King Zombie's 28mm First Responders.

[supervike]

Just wanted to give a small review on King Zombie's "First Responder Zombies".

They have been available for some time, in Resin. It was one of those things I always meant to get around to order, but just hadn't. Then,as I finally decided to order, I found out that King Zombie had issues with the molds, and that they were no longer available.

But, now they are back, and even better, are now being produced in metal!

I ordered the set of 15 zombies. After a quick turnaround, I had them in the flesh, and was very impressed from the start.

Size wise, they are on par with Griffin's Set of Zombies. They are also similar in sculpt style to that. They have slightly oversized heads and features which result in a solid chunky metal piece.

The 15 different zombie sculpts are all centered around the idea that these were the First Responders to a zombie outbreak. So, they are all firemen, police, national guard, paramedics and even a k-9 unit! Each is well done, and it is clearly representative of whatever unit they are from. All are hideously zombified, some munching on legs, some in the midst of a shotgun blast.

There is just a minimal amount of cleanup. Mold lines and flash are there, but very sparingly.

The one issue I'm undecided on, however, is the integrated bases. They all have the bases, and I can't see, beyond some serious conversion work, a way to remove them from it. The bases are sculpted to look like things such grass, or muddied tireprints, or dirt and rock. While it certainly isn't a deal breaker, I can see where the traditional slotted base tabs would have been a nice touch.

Price wise they weren't out of line at all, with the package deal, each figure worked out to about $3.50 USD each.

King Zombie has indicated that if these do well, he has plenty more ideas in store, and I certainly hope that's true. You can never have enough zombies!

All told, I'm very happy with these, and I highly recommend them to other zombie-o-philes.

http://kingzombie.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=11

[cheetor]

I bought a set of the resin figures last year.  They are fun, and I enjoyed painting them, but the proprtions are very "cartoony" to my mind.  They are also quite big and chunky.  Neither of those things bother me that much , but I suspect that it might bug some people.

I am also in two minds re the bases.  I liked some and rebased some others.  As usual, although the sculpted bases are OK, for the sake of convenience I would have preferred slots.

The theme of the figures is great.  They tend to be supplied in pairs: a couple of soldiers, cops, paramedics etc.  They are also very gory figures with a few scuplted in mid headshot, in the process of being ripped almost in two by some gunshot etc.  I think that my favourite is the Paramedic who has had her mouth and throuat ripped off, presumably in the process of performing CPR on a "deceased" patient.

Below are some WiP shots of my KingZombie first responders.  Since I got that far with them I have gone back over them to take some of the "ketchupy" redness from the bloody areas, amongst some other touch up work.  Its a pretty rough paint job but with some exceptions, I dont tend to paint my zombies up to a very high standard. 

There are some more photos of some of the individual figures on my blog.




A size comparison shot here:



L to R: Studio, Hasslefree, Kingzombie, old metal GW, plastic GW

[Commander Vyper]

Kinda need the whole theme produced by another comapny as they do look a littl too cartoon like for my personal tastes, but still my try them out who knows.

The Commander

[cheetor]

Kinda need the whole theme produced by another comapny as they do look a littl too cartoon like for my personal tastes, but still my try them out who knows.

That reminds me, there is a small set of survivors that can be bought with the KingZombie zombies.  They are, to my mind un-usable (with the possible exception of the SWAT survivor, who is supposed to represent HUNK from the Resident Evil games). 

The same cartoony proportions that are passable with the zeds (think Evil Dead 2 type zombie faces) make the survivors awful.  They look like spitting image puppets bobble heads on gawky bodies.  Plus they are huge...

Its a pity too, as they have a Resident Evil theme throughout, which is just my cup of tea.
I wanted to like the survivors, but couldnt

[Darkoath]

I just sold my resin set here at the Bazar of Obscurities.  I purchased another set in metal.
The problem I had with the set also involves the big honking bases.  I would not have minded
the bases if they at least had made them round.  But they are huge bases and are octogon
bases.   I was having trouble removing the resin miniatures from the bases hence my decision to
sell them and get a new set in metal.  The four survivor miniatures I was able to file the bases
until they were round and then place them inside a 30mm deep hollow DS base sold by Fenris
games.  I think they look good this way.  All my survivor miniatures are on 30mm DS resin bases.

Darkoath

[bandit86]

I enjoyed painting them up Still have not finished some of them but the ones I did were fun and interesting sculpts if a bit cartoony like others have said.
http://bandit86.blogspot.com/search/label/Zombies

[supervike]

That reminds me, there is a small set of survivors that can be bought with the KingZombie zombies.  They are, to my mind un-usable (with the possible exception of the SWAT survivor, who is supposed to represent HUNK from the Resident Evil games). 

The same cartoony proportions that are passable with the zeds (think Evil Dead 2 type zombie faces) make the survivors awful.  They look like spitting image puppets bobble heads on gawky bodies.  Plus they are huge...

Its a pity too, as they have a Resident Evil theme throughout, which is just my cup of tea.
I wanted to like the survivors, but couldnt

I won't disagree with that at all.  I chose not to get the survivors for that reason.  I feel too that while the cartoony look works better for the zombies, it doesn't work at all for the survivors.  The exception *may* be this one



As IMHO, he is the best of the bunch.  Still cartoony, but less so.

They (the zombies) are certainly not scupted to the quality of Studio Miniatures, but they match up pretty well with the chunky Griffin Zeds (as I mentioned above).

Plus, I think they are head and shoulders (both figuratively and metophorically) above Wargames Factories thingies.  I was very disappointed with those.

[Darkoath]

The survivors are not too bad.  They are on the large side, but fit in with RAFM and Griffon modern survivor type miniatures.  I think the sculpts are passable and will paint up nicely.  They definately are not quite the same quality of a sculpt as RAFM and Griffon however.

Darkoath