers or 7 containers for .42 cents each and again the time to make them up. Okay I only got 13 remember measure twice cut once oops!

One could make the outside of the container different due to different manufactures, or for a future time set as well, which in turn would give more of that random feel as, You could make one if you like and then make a mold and cast the rest you need as well.

So here is the start and some more pictures for size comparison

Again it's only the begining of this project and will update as I go along, blocks still need some cleaning up and adding the details and painting but you can see from the next picture you can have a whole shipping yard full fairly fast and cheap.

Hope you have a large shipping yard for your port you'll need it for all your cargo and your containers too.

Wasteland Raiders

Concept idea is to combine several grav bikes from different 15mm Miniature companies to form a nomadic raiding party just one more hazard for your Traveller party to deal with or to be your Traveller party, heck they could be your escort across the no man's land.

The more of a mix of Grav bikes the better, for the more random look as one would expect to see in a marauding group, picking up a bike here and there as they go and the parts they would need to keep them running as they raid camps or outpost as needed.

The concept came to me when I had seen a concept artwork piece of such a group when image surfing google and then saw the start of something similar at David's Painting and Modeling Log  http://billinghurst.spalding.gen.nz/Webstuff/hobbies/paintlog.html

Here you can see he is using GZG's Grav Bike http://shop.groundzerogames.net/  and Rebel Minis AP riders http://www.rebelminis.com/index.html which has inspired me to do fairly much the same only I'm going to add more to it.

I want to add bed rolls, saddle bags, pouches, sacks of goods and alike and I would do this by using modellers putty "Green Stuff".

Equal parts yellow and blue and knead together until it's an even green all around then you can work with it for awhile until it hardens, working with 15mm things a very little goes a long ways.

So now the list of Grav bikes for the Raiders

 

Grav Bikes from GZG http://shop.groundzerogames.net/

Grav Bikes from Critical Mass http://www.criticalmassgames.com/default.asp?category=homepage

Gave bike from Spriggan Miniatures http://www.sprigganminiatures.co.uk/index.html

Grav bikes from The Scene http://thesceneuk.com/

 

Grav Bike from 15mm.co.uk http://www.15mm.co.uk/index.html

 

Grav Bikes from Khurasan Miniatures http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/

Now I will be doing some head swaps and switching out riders as well, Riders from Rebel Minis AP riders.

I am thinking of some other Grav vehicles as supply vehicle and for carrying additional raiders and thought that I would need some dismounted Raiders so the jury is still out for those items for now.

In the mean time, if your players have to investigate a surveyors camp, or outpost that hasn't reported in be mindful of what may be out there. Not everything has to have teeth and claws.