Sci-Fi Windows and Airlocks

 

The Zombicide Invader game includes what look like 'airlocks' that characters and aliens can just 'walk through'.  To implement this idea in 3D, I decided to use SirayaTech Blu clear resin tinted with blue alcohol-based dye.  The O2 water tanks were printed with the same resin, but included more blue dye as these came out a bit too translucent.  The airlocks slot into a 4-inch wall section and consume the middle two inches.  Game-wise, I'm considering these as clear-blue 'force fields' that can be walked through as they are able to detect objects that are intentionally trying to move from inside to out or vice versa.  The force fields hold back gasses, dust, and other small bits from passing through.

The right side is the post-cure piece and the left side is after a gloss clear-coat.  I kind of like the look of both, but opted to go for the more transparent version as it felt more like a 'force field' to me.

In an effort to break up the mundane endless hallways flanked by solid walls, these window sections came to mind.  Again, I consider them to be some sort of 'force field' with a more aggressive algorithm in place to prevent anything from passing through from either direction.  The same SirayaTech Blu resin was used, this time tinted with a reddish-orange which I think contrasts nicely with the blueish paint scheme of the walls.

I was able to print all of the windows I wanted for this project in one printing on the Elegoo Saturn.  Everything stuck very well to the WhamBam FlexPlate along with the tips from Jan Mrázek's work in his Blog Post regarding bed adhesion and elephant foot prevention.

The windows got the same gloss clear-coat treatment as the airlock doors.  

All of the 3d models for the walls, doors, windows, and items are freely available on my Thingiverse page.

Zombicide Invader - House Rules

For the most part, the Zombicide Invader rules are fairly well laid out and make sense.  Guillotine Games has had many years to refine the rules through the generations of the Zombicide franchise so it isn't surprising that things are pretty streamlined by now.  There are, however, some new concepts in their new SciFi universe that don't make a lot of sense as well as an old irritating rule that they still have around...  Nothing a few house rules can't fix!

Shooting into Zones with Survivors

"Only misses on Attack rolls of '1' hit Survivors standing in the target Zone."

The rulebook states that ANY misses when shooting into a zone containing survivors automatically hit the survivors and are allocated accordingly.  This means that when shooting into a zone containing survivors and Xenos, it is impossible to have a result that misses completely - you either hit your friends or the enemy.  In many cases, it is also easier to hit your friends than a towering Abomination.  This just seems ridiculous to me and thus, House Rule #1 amends this rule to only hitting friends on rolls of '1'.  There is still some risk of hitting your friends, but just seems more reasonable than the standard rules.  This has been an annoyance to me since the very first version of Zombicide and I really wish they'd fix it or give some reasonable explanation for why they keep it the way it is.  Does this make the game a little easier?  Technically yes, but for me, even the risk of rolling a '1' is enough to deter me from shooting into a friendly-occupied zone unless there really is no other choice...

Exterior Zone Weapon Limitation

"Bullet-based weapons are allowed to fire in both interior and exterior zones."

Either these futuristic/SciFi weapons are inferior to our modern-day firearms or this planet has some very strange chemistry/physics in play.  Gunpowder in modern-day firearm cartridges contains its own oxidizer and is not dependent on oxygen in the atmosphere in which it burns.  Firearms can be fired in space.  Unless I hear some other reason that makes any sense, the artificial limitation on weapons firing in exterior zones is nixed.  Does this make the game a little easier?  Yes, but the inability to have any sort of logical explanation for the limitation other than to 'balance' things is too difficult for my mind to overcome.  The flamethrower and other fire-based weapons seem to make some sense to limit their outdoor usage though so the indoors-only rule for 'hellfire' still stands.

Search Limitations

"Searching by Soldiers AND Civilians can ONLY be performed in the red security rooms."

The rules state that Soldier characters may only search in the red security rooms.  I can't figure out why they wouldn't be able to pick up a weapon from a table in any given room just as easily as a Civilian could.  The only thing I can come up with is that it is an attempt to 'balance' the Soldier class out by nerfing their ability to search or just an attempt to add some more variety to the game.  Nerfing isn't needed as the Soldiers are generally not much more powerful than Civilians - one more armor point?  So they can withstand a single tank attack instead of dying after one hit.  Everybody (except Magnus) dies from a single Abomination attack...one extra armor point isn't really that big of an advantage.  The starting skill is usually the differentiator between a 'good' character and a 'not as good' character and the skills have no Soldier/Civilian boundary.

One option would be just to treat the red rooms like every other room and anyone can search anywhere.  I do, however, think acquiring items is a bit too easy in this game and since the game gets a little easier with the previous two house rules, I figured making it harder might be something fun to try.  So...both Civilians and Soldiers can ONLY search in red rooms.  When using the walls/floors I made, the security rooms are signified by the red 'item vending machines' so it is somewhat thematic as all sorts of good stuff can be stored there and they are fairly easily accessible.  This may totally not work out in some scenarios and is sort of a prototype house rule that I'm not sure I'll keep going forward.

The exception to this house rule is that any character with the Free Search Action ability may use that action to search in any type of room.  This allows the 'search-oriented' characters to not take a big hit on their primary ability.  

Bot/Turret Activation Limit

"Each Bot and Turret may only be activated a total of 4 times per Player Phase via the remote."

No more 'passing the remote'.  The bots and turrets are fairly powerful assets and can easily be abused by all the characters sitting in a room and passing the remote around giving the bot a dozen or more actions in a given turn.  The Character's actions can be thought of as semi-simultaneous and serializing the actions by passing the remote around while the Characters down the line just sit there and 'wait' just kind of breaks the mental picture and intent of the game.

Note that this only applies to the remote control token and not to Characters with the "Remote Control: Bot/Turret" skill nor Characters standing in the same zone as the Bot/Turret.  'Free' machine actions and 'extra activations' (such as from Born Leader) do not apply to the activation limit and can always be used to activate a machine.

Zombicide Invader - Scientist Companions

Olive Hayes, Lukas Pavlis, and Dr. Markus de Vries

I decided to take a detour from painting the characters for Zombicde Invader for two reasons.  First, I wanted to get some more practice with skin/faces to hopefully improve the quality of the character faces going forward.  Second, there are a few missions in the core set that involve rescuing(M4) or evacuating(M9) scientists, and having actual miniatures instead of colored cardboard markers seemed more immersive.  Who wants to rescue cardboard tokens anyway?

These specific 'companions' are tailored for a set of expansion missions as well as being useful as general stand-ins in the core missions.  Here are the profiles and character art from the Zombicide Invader Operation Persephone mission rule book:

I do like how the rules work for the Zombicide companions.  By bestowing some sort of free action to the character they are 'following', it is a very lightweight way to add some more variety.  Giving the companion their own turn and ability to move around on their own would have caused the player's turn to take longer and just be more complex.  One more free action aligns with a character leveling up and is very streamlined.

I'm finally fairly satisfied with how a character's face turned out.  Olive's is still far from what I'd consider 'great', but to me, it at least has some 'character' and doesn't look overly blotchy and just wrong.  Olive's face is better sculpted than some of the other characters so it made it a lot easier to paint.  It is probably a combination of having more practice and better-sculpted features that lead to painting this one taking much less time than the others.

Dr. Markus' face turned out decently enough. Fortunately, each face turned out better than the previous as I worked on them in the order presented here.  Hopefully, my skills keep progressing with each subsequent model.

All three of these models have a very fair complexion in the game art...I guess they are busy in the labs and don't get much sun.  

Lukas' face is very pale and a bit 'pasty' as it was my first attempt using the Vallejo Air series to paint skin.  These paints worked a lot better than the old paints I was using, but are a little too thin out of the bottle, and controlling the flow was a bit of a challenge.  His face does look better in person though - still pale, but from the naked eye, it looks decent.

I've acquired some AK Interactive flesh tones and will give them a shot on the next model on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Cole

 

Cole is the final character of the Zombicide Invader Core Set.  He has a lot of style sporting his boldly colored jacket.  

The facial details are getting easier to get to a 'looking ok' stage.  In the 'main' picture the face looks a bit yellow, but it seems better in person.  

I may need to figure out some different flesh tone paints as I've been using some fairly old (6-7 years old maybe) Vallejo skin tones and getting any sort of smooth semi-transparent consistency has been challenging.

It was only after I started down the 'blue jeans' path that I noticed that in the box art the pants are much more gray than blue.  The YouTube videos I watched used blue so that is how I got it in my head.  Rather than try to start over, I just darkened the blue down quite a lot and it will have to be 'close enough'.  The zenithal prime wouldn't have been useable if I tried to repaint and the blue didn't look terrible...it just doesn't match as closely to the artwork.  

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench (breaking from the characters and going with the scientists from the Kickstarter):

Zombicide Invader - Mitsuki

 

Mitsuki, the second of the core box Civilians, was a fun sculpt to paint.  She has tons of equipment all over the place which took a while, but I like the 'light armor' and general 'sneaky' pose of the figure.  

The face/skin of the model has been a constant struggle for me.  This one was another step in the right direction I believe.  Still not what I consider 'ideal', but it looks at least acceptable close-up and pretty good from a table-top distance.  

Looking closely, Mitsuki is wearing camo pants under the armor.  I attempted to replicate it, but it didn't turn out great which you can't really tell in the photos, but I know how it looks under a magnifier. ;) 

The Vallejo black wash was used again for black-lining the various items.  It was fairly easy and quick to do with the 00 (2/0) W&N Series 7 brush.

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Vivian

Vivian is the first Civilian character (going by the number on the bottom of the base).  It looks like she went a bit wild with the lipstick in the photo above, but from a distance, it doesn't look quite as disturbing.  The model didn't really have a mouth sculpted nor much of a chin so I worked with what I had and considered it ok for now.

I acquired a couple additional Windsor & Newton Series 7 brushes from DickBlick.com to accompany my trusty size 1 that I've used for years.  In particular, I used the 000 (or 3/0) from the series for the facial features.  Along with the optivisor, was able to paint the eyeballs and eyebrows.  

Although still not great, I think this face is somewhat of a step forward over the previous faces I've done in this series.  There is still a long way to go until I'd consider it pleasing to the eye, but one step at a time...

The Vallejo Black Wash replaced the black ink I used previously for black lining between various pieces of clothing and items.  It leaves a bit more natural dark separation than the ink which I like a little better.  

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Baraka

 

Baraka is the 3rd of the 83 playable characters in Zombicide Invader that I've painted.  The whole process seems to be going more smoothly, but it still is taking me longer than I'd hoped to paint each character.  At this point, getting them all done will take over a year as I doubt I'll be able to keep up my current pace.  I am, however, enjoying the painting process on these and after getting the six core box characters completed, I'll be able to play "fully painted" games.

The zenithal prime worked quite well on this miniature and I didn't need to spend much time on the white armor itself.  The Apothecary White did a pretty decent job of covering most of the armor.

The South African flag was the most difficult to get to what I considered a 'good enough' standard.

This time I changed things up a little bit and used black ink to give some extra visual separation between the different components.  It worked a lot better than the black wash I used on the previous two models. 

I'm not sure if it is supposed to be this way, but the head on the model looks like it was glued in and tilted quite a bit forward.  It didn't want to move at all so I just went with it as-is...she just looks 'determined'.

Paints used for Baraka:

Next up on the workbench: