More Painting & More Infection Z

I've been painting a bit. Just an hour or two most nights but I've also been typing a lot too, trying to bash my Infection Z solo zombie apocalypse rules into shape (more on that below).

Painting wise, I've mainly been doing apocalypse-ish things but I've still been doing fantasy stuff. I do tend to go off on a spree which will eventually peter off and then I get on to something else for a while. This time it's back to zombies.

Anyway, here's a bunch of bikers. I think they're Copplstone figures but I'm not sure. They look like his sculpting but I've seen the same figures on line with other folks making claims on them. They're pretty hefty dudes with plenty of character. I've had them for a while and that's why I can't remember where they came form.

This one is from Studio Miniatures. It's obviously supposed to be Daryl from the Walking Dead and it's a pretty nice figure. But the way it leans forward really annoys me. I might re-base it.

This guy is a Frostgravefigure from Northstar. Very nice. Despite his hood he has a very crazy face. I like him.

Infection Z

I've really been working hard on this. I wrote and changed and worked on a lot of stuff and played a test game. I went back and changed a bunch of things and added new things and played another test game.  Changed more stuff and played another game...

Lots of writing and three test games and it's really starting to take solid shape. I changed a lot of the original stuff I worked on last year but I tried to keep the basic concepts. After three games it now seems to work.

The main changes were made to the survivor characters. And it took a lot of thinking and chopping and changing and editing and chopping and changing again. In the end I looked at good old original D&D for guidance. And I found the inspiration I needed!

As for the zombies: my original concept of a goal system does allow for a lot more zeds. There are a few different types in the game (fast ones and big ones etc,) and they tend to were down the survivors. Some of the zeds are nasty but they can be killed with a single head shot. But it is working out how I wanted them to work. The sheer weight of numbers is what makes them lethal.

I took the following shots to show how, during the game, fairly quiet situations can become lethal pretty quickly. This is what I want. Unpredictability and dangerous, but not impossible, situations.

With writing the scenarios I also decided to go less detailed. Initially I made pretty precise maps but then opted for a general concept. On the tables below I played the same game through twice. The survivors had to get from the building in the big red circle to the exit at the little red circle. The top one was the first game and the second was the more general set up (which allowed me to do any sort of basic lay out).

The second game worked so much better that I forgot to take pics of the game because I really got involved. (And no! The bus and ambulance crash was not part of the game. I only now noticed that I did the same thing in both set ups - It must be a Freudian thing.)

So there you have it. Infection Z is coming along nicely. I'll play the 3 game, mini-campaign I wrote back to back this week to see how it works out.