Marauders & Wanderers

 

Most of my time in September and October was spent painting an Early Saxon army for Saga.  I did sneak in a batch of post-apocalypse minis to take a short break from the Saxons.

The Marauders are from Battle Valor Games at http://www.battlevalorgames.com/index.aspx

They make 15mm Fantasy and 28mm Sci-fi, Pulp & Fantasy.  Most or all of the 28mm were originally made by Sgt Major Miniatures which went out of business in the mid 2010s.  I had seen their ranges at US conventions but hadn't bought any, though my friend Mike had some.  In June 2020 I found out from Mike that Battle Valor were bringing these ranges back and I ordered a few packs during their introductory sale.  I received them shortly thereafter.

The Battle Valor minis are well-sculpted with minimal flash.  On the chunky side of 28mm, with lots of gear; just how I picture they would look wandering through the wasteland.  I enjoyed painting them.  I have another pack of Waste Marauders with more significant mutations, along with some apes that I will get to someday.  They have some interesting packs including cultists and various armed religious groups.

As I was writing this post I received an email from Battle Valor about their Christmas Sale: 30% off through 16 December.

When I was prepping the marauders, I also got out 4 miniatures from the 2019 Aftermath kickstarter.  They are now on sale at https://puttymonkey.com/shop/ols/all  I never played the Aftermath RPG back in the 1980s, my group preferred Gamma World.  They have clean lines, no flash and good details.  They also make another human survivor (that I didn't get) and giant mutated rats (waiting in the lead pile).

When painting this batch, I tested out my GW contrast paints on non-zombies for the first time.  I also used my normal paints.  I wanted to try a different method for flesh using a contrast wash followed by my usual skintone.  It was faster and I have been using it since.  Overall I am happy with how they turned out and look forward to using them in a game.

Waste Boss in the middle flanked by Waste Marauders (Battle Valor).  The Waste Boss looks like he stepped  out of a Mad Max film.

 

Three more Waste Marauders (Battle Valor)

The Preacher on the left (Putty Monkey) and Bounty Hunter on the right (Battle Valor).  I really like The Preacher, he has an Old West vibe and his facial features remind me of Yul Brynner in the Magnificent Seven.

Female Survivor, Gauntlet Girl & Male Survivor (Putty Monkey).  The Male Survivor came with a separate visor to fit on the helmet but I left it off.  Gauntlet Girl looks innocent until you see the knife behind her back.  Always be prepared in the wasteland!

All together

Quick 28mm Zombies

 After painting my first batch of zombies in June it didn't take me long to get out the rest of my plastic Warlord (ex-Wargames Factory) zombie sprues.  I had one sprue each of the the male and female zombies, minus the 6 I already painted.  I also found 5 sprues of plastic Studio Miniatures zombies (4 per sprue) I had gotten as a bonus from their Turf War Z Kickstarter in 2018.

After some quick assembly I had 16 zombies ready to be painted.  I again used a mix of GW contrast paints and my normal paints as I thought these would be a good batch for a second experiment with the contrast paints as I wouldn't be disappointed if something went wrong.

I started on a Saturday morning and about 7 hours later (with plenty of time doing other things i between painting sessions) I was done; significantly faster than my normal painting speed.  The detail on these miniatures is fairly shallow for the most part but they accomplish their purpose of serving as cannon fodder against survivors of the zombie apocalypse.  I do still have a few of the Studio Miniatures sprues left to build but I think I am done with zombies for the foreseeable future.

My favorite of this batch reminds me of the Tall Man from the Phantasm movies (though he is missing his jacket) so I painted him accordingly.

The whole batch.  The Studio ones are on the left side and are less animated.