The Walking Dead – A tale of boot camps and laughter

I was never going to be able to replicate the beautiful tables we played on at the boot camp. So I decided to make what little I had as great as I could.

I found a couple of coaches in the local pound land that I was happy with scale wise. I hit one with a claw hammer a few times, sprayed it with model mates rusty red and some black paint to show the evidence of a fire at some point. The other coach got less brutal treatment.

I found some pound shop motor bikes that I thought would make an adequate barrier if parked up as a 3, rather than just being scatter terrain for show.

I made some simple pallets out of coffee stirrers.

I already had some trees that I created using the BoW Hobby Lab garden wire and coconut brush fronds technique.

The cars that came in the set are brilliant in my opinion. Great fun to paint up and distress.

This has been adequate to enjoy some great games.

I got a real bargain from Warlord Games. A 4 x 3 post apocalyptic vinyl battle mat heavily reduced. Only played one game so far but it looked really good.

I soon got offers to play the game at a gaming group i had just started with.

I wanted to ensure that people had a chance to enjoy the game with as little unpainted plastic on show as possible.

I did my best to get some half decent paint jobs done and I think this period and projects like this really helped me speed up my painting.

And I wanted to get Negan in the mix and wanted to try some free hand on his back.

I picked at relative random which miniatures I wished to paint first and decided to picture them in and around my painted tokens.

I was really happy with my Zombie with a tie-die shirt and the Michone base having a severed Zombie head on it.

I love the new game rating system.

It was pleasant to rattle through all the games I have or have played and decided that this game would be the first one that I reviewed.

See if you agree with my findings.

Can’t compliment enough…

November 2016 I went to the Beasts of War The Walking Dead All Out War boot camp and it changed my hobby life.

It was awesome.

I traveled on the train to BoW HQ with Jonathan (commanderkaiser) after landing in Belfast. Thank you Jonathan for making a great start to the boot camp (travel to foreign climbs for the first time can be stressful without pleasant company).

I got to meet Andy Zeck (a person I had admired for his Fallschirmjager painting project months before) and have kept in touch since.

My first or second game was with Andy and he had already painted some miniatures and they looked great.

I got to meet Gerry the Giant (who you probably know from lets plays and game play for Legion and The Walking Dead games). He was a pleasure to game and drink with and someone I would love to meet up with again. (Maybe something Saga or Gangs of Rome based could align our paths again, fingers crossed)

The 4Ground terrain was beautiful. I took a ton of photos. My phone automatically generated a video out of the pics. I changed the music and put the video on YouTube.

Check out the coverage of the event because the videos really do convey some of the great feeling being felt that weekend.

The Walking Dead Boot Camp – Friday

The Walking Dead Boot Camp – Saturday

The Walking Dead Boot Camp – Sunday

There was a participation game filmed “in the cage” on the Sunday. We all got a random character and Sandra got me to the final. Check out the tale of betrayal that saw me come second. 🙂
One of the best moments of the game was “Jim” taking out Negan with a long shot and sadly becoming a Walker buffet as a result.

The talking points that spread from table to table between games really showed to me that this was a great game, with plenty of replay-ability, being enjoyed by everyone there.

Thank you to the Beasts of War team, the 4Ground guys, Ronnie and Rob from Mantic, NakChak, Commodorrob, Mightyprawn and a host of other camp goers that made it a very special weekend.

I managed to paint up Abraham and a host of tokens while I was on the camp, which gave me the bug to get started on the rest.