I've been thinking about what games I want to play when things return to normal, and TNT is near the top of my list. As such, I've been working on my Wasteland Encounter creatures of the wasteland painting projects.
The the grit of the basing material that I used to base my rad dogs, mutant ticks, and rad bear was not fine enough. It made the bases' surface is a bit too rough and it doesn't match the texture of the bases I use for my warbands (see page 15 of this thread). I realized this after painting the first few rad dogs, but rather than correct the problem then and there, I let it go. In the grand scheme of things it's an insignificant detail that bothers nobody in the world but me. Nevertheless, it bugs me every time I look at the models, so I finally fixed it.
I removed all 18 models from their bases and put them on new bases. The removal, painting, and touch up work was quite a chore. While removing the rad bear from its base, I dropped the model and damaged the model's paint, so I stripped the entire model and started from scratch. This wasn't entirely a bad thing, as it gave me the opportunity to remove the model's integrated base and in doing so I was able to make for it a better base. It is now posed on a pile of debri that I made from bits found on
Green Stuff World's resin
Dump Yard Plate and a metal gear from
Green Stuff World's gears and cog set.
One of the creatures on TNT's
Nuisance Creatures table is the Wild Mutant. I used
CP Model's mutated zombie minis to make my first three Wild Mutants. The mins with the big bellies aren't mutated enough for my liking, so is used GW Chaos bits and greenstuff to give them more obvious mutations. Wild Mutants aren't zombies, so I painted their skin using my normal recipe for flesh. I didn't patch the open wounds. I figure life in wasteland is very harsh for these feral, half-mad creatures, so open wounds and sores are inevitable.
While we are on the topic of non-zombie zombies, I've struggled to find models that match my vision for rad zombies. Unlike traditional zombies, rad zombies are not reanimated corpses, but rather victims of some bizarre (and implausible) form of radiation sickness, combined perhaps with effects of a pre-Fall bio weapon or disease. They do shamble along and rot a bit overtime, but they aren't the gooey, rotting corpses found in most horror and fantasy miniature lines.
Lead Adventure's Atomic Zombie's are pretty good, but they a still a bit too gooey for me.
What I settled on are
Pig Iron Productions' Infected minis. These models are dressed in tattered clothing, slightly emaciated, and don't have any guts spilling out of them. They look like the creatures from the 2007 remake of I am Legend.
The feature that really sold me on these minis is their baldness. It is generally known that exposure to large doses of radiation will typically cause hair loss (sometimes permanently), so in my mind, if Rad Zombies are victims of a permanent radiation sickness, they should be bald.
Other TNT critters I am working on include some Gnash Worms, a Greater Mutant Scorpion, and a Mutant Horror.
The worms and the scorpion are made by
Heresy Miniatures. The Mutant Horror is a "Terror Turkey" made by
Bears Head Miniatures.
One of the things that really sold me on this miniature is its name -Terror Turkey. The idea of a giant, mutant turkey that has turned the (dinner) table on mankind is too good to not include in my post-apoc world. The original version of the model (see below) has an extended tail that ends in a fan of feathers. I suspect that what the artist was going for was a Cenozoic era Terror Bird with the tail of a Mesozoic microraptor. Neither the model's head or tail reminds me of a wild turkey, so to make it a bit more turkey-like in appearance, I cut off the tail and attached the fan of feathers directly to the model's rear.
Original "Terror Turkey":
22 April 2010, 02:25:47 PM