Zombicide Invader - Val

 

Val is the fastest character in the game and has the potential to enable speed running various missions.  One could argue that +1 Zone Per Move is one of the most 'useful' skills in the game.

While Val shares the same blue-toned skin as Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element, the similarities seem to stop there so I'm not sure I'd call it a homage, but perhaps mildly inspired by that movie character.

Val was a tough character to get started painting for various reasons.  First, I wasn't overly excited about the layers upon layers of bits & details.  Second, various parts do not have a ton of detail - the face (eyes in particular), rifle, and some of the straps and trim are all not well defined and did not look fun to paint.  Third, I just wasn't overly excited about the model as I'd expect a speedster such as Val would be 'traveling light' and not have so much junk strapped to her.  Fourth, it was tough to get back into painting characters after the new year.  Every time I sat down with the intention to paint this figure, I got side-tracked (Pods) or something not hobby-related came up.

Whether it be that I was just out of practice or the sculpt was not ideal, it was more challenging to paint than other characters.  In any case, I'm glad this hurdle has been passed and hopefully I'm more inspired to paint the next model in line.

Paints used on this model:

Next up on the workbench:

Zombicide Invader - Pods!

3d terrain variety has been added, Character variety has been added, Abomination variety has been added, and new enemy variety has been added over the past year of working on Zombicide Invader.  The next bit of variety comes in the form of opening up the new missions provided by Zombicide Black Ops - which means Pod Zones!  

Pod Zones act as active mold zones with a bit of an extra 'bang' as they can be targeted with ranged attacks and destroy everything in the room when hit hard enough.  It will certainly be nice to have an additional way to deal with the Juggernaut abomination as it is the leading cause of character death and challenge up to this point.  

Since the Black Ops expansion has the Pod Rooms printed on the game board rather than separate paper/cardboard tokens, something was needed to represent them on the 3d terrain board.  I plan to continue to use the paper 'mold' tokens that come with the base game - at least for now.  The mold can just be slid under the pods and the pods can be removed and mold flipped to the inactive side when destroyed.  

These were a nice opportunity to use the airbursh along with the Vajello Air paints I received for Christmas and the new Badger air compressor (with an air tank) for my birthday.  Both worked fairly well, but I know I could have spent some more time on them to get a better effect.  The airbrush made quick work on them with just a bit of drybrushing and a black wash (which was probably not necessary) to top them off.  I tried to replicate the color scheme as accurately as possible and they turned out to resemble the game art well enough in my opinion.  

If my count is correct, 16 pod zones will be more than enough to cover any Black Ops scenario.  On most scenarios, there are far fewer than 16 pod zones so I'll probably add a couple of these models to each pod zone on the map.

I've updated my Thingiverse 'thing' with the STL for the pods:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5337884

The sculpt was a bit lazy and it has a few resin traps and islands so running the sliced file through UVTools is recommended.

Paints used: