Zombicide - Organizing Minis in the Trays & Distinguishing Bases

Jordan Peacock

New member
I know there was an official foam tray insert for the Kickstarter, but I've found that the vacu-formed plastic trays that came with the game work perfectly fine for storing my zombie horde for easy access. The trick is in getting the zombies BACK INTO the trays in orderly fashion when I'm done. The thought occurred to me to try THIS:

2012-11-18-zombicide-base-organization.jpg


Basically, I went down the row, and lettered the bases "A" through "H" on the bottoms. I only need to see this scheme when I'm putting the minis away, NOT when playing, so I figured it'd make sense to use the bottoms of the bases. Just to make things abundantly clear (in case a friend of mine is putting the figures away for me), I painted "A" on one side of the row and "H" on the other. Using this scheme, the Fatties end up all "D," for instance.

I've done something similar for the heroes, though of course I had to "write" in smaller letters with the brush. Fortunately, most of them have very short names! ("El Cholo" is probably the longest, and that I can put on two lines.)


Another tip: One problem we've run into in our games is that, at a glance, it's not so easy to pick out the runners from the walkers when there are so many zombies on the table, it's a big table, and we've got a big group. Sure, the runners have distinctive poses, but you might be surprised how little that pops out when you've got several zombies crammed into each square. I found a simple way to deal with this was that when I painted all my zombies, I gave them all "asphalt-grey" bases ... and then I painted yellow street lines on the bases of the zombies (as if these guys are running down the MIDDLE of the street). That splash of bright yellow amid the asphalt-grey of the horde really makes them stand out.

2012-09-27-zombicide-josh-the-thug-fb.jpg

For similar reasons, I've decorated the bases of the heroes once painting them (since I actually had trouble with a couple of players in distinguishing between player and zombie models across the table) -- basically by putting "clutter" on the bases, so that they further stand out from the "asphalt grey" dull bases of the horde.


It's a great game, and I've had friends borrowing it to play. Now that I've got it back, I'll have to get some friends together to play it again sometime soon before the holidays get too busy. :D I just wanted to share a couple of things I tried that might help to speed things along a little for those of you painting your miniatures.
 

Holmelund

New member
I found a simple way to deal with this was that when I painted all my zombies, I gave them all "asphalt-grey" bases ... and then I painted yellow street lines on the bases of the zombies (as if these guys are running down the MIDDLE of the street). That splash of bright yellow amid the asphalt-grey of the horde really makes them stand out.
.

Pics or it didnt happen. :)

Great idea with sorting btw and the painted hero looks cool as well. Plese share more pictures of your nicely painted set :)
 

Jordan Peacock

New member
Well, the problem is that right now my zombie horde is pretty roughly painted, so I don't have a bunch of pictures of the rank-and-file zombies yet (since they aren't much to look at). I mostly focused on detailing the survivors and the Abomination (my "star" zombie); for the zombies, I just splashed on some basic colors and gave them a rough wash as a rush job to get them ready for a convention. I'm slowly working my way through the figures to give them a bit more in the way of detailing.

However, by way of example, I first toyed with painting "street lines" on a base when I painted up "Goth Amy."
2012-08-22-zombicide-goth-amy-wip.jpg


It occurred to me after painting her that this scheme would actually work better for the runners/sprinters. (I.e., it was easy, visibly distinct, and didn't take long for me to roughly paint on the base -- a high priority when I have a bazillion zombies to paint, thanks to a friend of mine getting a set as well.)

Otherwise, here's what happens when there's no distinction in the bases, and the zombie horde is just a dirty grey. Can you spot the runners?
2012-10-27-zombicide-nick-last-stand.jpg


(This was an actual game "scene," except that right after "Nick" got overwhelmed, heroically holding off the Abomination and three converging hordes of zombies while the rest scampered off through a building to try to make a run for the last objective and then the exit in Scenario #1, we decided to take a snapshot of the sheer mass of zombies, with Nick placed on top. "Zombie crowd-surfing.")

Here's a picture of Nick on a better day:
2012-09-25-zombicide-nickwalker.jpg


And here's a picture of El Cholo; for added "papercraft" base decoration (quick shortcut), I filled up a sheet of paper in Photoshop with assorted images of newspapers, street signs, warning signs, biohazard symbols, "police tape," etc., and then printed off a sheet at 600 dpi. Thus, I could snip off bits and glue them down for some quick base details for street litter to help distinguish the heroes from the zombie hordes.
2012-09-24-zombicide-elcholo.jpg


And here's a hero WITHOUT base decoration. Oops. During our convention game, one guy kept thinking this miniature was a zombie for some reason and wanting to attack the "zombie" in that square. But then, maybe he just needed better glasses? In any case, I'm definitely going back to touch up the base a bit.
2012-09-24-zombicide-davethegeek.jpg


And, just to be totally different, here are some custom survivors I put together, using Reaper Miniatures Chronoscope "Townsfolk: Modern Children," and a bit of Apoxie Sculpt epoxy putty, plus some of those paper props.
2012-09-08-chronoscope-50042-townsfolk-children.jpg
 

Jordan Peacock

New member
Here's another of the painted heroes -- Phil the Cop. I won't pretend my painting skills are up to CoolMiniOrNot levels, but I still had fun decorating the base with the stop sign as a prop.

2012-09-29-zombicide-philthecop.jpg


The "stop sign" is cardstock (printed at 600 dpi), while the sign post is a wooden "craft matchstick" (I got a whole box of these "matchsticks" for craft projects, which work nicely for details like this).

I painted the rims of the hero bases in the colors of the original plastic, since at first I thought there was some sort of "color-coding" thing going on. (I painted the miniatures before actually playing the game.) I still left it that way, as it's one more point of difference to help in telling miniatures apart on a crowded board.
 
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