Zombicide Invader - Commander Amadi

Commander Amadi is a neat character.  It was a bit of a pain to paint the many bits of equipment and multiple layers of clothing he has all over his body, but overall I'm fairly happy with how he turned out.  I did envision the yellow to turn out a bit better, but I didn't have a dark enough yellow to start with as the base to work up from and made the mistake of trying to do a light brown wash.  That just made it look dirtier than intended.  

Not sure about a specific homage on this one. Bane out of "The Dark Knight Rises" was mentioned on BoardGameGeek, but nothing that seems obvious to me.

He is quite a force in combat with +1 Die (orange) as well as +1 to dice roll (red) plus Shove at blue just in case things don't go well.  Despite not matching exactly to the character art, I suspect this guy will find his way to the game table on a regular basis.  

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Kilgore

Kilgore again departs from the style of the many power-armor-wearing characters.  Neat concept and the mini is pretty neat.  I don't have much experience with the skill Reaper:Ranged, but I suspect it should be fairly useful - especially early on before bigger and better weapons are found and the hoard of Xenos thickens.  

Kilgore is said to be a homage to General Grevious which I guess could be the case.  Perhaps he has another arm hidden away under the cape and lightsaber or two.  I'm not familiar with it, but the cyborg 'Kilgore' from the "Killer Instinct" game was also mentioned on the forums.  Seems like that could be a more accurate fit given the name and cyborg commonality.  

This one painted up pretty quickly since most of the body is just gold.  I do particularly like how the cape turned out.  His shotgun on the belt, however, is very blocky and not very detailed.  

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Frank

Frank is an interesting concept and quite different from the multitude of power-armor-wearing heroes.  I almost skipped painting Frank as I planned to paint the Xenos from Dark Side to get some more practice before tackling this character.  In the end, I figured I'd spend more time on the character than the hoard of red Xenos and the technique may be different anyway.  As long as I stick to the same general paint colors, the level of consistency should be sufficient.  

The relationship between Doctor Fischer and Frank as well as the abbreviated name of 'Frank' lends itself to Frank being a homage to Frankenstein's Monster.

I tried a few new paints on this model.  The AK Interactive yellows that I tried out previously were very impressive in their coverage and ease of mixing & use so I picked up a few in the red spectrum.  I also picked up the Black Templar contrast paint from Citadel.  That black contrast REALLY covers and is basically liquid darkness.  It didn't leave any of the zenithal prime showing through to 'contrast' at all.  I ended up doing some drybrushing of Filthy Suit after the contrast had dried and then covering that with Dark Tone from Army Painter.  

The reds, however, did not disappoint.  My painting steps were not very efficient and I ended up just wet-blending most of the carapace areas.  The AK paints themselves, however, were very consistent and easy to apply.

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Doctor Fischer

Well, I wouldn't say my brushwork on this model was overly 'inspired', but it didn't turn out too bad.  She kind of looks like he is a 7th member of the "Black Squad" I painted earlier.  

I don't feel as though the skills fit very well the character.  Given the +1 to ranged dice roll in orange and +1 die ranged in red, this gal is a ranged beast rivaling Kyle and other 'big guns'.  Auto-repair and/or more free machine actions to add to her blue skill seem like they would have been a better fit.  

The skills she has would make more sense if they applied to the machine she is controlling, but from my understanding of the rules, that is not the case.  Might have to make a special house rule to allow those skills to apply to the Bot/Sentry she controls just to make him more thematically correct...

Another reason I've had mixed feelings about this character is that I found the copy I had in my Kickstarter package was missing the computer console.  There is no sign of glue or other hints that it broke off at some point - it is just missing.  Frankly, it seems a bit of a miracle that more parts of these multi-part miniatures are not found missing.  There are definitely some people with missing parts that are vocal on the Kickstarter comments, but there are so many miniatures with so many bits, it just impresses me the assembly team does as well as they do.  

The problem I had is that in the sea of gray miniatures, I didn't notice his computer was missing until a couple months ago - a few years after the Kickstarter concluded.  I reached out to CMON, but as I kind of expected, they were not able to help me out given the amount of time that had passed.  Fortunately, I was able to find a copy available on Ebay.  It was certainly not inexpensive, but not having a complete miniature would have driven me a bit crazy...  

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

 

Zombicide Invader - Magnet-Compatible Color Rings

Why more rings?  As you can see in the photo of a painted base, the snap-on color rings included with Zombicide Invader (and other versions of Zombicide) tend to chip away at the edge of the base.  This isn't a huge issue, but it was annoying enough for me to go to the trouble of making my own bases.  

I quickly designed a 3d model in SketchUp of the ring minus the little 'tabs' that dig into the bases and printed out a dozen.  Circular pieces of sheet metal (the same type used as the bottom of the storage containers) were cut and glued into the rings.  After a few coats of the best-matched paint-to-ring colors, I had a set of magnet-compatible rings.

Each base of the miniatures already had magnets glued to them to keep them secure in the storage container and now they simply grab onto the bases.  They are strong enough to not have any trouble holding on when picking up the miniature and moving it around.  

Generally, when playing solo, I don't use the rings at all as I'm very familiar with which character is which, but they are definitely helpful to new players.  It can be a bit overwhelming with all the miniatures and characters on the board for someone playing for the first time.

Another advantage to these rings is the elimination of the fiddling around with trying to snap a ring into place for those that fit a 'little too tight'.  There were also some rings that were a 'little too loose' and kept falling off.  It is possible that the magnet-compatible rings could be knocked off during handling, but they are so easy and quick to put back on, I don't foresee that to be an issue.

Here is a photo of several characters sporting the new magnet-compatible rings:

If anyone is interested, the stl file for the ring could be made available for free.

Zombicide Invader - Rea "Tank Girl"

Rea was a fun model to paint and went fairly smoothly.  Another character with the 'Shove' ability is always welcome.  Rea is apparently an homage to Ellie from Borderlands 2.  I've never played the game, but there are some similarities between the images that come up during a search.  

Paints used on this miniature:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Stepmother Abomination

Well, after an extended time of "painter's block", I finally worked up the courage to paint this Abomination.  The idea of a 'mobile spawn point' seems really neat and could add some additional variety as well as increase the difficulty a bit.  The Juggernaut Abomination really adds some "un, oh" moments to the game and this one has the potential to do so as well.  

I was stuck trying to figure out how to paint this figure using the drybrush technique used on the Juggernaught.  I really liked how "The Jugg" turned out, but really wasn't sure how to start from drybrushing with this model.  Blue and purple washes were used to apply the 'base coat' over the zenithal prime followed by a light drybrush.  

The paint scheme ended up being based more off of the Duke of the Blood Keep's style than the game art - mostly accidentally.  I was using his work as a reference and when I finally had the motivation to dive in, I didn't look back at the reference photo.

I think the paint scheme turned out well enough, but I do have some regret that it isn't more like the game art as I've really tried to keep the rest of the models as close as possible.  It seems as though the past couple Abominations have both drifted a bit color-wise.

The weird thing about this model rules-wise is that it spawns Workers.  Well, there must have been some confusion with the artists because the creatures crawling out of the back of this thing are neither Workers nor Hunters, but rather some mix of the two.  Perhaps they are spawned as under-developed Hunters who have not yet grown enough to gain their second activation and thus represented by Workers...we'll go with that.

One point of confusion on the rules is if only the first card is drawn from the spawn deck or if cards are continued to be drawn until a worker card is found.  I've seen people talk about playing it both ways.  For me, it seems the intention of the rules is to just draw the next card from the spawn deck and if it is a Worker, spawn them, otherwise just ignore it and nothing additional spawns on the Stepmother zone that round.

These are the 'mostly finished' photos minus the goo and gloss which had yet to be applied after the Testors Dull Cote had cured.

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench: