Zombie of the Month: Zombie Vixens

Zombie of the Month

   Wouldn't it be great if there were a Zombie of the Month Club? Wouldn't it be awesome if, once a month, you opened your mailbox and saw a little package, and you opened it and found a shiny new zombie miniature? Every month, a different zombie, from a different manufacturer. What a fun way to add to a horde.

   I wish I could offer you that. Alas, even I don’t have that kind of stock. What I CAN do is SHOW you a different zombie every month. There are so many wonderful zombie minis out there, and they each deserve the spotlight for just a moment before they disappear into the endless masses of writhing undead.

   And so, in the putrefied spirit of the never-ending Zombie apocalypse season, I bring you:

The Zombie of the Month – January 2014 – Zombie Vixens by Wargames Factory

  Naturally, when I decided to build a massive, all-purpose wargaming zombie horde, the first thing I looked for was the ability to add massive numbers of zombies rapidly… fast forward a month and I remembered that there is such a thing as quality. But then, I had a vision. Zombie Vixens, a box of zombie minis made by Wargames Factory. A way to have both quality and quantity at an acceptable level for my finicky tastes.

   What’s so great about these Zombies? The sculpts. Oh my stars, the sculpts. Faces that look like faces, body shaping that lets you know these girls were hot when they were alive, poses and details that unequivocally tell you they’re dead. Good, clean sculpts with enough detail to create a great picture, but not so much detail that you don’t want to get stuck painting it.

   Now for the more technical stuff:

            Scale- Wargames Factory sculpts most of their models in what they call 1/56 scale, which

is a 28mm scale. Specifically, these are approximately 30mm to the eyes, and 33mm overall, though, in a nice touch of realism, each figure is a slightly different height. The figures are about 5 heads tall, which places them nicely in-between “I’m sculpted like a toddler!” and “I know I’m biologically accurate, but I feel like I have tiny head syndrome.”

            Genre- Definitively modern, a mix of urban and suburban good-looking female civilians. The zombie chicks you’d expect to run into about town today… if you lived somewhere with a very low obesity rate, a high attractiveness quotient, and, of course, a zombie apocalypse. So, Los Angeles.

Material- These are plastic models. A nice, lightweight material that holds the details in the sculpt well and cleanly. Sure, there are some mold lines here and there, but usually well placed along clothing seams and easy to file down when necessary.

Parts ‘N’ Bits- A box contains three identical sprues, each with 10 and a half and a half zombies. Each figure is separated into a body, two arms, and a head, and labeled (A1, A2, and A3 for the first zombie, etc.) so you know which pieces were designed to go with which figure, for those of us who are less good at the conversion thing. Ten and a half and a half zombies? That was not a typo. The box is labeled as containing 30 multi-part figures, but the generous folks at Wargames Factory also threw two crawlers into each sprue as a bonus. So, for the purposes of devouring the living, you are really getting 36 total, 12 on each sprue. And there are some extra heads, arms, and accessories (like purses and such) in there for your conversions, bits box, or terrain clutter.

Assembly- The parts match up fairly well. It’s pretty easy to tell how joints are supposed to

fit together, and they attach cleanly, with just glue, and without extra work. However, since these are fairly realistic sculpts of lean figures, some of the arms are so tiny that they have a higher than average propensity for breaking off.

Bases- The box comes complete with 30 beveled, unslotted, round 25mm bases, right there on the sprues… which means they also come the same unfinished gray as the figures. Since the crawlers are a bonus, they don’t include bases for those, but you have a few extra lying around, right?

Ratings:

           

Sculpt: 5 brains out of 5. The sculpts are my favorite part of this set, hands down.

Affordability: 4 brains out of 5. At $21.95 per box (if you can find it in a store or online and skip the shipping), that’s 61 cents a zombie. Pretty dang cheap by almost anyone’s standards. Worst case scenario within the continental United States and the most expensive shipping option on the manufacturer’s website: $30.20 (UPS Ground), 84 cents a zombie. Still a steal, especially if you don’t need a thousand zombies.

Value: 5 brains out of 5. Sure, I’ve seen cheaper, but at nowhere near this quality. You will love looking at them. You will love painting them. You will love not having to spend an entire paycheck for 3 dozen zombies.

Availability: 4 brains out of 5. This is actually a very high rating, as few miniatures have the benefit of widespread retail store availability. But these figures are new (2012), and are a current part of the manufacturer’s Dark Futures line, so you can get them all over the place online, usually for about the same price.

Pros: Really nice looking models, fairly easy to work with

Cons: No versatility of genre- there’s no hiding that these are designed to be modern urban/suburban civilian models only

 That's it for this month, folks. Tune in next month when I look the figures from Last Night on Earth Grave Weapons Figures Set.

Ali Alcatraz