The Zeds Are Back in Town!

Well, life has got in the way big time.  Twenty-two years of service, and the funds have run out. Refusing to be beaten, I've secured new work, taking me in a new direction.  But it comes at a significant drop in income.   And considering I didn't make much in the first place, that's bad news.  So, following the truth that it's more important to feed the family than spend your money on hobby and starve, some projects will have to be shelved for a year or two.  If all works out, we'll all be in a much better place in a couple of years.

In the meantime?  Well, I'm going to learn contentment and paint the miniatures I already own.  Sure, there's not enough figures to make even starter armies for most of the periods I have started purchasing figures for, but this is surely a time to get ready what I have, isn't it?  And after all, there are a couple of games I appear to have enough figures for.  So it seems logical to focus on these first.
Which brings me back to World War Z, my own variant of Two Hour Wargames' three rulebooks, namely NUTS!, All Things Zombie and Chain Reaction 3.1.  I completed my rulesmash around Easter, and got my pack of Studio Miniatures Nazi Zeds painted at around the same time.  Truth be told, it was the discovery of these miniatures a couple of years ago that started this whole crazy project.

This game pitches a handful of SAS NWE infiltrating behind enemy lines on the outskirts of Germany in 1945.  It is here they uncover the dreadful truth of Hitler's obsession with never giving in, and launching a deadly virus that creates an army of Nazi Zeds.  Here's our intrepid SAS.
 They'll be facing hordes of Nazi Zeds, the Volkssturm, Hitler Jugend (as depicted below), the Wehrmacht and, in the early stages of the campaign at least, some terrified civilian survivors.
 It's that last lot that have been causing me some consternation.  have you ever tried to find some noncoms among the plethora of WWII miniatures in 28mm?  It's a blooming nightmare, let me tell you!  I had been hopeful of finding something among the various partizan figures produced by such companies as Artizan Designs, Dixon Miniatures, West Wind and so on.  I even checked out Wargames Foundry.  And yes, you can definitely get some lovely miniatures from all of them.  Just so long as you don't mind them having bren guns, sten guns and rifles.  Perfect for partizans, but not exactly representative of frightened civilians.

I had considered changing the setting to France, just to use West Wind's French civilians set. But I couldn't bring myself to do so.  And anyway, with little to no available cash on the horizon, there was no point looking.

Until I remembered a set of Grenadier Miniatures I purchased back in the 80's.  So I went rummaging in the loft, and found them much easier than I thought I would.  Here they are:
They were originally produced in 1982 to complement Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG.  I purchased them a few years later when Games Workshop got the license to produce a hardback edition of the RPG in the UK.  I never did much with them though, as our games of Cthulhu didn't involve miniatures.

Which means they were pretty much in their original state when I opened them today.
I picked as many as I could from the set, including an extra GW figure called 'Baron' according to his slottabase tab, which also tells me he's from 1987.  Okay, okay, one of them has a tommy gun and three others have pistols.  But they look the part, and I'm really pleased to be putting them to good use after all these years.  Nice to see the gent propping up the baron for this next shot!
The first thing to do was to decide how to base them.  My Zeds have all been given rubble bases.  Most of my Volkssturm have similar bases.  My Wehrmacht are currently being made and have a mixture of rubble, conbblestone and open ground bases.  So I had to decide how to model my civilian's bases.
After a little humming and hawing, I decided to go for cobblestones.  This would mean I could get away with using them in different settings if I so desire in future years.

Before anything could really begin, I needed to make sure the models could be looked after properly.  So I went to my stash of self-adhesive steel sheet.  And found I have almost nothing left.  Sigh.  What I did find though was the 10mm wide offcuts from my 20mm x 20mm squares I use for my Really Useful Boxes.  So I cut them into strips and placed them together.  Necessity is the mother of invention, after all!


Then out came the Renedra 25mm diameter bases.  I love these things.  I cut some 25mm x 25mm squares from my cobblestone embossed sheet of plasticard and affixed them with good old Revell Contacta liquid.  It's actually from my old pot as what remained in it had become too gloopy over the months to be used for modelling much else.
Then I began the laborious process of cutting away the moulded on bases on each miniature.
It's always satisfying to cut them away and still see your little man (or woman) stand up all on their own.  And when that happens, you can be sure they'll happily stick to your bases!
 As I stuck the last model onto his base with super glue, I suddenly remembered i needed to stick the round magnets to the bases.  Doh!  Should have done that before sticking the models on.  No worries though as it all worked out fine in the end as you can see in the next photo!
 And there they all sit in their new home, ready for painting.
What?  The empty squares?  Well yes, those are for my Wehrmacht troops.  They're currently on my paint station, awaiting magnets on their bases.  With a couple of Perry's Desert Rats for company.  Just because.
Oh wait, one of the Wehrmacht has gone off on a jolly somewhere...




Nazi Zeds are manufactured by Studio Miniatures.  The SAS, Volkssturm & Hitler Jugend are made by Warlord Games.  Wehrmacht figures are from Wargames Factory.  The civilians are from Grenadier Miniatures.  And for those of you looking close enough, the handful of those schweinhund Nazi leaders and Late War soldiers in Great Coats are from Artizan Designs.  They are for my future games of Eat Hitler! but I needed somewhere to keep them safe. 

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