Advice on winter zombies? help me decide

[fergal]

I’m getting close to wrapping up my current FIW project (well the close to finishing the beginning anyway) and that’s got me itching to try something different for me.  Something that doesn’t require historical accuracy.  I’ve also wanted to try some zombies for a while now, inspired by Akula’s Rules: Skirmish Edition.  I wanted to use the crazy cheap Mantic Zombies in the project, that was one thing I knew for certain.  While trolling for figures, I came across the fantastic Copplestone range.  So I’ve attemped to combine the two and have come up with The Dead of Winter.  I’ll set my games in the post-apocolyptic north where it’s winter for most of the time.  I haven’t quite figured out why it works, but I’ll be wargaming rather than growing crops and such.

The biggest obsticle has been how to base my units for winter.  I researched and researched winter basing and for the most part found out that there aren’t a lot of tutorials on the web.   The best one that I found was this snow basing tutorial.  I have replaced the baking soda on top of the base with Woodland Scenics snow flock, but kept to the recipe other than that.  It’s a serious pain and I’m not sure the flock will stay put, so I tried using my typical basing material, Vallejo Pumice, with a little white paint mixed in as well.  And because I’m still not certain that I want my zombies to only be able to be used in one gonre of game, I tried something close to my regular basing with more of the dead looking grass.   Here are the results.



I’m starting to really like the look of the winter bases with flock on them (1st zed), which is strange as I didn’t like them at all when I started.  While the next zed (middle one) looks ok in a picture, in actuallity, it looks a little to glossy and plasticy in person.  I also really like the “grassy” zed as it will mix with the basing on all of my other figures and will allow me to have everyone fight the Zombies as whim dictates.

So at this point I’m really just wrestling with the dilemma of whether I should actually start creating a winter table and base my zombies with snow bases.  I’m quite happy with how they will look, but do I want to make them exclusive to one table/set-up?  I want my VSF Lead Adventures chaps to fight zombies as well…I’m oogling many, many fine 28mm figs that could be zombie combatants too…there’s Hasslefree miniatures that I want to slap some paint on and many others.  Having a large group of zombies to fight small groups of figures allows me to paint small sets of figs (up to 10) on a whim and still have something to do with them.

Here are my Copplstone Neo-Sovs that are ready to be based when I decide.  If I don’t go with the winter theme, I’ll have to give them a different coat.



 I suppose I have to figure out if I want to have two sets of zombies or not?!

Any other ideas or suggestions out there?

[6milPhil]

I think I prefer the second snowy zed. Looks oh-so-right in the photo.

Have you considered a less freshly fallen snow look? Image it partially melted perhaps, so a mix of the straw looking grass and dollops of snow. 

[zizi666]

Youre Zeds have bloodred wounds hence fresh blood.
If that's what you're going for I'd suggest blooddrops in the snow.
For older wounds I tend to use Valejo's terracotta as blood colour.