"Winter zombies or no?" Topic

I'm getting close to wrapping up my current FIW project (well the close to finishing the beginning anyway) and that's got me itching to try something different for me.  Something that doesn't require historical accuracy.  I've also wanted to try some zombies for a while now, inspired by Akula's Rules: Skirmish Edition.  I wanted to use the crazy cheap Mantic Zombies in the project, that was one thing I knew for certain.  While trolling for figures, I came across the fantastic Copplestone range.  So I've attemped to combine the two and have come up with The Dead of Winter.  I'll set my games in the post-apocolyptic north where it's winter for most of the time.  I haven't quite figured out why it works, but I'll be wargaming rather than growing crops and such.

The biggest obsticle has been how to base my units for winter.  I researched and researched winter basing and for the most part found out that there aren't a lot of tutorials on the web.   The best one that I found was this snow basing tutorial.  I have replaced the baking soda on top of the base with Woodland Scenics snow flock, but kept to the recipe other than that.  It's a serious pain and I'm not sure the flock will stay put, so I tried using my typical basing material, Vallejo Pumice, with a little white paint mixed in as well.  And because I'm still not certain that I want my zombies to only be able to be used in one gonre of game, I tried something close to my regular basing with more of the dead looking grass.   Here are the results.

I'm starting to really like the look of the winter bases with flock on them (1st zed), which is strange as I didn't like them at all when I started.  While the next zed (middle one) looks ok in a picture, in actuallity, it looks a little to glossy and plasticy in person.  I also really like the "grassy" zed as it will mix with the basing on all of my other figures and will allow me to have everyone fight the Zombies as whim dictates.

So at this point I'm really just wrestling with the dilemma of whether I should actually start creating a winter table and base my zombies with snow bases.  I'm quite happy with how they will look, but do I want to make them exclusive to one table/set-up?  I want my VSF Lead Adventures chaps to fight zombies as well…I'm oogling many, many fine 28mm figs that could be zombie combatants too…there's Hasslefree miniatures that I want to slap some paint on and many others.  Having a large group of zombies to fight small groups of figures allows me to paint small sets of figs (up to 10) on a whim and still have something to do with them.

Here are my Copplstone Neo-Sovs that are ready to be based when I decide.  If I don't go with the winter theme, I'll have to give them a different coat.

I suppose I have to figure out if I want to have two sets of zombies or not?!

Any other ideas or suggestions out there?

When I was a zombie in the winter, the fluid in my head froze, expanded, and caused my skull to split open a bit. It was an odd sensation.

Man I hate it when that happens.

I like the earthy look but you could add patches of snow here and there. I would also darken the earth tonee a bit to give more contrast with the dead grass.

Looks great.

I was actually going to use winter as a 'rest season' for my zombie campaign. I figured that the zombies would freeze during winter and maybe thaw out in spring… or migrate to more warmer climates.

I would think that winter zombies with no metabolism to speak of would be … problematic.
Let the Spring be truly terrifying as they thaw out and reanimate.

I like the colorful guts with gray skin…nice simple design trick, s'nice.

*****

If you can accept that zombies exist then it is only another item in the grocery cart to accept that they can move around in the dead of winter.

If they can still move, if they can find you, if they won't stop til your brains are in their collective mouths, then they can mill about smarty in the snow.

:)

Use pumice and when you don't want snow any more you can paint over it and add some flock. :)

Lots of places have very arid winters (little snow or snow confined to higher elevations), so brown grass, stones and just a small amount of white would work.

The non-flesh-eating miniatures you have would still want heavy coats and white would still be an appropriate colour.

Don't forget the footprints!

I am a freeze solid in cold winter sorta zombie fan myself….

I think the theme of a winter war with an army that doesn't need to stop due to inclement weather is a great idea! Don't worry about the zombies freezing as *handwavium* whatever chemical/virus/bacteria made them a zombie also doubles as an excellent anti-freeze!

Zombies surely would freeze solid , all them bits hanging out would freeze solid and drop off ! Or worse still if they recieved a heavy blow or gun shot they would explode or shatter , any way I can't see zombies being in the cold it could really chap there skin !

Those having trouble with the concept of zombies in the cold should check out the movie Dead Snow. Of course in that case the zombies are also Nazis, so it is great for the historical crowd as well.

Dead snow ! Fantastic film I heard that when they where filming it the zombies all suffered from stage fright and froze solid !!!

Z's freeze up in the winter, everyone knows that (if you've read World War Z and subscribe to the author's views on zeds).

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Thanks for everyone's advice and it's been interesting reading everyone's takes on Zeds in the winter.

The original post was asking about the validity of starting a completely themed group of zombie figures that wouldn't fit with the rest of my collections and thus be exclusive to one setting. Something I usually try to avoid.

In that, combatpainter, thanks man. That's exactly what I was looking for but couldn't think of myself. The white pumice gives me the option to easily change my mind later. Sold!!

I've garnered some great ideas from the rest of your posts as well.

To everyone who says zombies can't survive in winter, I have only this to say:

In real life the dragon would have eaten the horse.

:) Thanks for the great reads.

If you accept that bodies with such open wounds are neither blooded to inaction nor mummified by dehydration, that these same bodies practically without functional heart, lungs, brain, intestine… can 'live', move and make decisions, eat and digest, then *why would they care about temperature*? Why would their thermoregulation be more affected than any other function?

The original post was asking about the validity of starting a completely themed group of zombie figures that wouldn't fit with the rest of my collections and thus be exclusive to one setting. Something I usually try to avoid.

Re. the FIW, they can very well be combined with zombies, including winter ones:
link
as could other 'oddities':
link
link
link
If you want so much snow, FIW types in snowshoes are available (Calvalcade Wargames, I believe?)..

PS: already knew and enjoy your site syw6mm.com … specially since you 'raised' to 28mm!

To everyone who says zombies can't survive in winter,…

'Realistically' they would not have survived death, to start with! So, no 'logical' difficulty at all.
Since zombies see, integrate information and coordinate limbs movements, move and bite, they consume energy; thus, unless they feed on ambient aether wind, vril TMP link or orgone, they DO have a metabolism -and then can keep their body warm better than 'ordinary humans' (who would not survive with their guts at open air: zombie metabolism is far more efficient!).
Barely less silly than 'animated skeletons' which can see without eyes and move without muscles, but visually less… shocking.

For 'realistic' (Sci Fi rather than Fantasy) zombies, on could envisage, by increasing 'seriousness':
- *very fresh* corpses somehow quickly 'healed / sealed' and reanimated, Frankeinstein's creature fashion (re. one of Howard's Conan stories, Glen Cook 'Dread Empire'…),
- a parasite (not a true symbiotic organism, given the regression of the host) ensuring the resilience of the invaded body (not that different from the endosymbiotic cyanobacterium of WH40K Orks) [Resident Evil, I'm a legend…],
- people drugged to look dead, then 'awakened' by their Voodoo creator; of course the brain lacked oxygen when the heart was almost paralyzed, thus the 'zombies' are less 'intelligent', and far less active, than a toad.

Regarding miniatures, most zombies ones (except for some pirates, Alternative Napoleonic undead Russians and a few 'authentic' Haitian ones link ) are in 'generic modern' clothes. The best way to have zombies dressed in other periods fashion TMP link . TMP link is to make your own. Movies zombies are humans with a few prosthetics and a lot of make-up: just do the same. A matter of carving tears in the clothes, wounds, pustules, scars in the skin, mutilations of the lips, grooves around the eyeballs… with wire cutter, nail pincer, pin point (the kind of mistreatment the Hinterland sculptor used to 'zombify' his female hussars link ). Then it's a question of appropriate(ly disgusting) painting and 'weathering'. I got an interesting 'freshly unearthed' look by 'inking' with (or dripping in) the syrup so obtained: dried prunes are 'reinflated' in boiling tea, mashed, filtered, thickened with honey / egg white. When dried, the plant miniparticles, while almost imperceptible with the naked eye, gave (even under a protective varnish) a 'texture' that no ink / paint could have provided.
The main difficulty may steam from the fact that, however they are created, zombies are likely to be bare-headed, so one would have to 'scalp' hats away and reconstruct the top of the head…

PS: @ fergal Re the 'poor taste' (debatable; and so well painted, anyway) miniatures link : most from Hasslefree, I suspect? But who makes the fairy with -seemingly- a tricorne?

Thanks for the insights Abdul, the whole scene is new to me, so I've got to concoct a believable back story to keep my interest up.

I'm going with Mantic zeds for two reasons, 1) they look good, 2) they are really cheap and I'm hoping to have about 200 when I finish, so that's important.

200 'hard to kill, dispensed to any reaction / morale test' zombies? How many poor human soldiers will you need to merely contain them? And if they are 'contagious' nd turn human casualties into new zombies… link

'Dispersion' between several projects is often the bane of wargamers: to have several irons in the fire may lead to dissatisfaction, disappointment, disaffection and discouragement since none of the projects seems to progress fast enough, and / or one treads water while the other advances. Thus when having two projects it is generally gratifying to *link* them somehow: any progress in one benefits to both, both implicitly keep making progress.
For instance, if tempted by wargaming in another era after having developed an Imagi-Nation in a given period, it's more cheering to carry your 'brainchild' to the new setting: history, geography… are common, the overall background and 'personality' of your country get more 'rich'. Better imho than building the same army at two scales, one for adventures / skirmishes the other for large battles: when it comes to 'characters' one will never find *exactly* the same mini in two scales.
In the same way, if playing 'tricornes' (OK, I'm biased…) and tempted by (Victorian) Colonial wargaming, paint the 'Natives' first, and you'll can try your hand at the Colonial genre by sending a small 18th C. expedition link to the 'exotic' oversea theatre of operations adventuresinlead.blogspot.com . 'Natives' minis are generally 'period-generic' enough, and wargaming figurines are not intended to be scrutinized individually, but to be seen 'en masse' from a distance: any 'too modern' firearm for instance will pass unnoticed. Your 'Victoria's Boys in Red' will be painted at leisure in the meantime.
Similarly if already the happy and proud owner of 18th C. figurines and tempted by some 'weirdness' link -zombies link link Chaos in Carpathia, Stange Aeons link Call of Cthulhu or even Malifaux…- rather than waiting to have the 'canonical period' human characters painted, start with the 'monsters' and play your first games with figurines in tricornes. Lovecraft's Elder Gods and their minions, for instance, were here long before the 1920, people believed in vampires and werewolves long before the 'Victorian Gothic' or 'Pulp' times….
Even a first try with VSF / Steampunk can be done with 18th C. minis, if you already have some link

Totally unsolicited ruminations, I reckon, but -perhaps a scar from the "70 and the rarity of potential wargamers in France then- I'm convinced that division / dispersion disheartens & weakens, while union / unity gives strength and enthusiasm.

Jean-Louis

Excellent examples of 'home made' zombification by 'pimp my minis' conversions: link

For basing here is what I have done with about 400 Star Wars snowtroopers. I painted the base white, covered it in white glue Elmer's or whatever put the stand in dried coffee grounds and once dry covered again with white glue then painted white. The texture is just right for 25mm and I have a ton of coffee grounds and every day have enough to do at least 50 stands. Simple and works well for the effect I am looking for.
VR
James Mattes