Speaking Of A Horde...

Following up on the movie review I posted a couple of weeks ago, we'll explore how to populate your table with vast amounts of undead.  Even in 15mm, putting enough zombies on the table in order to get that "horde" effect can be pricey.  Rebel Minis 15mm Zombie packs cost $11.99 for 22 Zeds.  Put 100+ of them on the table and you've dropped over $60!  Here's a way to bulk up your 15mm Zombie horde w/o offering up an arm and a leg, or would that be your brains?

Get on e-Bay and buy a pack of plastic HO scale Model Railway figures like the ones below.  You can buy 100 figures for about $12.50; that's including shipping!

Once the figs arrive , you can "zombify" them by touching up the skin tones with grays, pale blues and sickly greens, as well as adding copious amounts of blood.  Once that's done, get some different sized steel fender washers from the local DYI store.  Glue sand to the washers, then paint the ground color; earth tone brown works.  After that, super glue the figs to the base.  Gel type super glue works best, for me, as I don't have to hold the figs upright while it dries.  I make bases with 2, 3,5 and 10 figs on them, so I can add and subtract bases from the table as Zeds are killed/drawn into the fight.  My single Zombies are the metal Rebel Mini figs.  Once all the figs are based, wash the figs and bases with a black wash.  I use Future floor wax with black India ink mixed in.  Once the wash is dry, go back and dry brush the base with tans and light grays, to bring out details.  Finish it all off with a bit of flock, or ground cover.

All this work can be done over the course of an evening and the end result of your work is a bloody horde of hungry Zombies, ready to swarm your survivors:

The inclusion of kids in this HO scale set means you can have a swarm of rugrat zombies, if you wished.  You can see a couple in the above pic.

Zombie horde bases mixed in with Rebel Mini zombies

You can also use these figures to create a good sized crowd to hold a protest and/or riot.  I for went the zombification of the figs below, and added some individuals with protests sings, and viola, instant mob.

Apparently, this crowd is mad at Two Hour Ed for some reason!