Zombie of the Month: Zomblins!

   Happy St. Patrick’s Day from LXG! You didn’t really think I wouldn’t give you something special for St. Paddy’s day, did you? After all, between Army Painter’s lovely paint color "Necrotic Flesh", and a theory circulating around lately that zombie blood is green, the color is just so zombie friendly that I couldn’t pass up the chance to give you something thematic. No, I did not find any zombie leprechauns (yet), but I found the next best thing. And so, without further ado, I give you…

Zombie of the Month – March 2014 – ZOMBLINS! – by Titan Forge

What’s so great about these Zombies? They’re zombies! They’re goblins! They’re Zomblins! What could be better than taking two of the ugliest creatures ever devised by the mind of man and SMASHing them together into one fantastically hideous creation!

 

These beauties were designed for Titan Forge’s Gravehaunt Hills collection. For some reason, they don’t show on the Gravehaunt Hills page, but they do sell them on their site. You have to use the search tool to find them. So, I’m not sure what’s going on with their website. I heard rumors that they were planning to expand the Gravehaunt Hills line, so maybe the website is out of sync right now. But they do have some fun stuff on there, like these guys!

Onto the basics:
Scale- These guys are 28mm scale, which means they are a whopping 18-23 mm high, depending on what’s sprouting out of their heads.

Genre- Period Fantasy… unless you know some other genre that would have undead goblins. If you play modern but really want some zomblins, maybe you could make them into little Trick-or-Treaters. The heads are big enough that they could be masks.

Material-Resin, not that material has a big impact on stunted little undead munchkins. There’s really nothing to break off, and if it did, would you notice?
Parts ‘N’ Bits-
The set doesn’t come with any extra anything, but see bases below…

Assembly- The figures themselves come fully assembled, although they are not pre-attached to their bases (which is good, because that would have made painting them a female dog. Besides, this way you can choose to put them on different bases if the ones they come with are not what you need.)

Bases-
The bases the set comes with are these gorgeous, sculpted, beveled, 20 mm square bases. If you don’t play on square bases, that doesn’t help you much, but honestly, given the price of the blister pack, you’re kinda getting them for free, and they’re beautiful, so don’t complain.

Ratings:

Sculpt- 4 brains out of 5- I’m afraid judging the sculpt on these figures is quite a matter of taste. The sculpting style is somewhat gawkish, but, you know, they’re zomblins. What other sculpting style would you use? At any rate, the sculpts feature incredibly deep cuts, which will have you cussing when you are trying to lay down your base coats, but praising the sculptor when you get to the wash and dry brush stage. These babies hold a wash beautifully, and virtually dry brush themselves. And that includes the sculpting on the bases, as well. Very easy to get a good finished look on these figures.

Affordability- 3 brains out of 5- The price of the pack itself is $9.31. Unless you are ordering it with other things, you’ll have to factor in another $8 for shipping. Of course, this is all unless you find someone selling an old pack on Ebay, in which case anything goes. At any rate, you can count on the price per zomblin being somewhere from one and a half to three and a half dollars. Not bad at all, but not a price point at which you want to build a thousand zombie horde (of course, at that point, the shipping would be free, but with only 5 preassembled figures it wouldn’t say much for variety.)

Value- 4 brains out of 5- With a wholly acceptable price point, a viable (if imaginative) excuse to field them for anything but some futuristic genres, included sculpted bases, and some really creative sculpts (one guy has mushrooms growing out of him, for crying out loud), these are definitely worth picking up just for fun. I think the situation in which more than one pack would be useful is a rare one, but that’s no reason not to get some. They are entertaining to paint and to look at, and it’s just fun to have an excuse to blurt out "Zomblins!" once in a while.

Availability- 3 brains out of 5- You can buy them directly from Titan Forge’s website (if you know where to look for them), but I really haven’t seen any third-party vendors sell them, even online. Obviously, there will always be some floating around on Ebay and the like, but they are not swarming the internet the way zombies should. Still, as long as Titan Forge doesn’t vanish, you’ll probably be able to get some.
　

Pros: ZOMBLINS!!! See, isn’t it fun to say? Like I said, a lot of fun going on in the sculpts, and they come with some really nice bases, even if you just use them when you want to put your little ones on display. Basically, good, unclean, all-around fun.

Cons:
Not really something you are likely to have a specific need for, nor likely something to build an army, game, or anything else around.