OUTBREAK released, and GENCON!

GENCON has begun, which means OUTBREAK has been released! Many a demo game has been played, many copies of our rules have flown out the door..

For those who didn't manage to find us, we are in booth 2934, in entrepreneurs avenue. We have many copies of OUTBREAK, as well as Skirmish Sangin, and our zombies and survivor miniatures- that's right, we have some survivors too! 

Below are the survivors, along with some painted versions of the Ragers. Not by me, I only got my set today too!

Survivor 1: Gas mask survivor

Modelled after this banner....

Survivor 2: Priest!

Rager Miniatures!

For those who can't make it to GENCON, don't despair- for our website is now live! Head to www.skirmishoutbreak.com to order yourself a copy of OUTBREAK, and we will start shipping them come as soon as we can, which is early next week.

The survivors and Ragers are not yet in the site, but they will be very soon!

Chris

Walking Dead Wednesday- Rick

Time to have a look at the first of the Studio Miniatures Walking Dead figures. The natural place to start is with the group's leader, Rick!

I promise that the eyes look much less strange in person- I got a weird reflection from somewhere on them!

Rick is a really good figure, Studio Miniatures have done a cracking job in representing Rick in 28mm miniature, right down to his big pistol! I opted to give him a red shirt and his sheriff pants with the stripe down the side. Overall I have to say that I am pretty happy with him.

In OUTBREAK, Rick would have the following stats:

Rick is an Average Joe, armed with a Pistol and the Hero survivor upgrade package. The upgrade package adds two to three of his skills (I chose Firearms, First aid (specialist in limb removal) and Dodge), as well as making him a whole lot better in hand-to-hand combat.

Of course, should Rick not manage to outpace the zombies, Studio Miniatures have helpfully also made a Zomb-Rick!

A really lovely sculpt, just like the living Rick.

So there we have it, Rick and Zomb-Rick. Next week? Carl!

In other news- I am in Indy, it's almost GenCon time!

CP

Studio Miniatures freebie zombie

Just a quick update, with a Studio Miniatures Zombie I finished recently. The sculpt was a freebie as part of their recent Kickstarter campaign.

A Hari-Krishna zombie!

In other news, I am about to start a whole lot of plane travel to get me from little Ol' NZ to the big Ol' US of A. Luckily I have pre written my posts for the next week aye?

GENCON here I come!

CP

Survivor Friday- Felicity

I know the posts are coming thick and fast at the moment, but it's Friday, so don't you be thinking that while posting all these other things that I would forget about completing a survivor!

This week's survivor is a continuation from the last story (here).

... Cooper and his group continued to move through the city.

Around every corner was one of them, distracted trying to break down doors, hunting the living, or feasting on those they had caught.

They managed to make good progress, avoiding them wherever possible, attacking only when they had to.

As they ran down the street, up ahead they saw a figure, a woman. she was running, smacking a zombie here and there, always moving forward. The group followed, thankful for the clear path through the zombies.

She looked behind her, spotting the trio. On seeing that she was being followed, and not by the living dead, she stopped, pausing in her violent running race.

Cooper slowed, motioning Sasha behind himself. Smitty had his rifle raised, taking no chances.

"Don't use that please, don't be loud. Surely you know that it brings more of them?" She said, pointing at Smitty's rifle.

Cooper got a good look at her weapons, a butchers cleaver in one hand, a cast iron frying pan in the other. She wore a bloodstained waitresses uniform, her hair unkempt.

When Cooper remarked on her arsenal of weaponry, she just said "Look I know I am a walking stereotype- but the frying pan really works you know? God, if my gender studies lecturers could see me know...."

Felicity is another from the Wargames Factory plastic boxed set, but with a fair bit of converting done. The figure originally comes with some very impractical strappy shoes, so I replaced them with some much more sensible sneakers off another survivor. The frying pan is a combination of a plastic wargames factory arm, with a new greenstuff shoulder, combined with a metal round, formerly off of the base of a 15mm figure and then held on by Green stuff.

So there you have it, another survivor! I had a game of OUTBREAK last night, so will get the AAR up over the weekend.

And hey, I leave for Gencon soon!

Chris

GENCON T-shirts

Hi All,

Chris has been doing a sterling job with this blog but I have just realised reading his latest missive that I haven't told him the T-shirt design has changed. With me being stateside for Historicon and Chris keeping the NZ home fires burning, communication has not been our strong point :-) 

The T-shirts still have yellow in them but not quite so yellow as we envisaged. So I thought I would take the opportunity to share. We think they look pretty cool, but I am bound to say that as I designed them. What do you think?  We will have a few for sale at Gencon so make sure you are in quick. Don't forget we are at Booth 2934 on the Entrepreneurs' Avenue. I hope to meet as many of you there as I can.

cheers

Colin

Walking Dead Wednesdays 1: Beginnings and Zombies

It seems like it is all go here on the blog at the moment!

With the arrival of the Studio Miniatures pack last week, I decided to stage my painting out for it, so that I will be able to keep up with my other painting goals.

Right- so what is the plan then? Well, Walking Dead Wednesdays will be me working my way through the miniatures which I got from Studio Miniatures, plus whatever else I think of Walking Dead related on a Wednesday.

Sound good?

So to get us started, here is the little girl zombie from the kickstarter. This is her from the show:

Image owned by AMC, taken without permission for this blog.

And this is my take on the miniature:

So, as you can see, I changed the colour palatte a bit, mainly because I don't have a good pink-ish colour. I decided to use the yellow simply because I don't really use yellow a lot at all, which will make her stand out, and plus it was one of the few nice pastel colours which I have readly to hand.

The sculpting on the zombie is excellent (as is, on the whole the whole set actually), in fact if I was being critical, it is probably too good, a bit too realistic!

So all in all, a lovely sculpt, really impressed with the quality Studio Miniatures are bringing to the table here.

Next on the Walking Dead Wednesdays is Rick and Zomb-rick!

OUTBREAK- Gaming the Zombie Apocalypse released at GENCON!

For far too long, I have been remiss in talking about the ruleset which my colleague Colin and I have been working on for our zombie games. I eluded to it once in an after action report I did, but nothing other than that.

It has been in the works for over a year or so, and now it is fast coming up on it's time of release, and so it is time for me to start talking about it with you guys!

It comes in a soft back version and as a PDF, both in Hazmat yellow for easy spotting! I will delve a bit more into the rules in a future post.

Colin and I have been writing rules together for a few years now, including the Skirmish Sangin ruleset (which has just had it's latest supplement released!), and given our love of the Zombie genre, it was only natural that we wrote ourselves a game to play it!

Alongside the rules, we will be releasing a few sets of figures. The first of which you can see in the render are here...

I will go through the rules in a bit of detail, and show examples of how the game works with some demo characters, and will walk through a combat turn or two. What would you like to see?

So all of that is going to be released at GENCON in two weeks time, Colin and I will be there in bright yellow t-shirts (we had to really, given the colour of the book), so if you are going along, come and find us and pick up your copy!

For those who can't make GENCON, or who can't manage to find us (which, given our yellow I think is unlikely), the OUTBREAK website will go live with the books and miniatuees up for sale on the website in early August, as close to the end of GENCON as we can manage.

Chris

Survivor Friday- Paul

It is Friday, so it is time for another survivor! Following on from last week's survivor (here)

... It was time to move.

The trio grabbed their gear and cautiously left their safe house. The two zombies banging at the door were easily despatched with knives, quietly for fear of attracting any unwanted attention.

They moved quickly, Cooper taking the lead, Sasha behind him and Smitty following behind. The trio had their weapons raised, ready and waiting.

They rounded a corner, just in time to witness a man in a suit, standing on the top of a car, surrounded by a mob of zombies. He swung a crowbar in panic, cracking skulls and fending off the clawing limbs.

Cooper wondered how long he would last, his arm was tiring, the strikes becoming more infrequent, soon there wouldn't be enough power to crack through a skull...

But those questions would never be answered, the trio were just thankful for the distraction as they moved onwards....

Another plastic survivor from Wargames Factory, and as requested an office worker from DC for the team to come across.

Sadly I don't think Paul is going to make it :)

Paul is a straight out of the box build, Not much more to say other than that about him!

Oh, these turned up from Studio Miniatures. Very excited!

CP

Survivor Friday- Smitty

It's Friday, so you know what that means! Today's story continues on from this one....

It had been hours since Coop had met Sasha, since they had left the school to head back to her dad. They had made a run for it, but there were too many of.... them.... on the streets, so they were forced into to a tenement building, barricading themselves in to stave off the horde outside. Coop had managed to get a signal out, before the radio crapped out. They were both running low on ammunition, Getting even this far had taken up so many of their precious bullets.

Sasha had never let Coop go since they had left the school. Neither of them had slept, the clawing at the door was always there, every once and a while Coop had to dispatch a Zed that was smart enough to figure out that there are a windows around the side of the building.

There were always explosions going off, jets streaked over the sky firing their weapons into the city. Explosions and fire, screams and howls.

Dante's inferno comes to Washington.

There was a loud bang outside, followed by a shout.

"Oi, anyone in alive in there"

The accent was British, the words punctuated by short bursts of an assault rifle.

"Yes" Coop responded, raising his weapon at the door. He pulled Sasha in behind him, shielding her with his large frame.

"I'm looking for Lance-Corporal Cooper, or for Sasha. Ideally, both."

"Who are you?" Coop called in reply

"I assume that means you are Lance-Corporal Cooper. Well, I'm here to save your sorry ass, ain't that enough?" came the angry response.

Coop repeated the question, this time louder. His weapon was trained on the door.

From outside, The Brit said "Right, sod it. No time for this", promptly kicking the door down, entering the room with weapon raised.

"I am Corporal Smith, Royal Marines. Friends call me Smitty. Squad and I got sent to get you and her- pointing to Sasha- out of here. But apparently the world has gone to sh*t and at the moment I am all the evac you get. Now I am going to lower my weapon, you do the same, and then make a nice plan how to get out of here"

Coop nodded, and lowered his weapon.

Smitty closed the door again, pushing a bench to give it more strength. He then righted an overturned chair and sat down. "Questions?"

"Where is your kit? Body armour? Webbing? Pack?"

"Got lost a while back, dropped my armour quick smart- in case you haven't noticed they aren't shooting back, don't need the Kevlar. Not when they go for the throat. My Bergen went up when our vehicle went up, now I just have my rifle and all the mags I can fit in my pockets"

"Why are the Royal Marines here? Shouldn't you be saving the queen or something, leaving this to our boys?"

"I bet Her Royal Highness is fine. She is probably popping shotgun shots off the bloody balcony of Buckingham Palace drinking a sherry with the corgis at her feet while the horse guards get cracking skulls downstairs, making sure to not get their shiny boots scuffed."

He smiled.

"Plus, there are plenty of SAS boys to go off saving princesses, probably getting all the kisses from 'em right now too, while I am stuck saving you two, from a country which gave our king the middle finger in 1776. Why aren't your boys here? They are. They are just the ones outside with a hankering for some of our tasty tasty skin. Long story short, you get me, the SAS get the princesses."

He leaned forward. "As much as I love question time, what's the plan to get out of here...."

Look at that! Another survivor, and one with a proper background story! Coop and Sasha are verging on becoming main characters, maybe I should make that happen. Now that they are a trio there must be some adventures to be had!

Smitty is another from the Wargames Factory survivor kit, once I saw that they had an SA80 on the sprue, the wheels started turning, so all that was left was to give him a French hat (beret) and voila, Royal Marine! I painted him at the same time as some other Modern British for Sangin, using him as a tester for British DPM camo. All in all, I am pretty happy with how he has turned out.

Right well, back to it. Who should join Sasha, Coop and Smitty? Any ideas? Where should they try to go next?

CP

Double Survivor Friday! Marcus and Mike

It is still Friday somewhere in the world, so technically this still counts!

Marcus and Mike come from Spectre Miniatures, another couple from their kickstarter that I bought into a while back (still waiting on the last of it, sigh). I actually finished these guys ages ago- they were meant to be put up here in that 3 week hiatus I took! Sadly, they got put into a box and I have only just found them as I was looking for something completely different! It is about time these two got up here onto the blog.

The names come from the leading men of Bad Boys II, sorry for the lack of story. If I get a spare half hour over the weekend, I will write one up. And sorry for the bright images, the iPhone camera and I aren't getting along at the moment.... Well actually the issue is less with the camera, and more with the lighting. And no small amount of operator error!

So where are the new miniatures I hear you ask? Well, this week has been really hectic at work, and I just haven't managed to get them done. So instead, you get some new (old) survivors! The two from the Wargames Factory sprues have been pushed till next week....

Back to painting!
Chris