Left4Dead Collection: Clean Up

 I do not know if this post will lead anywhere in terms of projects or painting in the near future, but since this is my blog, I get to post whatever I want. So through Youtube's recommendations I was sucked back into Left4Dead; For those not in the know, it is a cooperative horde shooter from the late 00's/early 10's which massively influenced the genre. In any case, being sucked back into that world I remembered I did buy a bunch of Zclipz miniatures a few years back.

Studio Miniatures produced a ton of 'inspired' miniatures for the zombie apocalypse under their Zclipz line. Their offering included survivors based on many media franchises, such as The Walking Dead(both show and comics), The Strain and notably Left4Dead. Sometime in 2021 or 2022 I bought a handful of Blisters in a Berlin Tabletop store, above you can see the horde of zombies resulting from that purchase. Those are just standard zombies though; I remember seeing the Left4Dead special infected and immediately grabbing them. 

Please ignore the poor photo quality, I did not want to break out my photo set up for these kind of photos. In any case, here you can see what I meant with 'inspired'. These are roughly analogous with the special infected from Left4Dead, but they are not quite there. They are incredibly uncanny in that regard, but honestly that is the charm of it. I spent part of today assembling and basing these guys, especially making a custom 40mm base for the tank. All of these originally came on those lipped 32mm bases, but I was never a fan of them. Instead I popped them on the classic bevelled GW slotta bases; Though I did change some of the basing sizes. The Spitter, Hunter, Jockey, Witch and Smoker all work perfectly fine on 25mm bases. The Charger and Boomer needed some bigger bases to match their general silhouette, 32mm for them. Now you might be wondering why the Witch ended up with a 25mm base since she is such a threat, simply put my basing was primarily inspired by size and by all means the Witch is not very big.

Lastly is the tank, THE boss zombie of LEft4Dead. I decided to give him an even bigger 40mm base. I had to carefully cut a slot into that to make him sit nice and tight on it. The Tank also was the only model that was more than a single piece. His arm had an unusually obtuse joint and I had to hunt down studio photos to figure out how it was posed. In the end I took some sturdy paper clip to pin his arm into place. That still left quite the unsightly gap which I filled up with a mix of grey putty and silver Miliput. I also practiced more sculpting by attempting to accentuate the muscles and making the connection seem more fitting. The photo sadly obscures all of the sculpting, but I imagine once he is painted it will show more obviously. I also did some additional sculpting on the Smoker; His tongue looks pathetically small, so I sculpted over it, made it thicker and elongated it slightly. The rest of the group seems mostly fine, but I might try and sculpt an acid puddle as a marker for the Spitter and a small one on her base.

Last but not least are some survivors to fight the not-so-undead hordes. These were not part of that initial purchase in 2022; I acquired them a few months ago alongside all the other survivors 'inspired' by Left4Dead. Here we have the line up from Left4Dead 2: Coach, Rochelle, Ellis and Nick. There is also a cheeky Bill from the first game, but unlike the rest he is a Hasslefree Miniatures sculpt, rather than from the Zclipz range. There is another set of these characters with the weapons switched; This set has Coach and Nick with melee weapons while Ellis and Rochelle have guns; The second set would have the weapons the other way around. I also have two sets with the same idea for the Left4Dead 1 survivors Bill, Francis, Zoey and Lewis. 

Sadly Studio Miniatures went out of business not so long ago and thus most of their ranges are now incredibly hard to come by. I do know of two stores that still have some leftover stock, but even that is quickly dwindling, so if you want some Left4Dead survivors, then quick! In any case, thank you for indulging me with this bizarre detour; As said in the beginning I doubt I will really delve into this project any time soon, but if I do I was considering writing a rules mod for All Out War and play with these miniatures. Til next time!

Correction: I just found out the models are still being sold by Hayland Terrains, PRAISE BE!