Dungeons And Dragons Eight Week Project- The Undead of Gardmore Abbey 2

With the bony contingent finished I got on with the more fleshy vitally challenged. 

These are mostly zombies, and already the online play means I won't need one particular group of them (Chillborn, if you're interested).

Still, I may well need others, and looking forward, encounters with zombies in crypts are always fun (?!).

Collecting Zombies

I painted up ten Reaper Bones zombies way back in 2016, they were the first minis where I experimented with clear basing. Sorting through the loft of shame I could only find 8 of them, but I've a another set of the models unpainted.  So here they are.

  

So that's an extra five, and I think it's all my unpainted Reaper zombies finished.  I'm adding a few other makes of zombie to bulk out the collection and add variety. 

The Dread Warrior is a WotC prepainted mini, and was already finished but for a coat of matt varnish and clear basing.  There's a WotC prepainted Strahd Zombie from the Ravenloft setting, and one of the second lot of  WotC zombies (the first one is pretty poor).

Although prepaints, the Strahd zombie and the vanilla zombie were repainted more or less from scratch. 

Finally, a mini from the Magic the Gathering minis game, simply because it was already part painted, and, with the armour and axe, fitted the ex military background I want for some of the zombies in the Abbey.

Painting the Zombies

All of these, even the pre painted minis (except the Dread Warrior) and the part done MtG one, were given a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone followed by a white dry brush.

Then assorted Vallejo Express Paints for the bulk of the painting. I wanted the same sort of look as the more recent zombie models I painted, which means a second wash, so I avoided Speedpaints.

As a nod to my long ago zombies, I did some flesh in Space Grey, which I think gives a nice 'spooky' effect.

But how well do the newly painted zombies compare?  Well here's a comparison shot of the old and new Reaper bones Zombies.  I deliberately went for different skin tones, and I've used a wider range of colours for the clothing, but I think they look OK together.  The main difference is the more gloss finish on the early zombies, I may give them  a coat of Matt varnish at some point.

Or not.

A Shamble of Zombies

Is that the collective noun?  It should be.

So here's my D&D collection of zombies; various makes and two lots of painting, but I think they'll do.

But

You might be thinking "but Mister C,  what about all those Reaper zombies you painted earlier?" 

I've still got them, currently languishing in a box set aside for Frostgrave/Rangers of Shadow Deep.  They aren't exclusive to those games, but I wanted an excuse to finish off this group and sort through my undead collection. 

They also have a different aesthetic. Those RoSD ones are, or were, definitely civilians, and they look recently raised. Most of this batch look older. The clothing is more ragged and the flesh more sunken. OK, I'm self justifying here, but it's an excuse to organise my collection a little more, and I can always combine them into one huge horde.

I do think that the Reaper zombies I just painted would look perfectly at home in modern games.  The clothing can easily be interpreted as modern dress.

I also found that I had few 'martial zombies', unlike the skeletons I did recently, zombies seem to rely on fists (and teeth) rather than weapons.