The Living and the Undead

Well hello everyone I hope that you are doing well. Back with more from the Zone project this week, four more miniatures to show you. Two zombies and two Stalkers. Once again thanks goes to my flatmate Logan for lending me their phone to take these photos.

Obviously staged, even Stalkers this well armed would not casually stand with zombies.

So we have two women now finding themselves in a cruel state of unlife (hopefully they have passed at least consciously). One is a Dark Alliance miniature, the other is another Caesar zombie. Quite a difference is style but they are still relatively compatible. The other two are from the Dark Alliance Stalker sets. Let's take a closer look.

So the one on the left is part of the same inquisitor/witch hunter group as the last one, the guy on the right is a mercenary.

Bad mask etiquette on the inquisitor, doesn't he know it is ineffective that way?

So for the two living characters we have another Witch Hunter/Inquisitor/Zealot figure and a mercenary. Mercenaries are common in the zone, both in the sense of former mercenaries becoming Stalkers trying to make it rich, and Stalkers becoming mercenaries earning a living fighting for the various Zone factions. Mercenaries tend to be better equipped than most stalkers with some military equipment mixed in. However, they are generally not as well equipped as the factions directly (although usually unofficially) backed by military forces from outside the Zone.

Red coat and exoskeleton. Which one is more fashionable? 

Red vs blue too, although one is substantially more red than the other is blue.

Now onto the undead, the walkers, the zombies, the living-dead, the Zeds, the..... why do we have so many names for Zombies? Here are two, whether these two were once women living in the Zone before the cataclysm, or tourists in the early years before the second emission turned all who'd foolishly entered is unknown. They could even have been from some of the Stalker villages. Whoever they were now they are but moving husks, who's one aim is to feed on the flesh of the living (or the dead, but they prefer fresh meat). Feeling no (or very little) pain they are hard to take down, but a shot to the head or a few good hits on vital organs will end their torment.

BRAAAAIIIIINNNNNSSSSSS

Zombie..... hug?

On the left we have cream shirt and blue jeans and on the right yellow dress and blue shoes.

Oh looks like their friendship is over, time to go shamble off to greyer pastures (sorry about the hair in these shots)

So finally some individual shots of the miniatures. It has been interesting painting the zombies in particular. They are generally very quick to paint but there's a few tricks to get them looking suitably zombified. Usually this involves using light skin tone with some black or grey in it, gives the right tone for cold dead skin.

I am not sure if the fingers were supposed to be bitten (or chopped) off or if this was a sculpting/mould error but I decided that bitten off fingers was the look to go for.

For a while I was struggling to decide what colour to use for her dress but I am so glad that I went with yellow. The dirt, blood and general weathering effect looks quite good.

Quite the cool operator and another member of this zealot group of hunters. Three more miniatures to go for them (for the first party at least). Although I do still have to decide on the fifth member.

Here's the mercenary, this shot really brings out the exoskeleton. At first I was going to do some urban camouflage but the simple blue works quite well.

So that's all for today. I hope that you have enjoyed these miniatures. More is coming up to keep an eye out. I also have some Soviet/PAPA NCOs that I really should get around to finishing. So they could be next or it could be something completely different. We shall see.

But until next time I wish you all a good day/night.

Motorised Rifle Squad (Soviet/PAPR)

Well a little over a week since my last post. Not because it has been a week in terms of painting (I have exclusively been doing conversions). Rather, I just didn't get around to doing photos. So last minute and basically taking this final opportunity to get a post out this week. Anyway let's get into this shall we.

Action pose for the squad. Sorry in advance for the yellow hue of the photos. I do get a couple of shots where this is less of an issue.

So back to Elhiem figures this week. These are from a Soviet Motorised Platoon (For BTR60/70/80s) pack I got. That's right a whole platoon. Plenty to keep me going. This is the first squad of the platoon which includes a marksman not in the other two squads. I have painted them up in a KLMK pattern camouflage, basis it off pictures of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. For the purposes of Oronegro they shall serve as the core of the Pan Andean People's Republic. Though their equipment is a little dated compared to their Oronegrean counterparts they are still quite formidable and well versed in both conventional and guerrilla warfare (though to a lesser extent than their local force/regional force counterparts).

While the squad lead may be getting distracted by local birds the rest of the quad gets to work.

So as mentioned there are local/regional forces. These represent the guerrilla forces and units from the constituent members of the PAPR. The former are very much like the Vietcong (guess which models will be used to represent them). The latter being more akin to the Warsaw Pact troops (again, who could possibly be used to represent these troops). These troops are also going to be roped into service in the Ororussia setting. In this case they may represent troops from the post Soviet neighbours of the region there. Although I haven't fully established the situation over there.

This squad also has access to the newer RPG18 (left), while the others had the RPG7. All squads have a RPK74 gunner (all in this pose (centre). Finally the guy on the right has a bayonet, which sadly is not fully in shot.

This squad, as mentioned, as the platoon marksman with the SVD (left). There is then only two standard riflemen, one with a bayonet above and the kneeling man in the centre. That leaves the grenadier on the right.

Shot of those figures from behind. Also the clearest photo and I have no clue how to get this consistently, oh well. This view gives a good view of their webbing too.

Finally we have the bird-watching squad leader. I call him that because of his binoculars and his clear focus of something up above.

Another view of the webbing, also a decent view of the camouflage too. It's Model Master Olive Drab, with the light parts being Tamiya Grey (I hate Tamiya paints, so claggy on brushes), with a semi-brybrush of Vallejo Rusian Uniform WW2. 

These troops will see quite a lot of action I hope, whether as soldiers of the PAPR, another imagi-nation of even the Soviet Union. Before I finish I must give a big shout out to Martin Evelyn for subscribing to my blog. Great to have you here. Hope you like what you see.

So that's all for today. I will try get out a post for next week. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, not much progress on the painting front (although I have made plenty of conversions and I have even bought some exciting new things). So we'll see if I can carry on doing a post a week or if I am finally beaten back. But until next time I wish you all good health, stay safe and have a good day/night wherever you are in the world.