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"Creatures of the Night!" Box Set

  • JTam

    A typical WGA box seems to be roughly five of one sprue, with that sprue having five to six bodies for approximately 30 human type figures.  Let's pretend we can get seven bodies on the sprue as there are not as many weapon and equipment options taking up room.

    Two zombie bodies, two wolf bodies, two ghouls bodies, one ghost/spectre/banshee thing body on the sprue.  Two bodies with different heads and arms can go a surprisingly long way.  If the legs and upper body are separate you get even more mileage. (Think about the beastmen in Blackstone Fortess).

    A box would let you build 10 zombies, 10 wolves, 10 ghouls, and 5 spirits.  Maybe one could throw some bats, a skull, and a tombstone on the sprue too.  Zombies wear rotten remnants of clothes, and ghouls have loin cloths or just present the whole fruit basket, either way the whole set could be pretty period agnostic.

     

  • M

    While these are definitely a good set of creatures to do sets for, I think that trying to cram them all into one set might reduce their desireability to buyers.especially those looking for mass battle stuff.

    Instead I'd narrow the focus a bit more.. you could include zombies and ghouls together easily, and I think 5 sprues each with 4 zombies and 2 ghouls (for 20 and 10) would go over well. Maybe toss in some rats and decorative bits like gravestones to fill space. It would also give you the kinds of numbers that most games give undead even in skirmish games.

    For wolves, you could do wolves and werewolves, with perhaps 3 wolves and 3 "biped wolf" werewolfs per sprue. (since wolves tend to be fairly low parts count) this would give you 15 or each. A good number for both skirmish and mass battle games.

    Ghosts are trickier.

  • JTam

    I was envisioning this set as one stop shopping for players of Silver Bayonet/Dungeon Crawler X/Skirmish Game Du Jour who need opposition forces. 

    Wouldn't be as useful for the building of regiments. no.

    Werewolves would also be cool.

    Like the idea of a couple stray rats on the sprue.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    I like where you're going on this.

    I suspect the bodies can be a little more interchangeable:  generally ragged or tattered clothes including shrouds and bandages, on more or less gaunt and crooked bodies, and a variety of heads with and withou fangs, pointed ears, bulging eyes, hair and fur, wounds and decay, deformities, mutilations and scars, skull-faces, masks, hoods, and whatever in different combinations, and a selecton of arms with grasping long-fingered hands, and assorted ghoulish weapons (knives, hatchets, femur bones... though to me also, weapons are certainly less important in a set of "generic" Classic Fantasy gothic monsters, and I'd rather sacrifice weapons for the best possible selection of heads and bodies in this sort of set!)

    "In inventing a new type of ghost, [M.R. James] has departed considerably from the conventional Gothic tradition; for where the older stock ghosts were pale and stately, and apprehended chiefly through the sense of sight, the average James ghost is lean, dwarfish, and hairy—a sluggish, hellish night-abomination midway betwixt beast and man—and usually touched before it is seen. Sometimes the spectre is of still more eccentric composition; a roll of flannel with spidery eyes, or an invisible entity which moulds itself in bedding and shews a face of crumpled linen...." - H.P. Lovecraft on M.R. James in the essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature"

    Whether any specific creatures built from such a kit be ghouls, vampires, ghosts, mummies, revenants, werewolves, scarecrows, and the like is up to the customer, and to the combination of heads and bodies, and the paint scheme....

    A couple of us have been tossing around the idea of an orc-head sprue (including heads with military hats from various eras) in another conversation, and I like the idea, and thought about including a variety of monster heads on the same sprue - that sort of crosses over with what I envision here, and as much as I like the idea of a dedicated sprue of "orc", vampire, ghoul, and wolf-man heads, I also like the idea of sacrificing the military hats and using that sprue space for a few matching bodies and arms for a more classic gothic-horror monster set.....

    Orcs, I say?  And what is an orc after all, but an evil faerie, cousin to the banshee, a haunter of ancient graves and tombs best avoided deep in the wildenesses on the fringes of civilization, savage and decayed representatives of long-buried and long-forgotten races of "wild men" and the ancestral barrow-tombs they had built before the arrival of younger, milder, more civilized folk.... By any name, the faerie are the bogeyman prototypes of the witches, werewolves, ogres, vampires, goblins, and ghouls of legend, and interchangeable with all those and more.

    Rather than separate boxes of copies of all the other guys' standard-issue zombies, ghouls, vampires, mummies, werewolves, and the like, I'd far rather see a single kit of something a little more vague, a little more general-purpose, a little less specialized: general-purpose bogeymen and spectres and ghouls in a broader sense, from which more specific monsters might be suggested based on the choice of parts if desired (including more exotic fare like wendigo, skin-walkers, bunyips, demons and deadites, etc.), or from which vaguer, less-well-defined, and more primal and unknown varieties of creatures of the night might be made - the thousand faces of the nameless children of the graves, the haunters of darkness, the things in the closets and under the beds:  they need no names nor introctions, because we've known them all, all along:  we've met just a few of the representatives of their kind every time the lights went out late at night and darkness and shadow settled in around, allowing only the dimmets of glimpses into the unknown and what lurks within....

  • BS Kitbasher

    Considering how many gamers want zombies, especially modernish zombies, I think they would be better as their own kit.  I love the idea of a monster squad kit that can fill out any castlevania needs, but I'm not sure it's financially practical.

  • William Redford

    As long as Wolfman has nards... I am in.

  • JTam

    @William Redford 

     

     

     

     

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  • Yronimos Whateley

    @BS Kitbasher - I think you're probably right about the modern zombie figures:  that's going to be a very specific niche, which can probably only be done one way.

    Fantasy and gothic horror games are an entirely different matter, though, and there are a number of such games that use undead hordes of various sorts.  Role-playing gamers and some wargames that run on kitchen-sink fantasy are not necessarily very picky about the "species" of undead:  those customers can run on rule-of-cool (rule-of-ghoul?) pretty easily, as long as they're close enough to what they are representing.  On the other hand, some other games can be really picky about specifying a difference between a mummy army vs. a zombie, ghoul, vampire, or skeleton army, and that's a different matter altogether.  A single Classic Fantasy gothic horror kit that can do all of those things for gamers who are doing pretty much any game other than zombie-apocalypse gaming would, I expect, have an audience.

    So, I think the zombie-apocalypse gamers and the fantasy and general horror gamers are probably two different markets, and the fantasy market is almost certainly the biggest of them all.

    Probably different markets - I might be the only one, but I would happily do zombie-apocalypse gaming with generic fantasy ghouls, ghosts, vampires, and other bogeymen any day.  Why not?

  • JTam

    A zombie miniature in the shreds of pants can pretty much work from 1000 to 2022.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Yes! 

    And the same could be said of a zombie in torn pants and the indistinct rags of a torn shirt, or the tatters of bandages, or a torn shroud, or even a ragged robe....

    And those sorts of indistinct rags and generic outfits would not look out of place on that zombie, or on the Lovecraftian ghoul in the original post, or on Lon Chaney's wolf-man:

    The only limit, really, is how closely we stick to the territory of "The only proper zombie wears modern tennis shoes and designer jeans-and-t-shirt, or a suit-and-tie!"  The simpler, less specific rags can cover a lot of ground up to and including the modern era, while the specifically and explicitly modern outfits pin the zombies to a very specific time and even place!

    (And the great thing is that the heads of such a kit, at least, swap nicely onto the uniformed bodies of historical soldiers or partisans or civilians of any era, to make zombie, vampire, ghoul, or wolf-man soldiers or the like... and no doubt also many zombie arms - especially any in torn sleeves, but even bare arms - would swap just as well!  Who wouldn't enjoy leading a squad of brave soldiers against a horde of nazi zombies???)

  • JTam

    @Yronimos Whateley 

    Yup.  Good point.  Is the above a dead Saxon, 1930s farmer, or 21st century fashion reject?

     

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Exactly - and with a boxed set of this sort of undead?  Sign me up, for any era, especially with a good variety of different heads to customize it with! :)

    And speaking of heads, I really like the face on that particular one:  it could be a mindless, shuffling zombie... but do I detect more than a hint of malevolent, monstrous glee and intelligence in that grin?  I think I do, and that's even better, to me!  :)

     

  • BVD

    @JTam

    Nah, Reaper, Mantic, Northstar and several others have the “all in one package” covered for this.

    Plus most of those monsters done the way your suggesting already have a proven track record of selling separate sets just fine, (I even kind of wonder why your adding ghouls since Mantic’s are pretty dang good sculpting wise, dress exactly the same as what you describe,  already scale well with most 28mm Nappy figures, and can actually be bought in an all in one package with other undead on Northstar's eshop last I checked).

    Likewise the few subjects that you mentioned that don’t really have their own sets probably could support one set on their own at least or in some cases 1 to 2 sets with upgrade sprues for the historical sets.

    Wolves without question, the only issue is should they be more realistically sized, monster sized or a combination thereof somewhat like the spiders.  

    Werewolves along with parts for different levels of transformation would probably sell well not just for horror gaming but also for alternative beastmen for things like Oathmark.  

    Now ghosts, Banshees, specters, spirits, etc. might be a bit of a disappointment as a one set subject for some. Ie separate male and female specter/spook sprues might actually be a good idea customization wise since it is a broad subject with a lot you can do. But if most people are okay with flying bedsheets with different head swaps you can do it in one box, though I wouldn't mind seeing some Asian (maybe Chinese or Japanese) fantasy elements thrown in as well if done as two kits, heck might even get me to buy them even though ghost are really low on my interests.    

    @Yronimos Whateley 

    Heck with the zombies that can sell separate male and female boxes/sprues right there by itself easy, particularly for modern (in fact it is probably the one thing for modern style games that is guaranteed to sell plastic boxes like that since back in the 2010’s according to the marketing guy WGF had supervising their forum the zombie Vixens was one of the top sellers for them).

    That said I think the real way to view plastic zombie sets though isn’t just as sets unto themselves for an intended genre  but also as way to convert/upgrade your other sets to the undead horde for the setting your actually wanting to play, and yeah I think there is way to do them as 2 (male/female) cross genre kits. After all they are basically just walking human corpses, should be kitbashable.

     Just put them in really ragged plain clothes for the main torso/bodies (ie, plain pants and shirt/tunics with rips and tares for the males, for the females really ragged dresses/tunics). Then have bare, ripped, short and long sleeved options for the arms (no weapons as they tend to date things) and keep the sleeves simple (no buttons, stitching, armor, etc.) that way you can reuse them for a lot of other kits. As to heads, focus on the undead aspect and keep them bare.

    Do them this way (plain, ragged and ripped clothing) in simple walking shambler poses and you can probably use them for most eras without people bulking in disbelief, particularly if you use the extra arms and heads on era appropriate bodies.

     Also you do want both genders on separate sprues so you can take the bits and make more zombies out of things like female Partisan sets for different historical settings and not have  the pop-eye the sailorman syndrome undead.

    Now the way I would sell these as a multi-use kit is you have a pic or 2 of kit bashes of the arms and heads on other WA bodies on the back of the box (I recommend the WW2 Partisans, 95th Riflemen, if its out something modern and maybe either the Conquistadors or the late Romans for the males, unless there is a female partsian set out it is not as important with the females) and mention its compatable with other WA products.

     

     

  • JTam

    @Brian Van De Walker 

    "Nah" as in "no" not needed?  Or is Nah a miniatures manufacturer?

    Regardless, good info, Thanks.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    "Zombie" head swaps onto uniformed bodies is a project I recently started some work on, for some DOOM/Quake-themed figures, in the demonically-possessed "zombie" troopers.  Tricky part was finding the right heads for the project! 

    Most undead sets out there are dreadfully specific:  zombies look a very specific way, ghouls look a very different specific way, and so on, with not much variety between those specific figures.

    Not much freedom or imagination to cook up anything off the beaten track.

    But, I suppose a lot depends on what customers will buy, and what fits Wargames Atlantic's current business model:

    WA's very specific skeletons were an early project, and presumably one that has a pretty reliable audience.  More of those specific, focused, standardized products will surely find the same reliable customer base:  traditional fantasy zombies and whatnot.

    On the other hand, since then, WA has dabbled in some different sorts of projects, with some very niche products apparently doing really well:  the halflings, for example.  And even more recently, we're seeing more variety and flexibility being built into WA kits, allowing one kit to cover multiple subjects.  These niche and multi-purpose kits interest me far more than the more specific kits, but do they appeal to eveyone, or are they appropriate for every project?

    On the gripping hand, Wargames Atlantic is poised to begin producing books of gaming rules and so on, giving them the ability to put their products into their own context, and giving them the freedom to produce kits that are tied less to external games, and aimed more at their own settings and visions for e.g. undead:  there might be room there for something unique to the WA "Classic Fantasy" or "Death Fields" setting, which nobody else is doing and nobody has seen before, which might be as broad or specific as WA needs it to be.

    It might be useful at this point to run a survey and see who the undead customer base really are.  Zombie Apocalypse type gamers are going to be looking for a different product from those who are looking for inexpensive alternatives to GW products, which in turn is different from RPG gamers, or sci-fi gamers looking for unusual bits to build aliens from, or from an upcoming generation of WA gamers....

    It might be possible to please the top two or three of those markets with the same kit (though it's perhaps more likely that WA might have to pick one, and ask themselves whether additional kits can be be profiably targeted at the rest....)

    In any case, I would take novelty, flexibility and variety over copies of the specific boxed sets produced by the other guys, any day.

     

  • William Ings

    Maybe down the line when they have expanded the range a bit they can release a variety box. One or two of each of a few different sprues. 

    Somthing like

    - 2 goblins

    - 2 spiders

    - 1 troll

    It would probably go over well with RPG and skirmish players.

  • BVD

    @JTam

    In case you’re not being sarcastic, Nah as in a bundle every "children of night" critter on one to two sprues is not really needed as there are plenty of bundle options for undead out on the market like that already  even in plastic (if there is a mini company by the name Nah news to me and I want to see thier webstore🤣).

    Also it is not exactly the optimal multipart formula if you know what I mean since normally I would think you want each mini in your kit to come out as a unique interpretation of the subject once built (ie each individual undead should look different from its fellow undead of that class/type when we are talking multipart kits), which is not likely to happen on a multi subject sprue normally unless it is just a headswap difference.   

    I think WA should just do the things you mentioned as separate sets since they all either already have proven track records as set subjects or very likely would work as sets on their own, maybe sell them by the sprue as well or have a special sprue bundles after they are all made.

  • RA

    @William Ings This would be insta buy from me (from local shop tho).

  • IS

    I think you should think about a box of 30 strait zombies. Zombies are always one of those things in gaming that you need a lot of.

    #1- I've never seen a Necromunda campaign go down where at some point a lot of zombies arn't required. Either a Scavvy gang looted your territory and is throwing 100 zombies at you with the looted proceeds (usually the highlight of the whole campaign) or every other card in the purge scenerio has a D6 worth of zombies.

    #2- Just about every D&D campign has a zombie outbreak at one point or another. Necromancers will be necromancers. 

    #3- 40K can always use a swarm zombies in any Nurgle Army or that pure cultist army of legend.

    #4- Cheep Zombies make Warhammer Fantasy Undead armies almost as threatening as Skaven. 

    #5- Right now the zombie market looks slim, GW's zombie selection is over scupted and expensive. Other zombies are too styleized and over weaponized. Just give me a zombie I can shoot in the head with a shotgun or slice with katana. I don't need no zombie getting an associate's degree in the dark arts or monopolizing the dance floor on goth night at the club.

    If you folks deem it fitting to make them interchangable as Ghouls, that isnt a problme with me. You folks are pros at head swaps and some clawy claw altenative arms might be all you need to make the swap fly. Genreally zombies with weapons can feel redundant but I don't begrudge some sickles, crowbars, or machetes. A kris dagger would make my day as well.  

    In reality there are a hundred settings and minature lines that zombies would compliment. Zombies for the win comrades.

  • Grumpy Gnome

    Zombies seem like a no brainer to me, pardon the pun. 

    Yes, there are other zombies out there but a zombie kit from WA which would be sure to scale correctly with their other kits would be brilliant for kitbashing for all those uses@INSURGENT Skirmisher has pointed out. 

    Look at how crazily well the current CMON Marvel Zombies Kickstarter is doing. Over 3 million dollars in 24 hours. Some folks say the zombie market is saturated. In my opinion Vikings, pirates and zombies always sell... be it movies, tv shows, Larp and video gaming as well as tabletop gaming.

    Home of the Grumpy Gnome

    https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/

  • IS

    And there is no reason to not make as many as half of those zombies women. Most zombies come from the civilian population. But please don't get styalized on any of the clothing. Keep it neutral rags so the zombies are interchangable from fantasy, to modern, to future.

  • RI

    Zombies are a staple of fantasy and I wouldn't be surprised to see them. My problems though are:

    - Many other maufacturers make excellent zombies.
    - People intent on zombies might just want dozens of zombies, without being interested in ghouls/wolves/other stuff.

    In my opinion, the best thing would be to dedicate a kit solely to zombies, but keep them separate from a "creatures of the night" box.

    Wargames Atlantic is working on a "Farm Animals" kit and I imagine a "creatures of the night" kit would be the fantasy/dark equivalent, so with wolves, snakes, werewolves, bats, bears (maybe undead), banshees, scary insects, etc...

  • Grumpy Gnome

    @Riccardo Improta An updated version of the old GW vermin sprue?GW vermin sprue

    Home of the Grumpy Gnome

    https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/

  • JTam

    @Grumpy Gnome 

    Yes!

  • RI

    @Grumpy Gnome Yes,! That's exactly what I would imagine from a "creatures of the night" kit. I think it could be useful for skirmish wargames (something along the line of rangers of shadow deep) or dungeon masters that want to have some simple generic enemies.

  • JTam

    @INSURGENT Skirmisher 

    You make me wish I had picked my forum name better.

  • BS

    a zombie kit from WA which would be sure to scale correctly with their other kits would be brilliant for kitbashing

     

    I like the idea of zombies as an upgrade/conversion kit, but could it fit all other kits? I thought Death Fields (and Fantasy?) were more 'heroic' than the historicals, so something that is correctly scaled for one won't quite fit the other.

  • JTam

    @Ben Saunders 

    I've seen some pictures of Death Fields parts mixed with WW2 French somewhere.  The differences weren't obnoxious.  Maybe a conversion kit could cut the difference between the ranges in size.

  • BVD

    @INSURGENT Skirmisher

    Nah, WA could make them in 2 gender separate sets (or at least sprues) and should due to proportions since we are mostly talking historical scale fantasy sets here.   And before you even ask, they actually would sell this way.

    @Ben Saunders They are, but not by so much though it is enough where having a Death Fields set is needed.

    A couple of good historical scale gender separate sprues kits of zombies with plain ripped cloths and no weapons would probably cover zombies for everything for most folks and make different eras/sprues of  civilian partisan kits to kitbash with them more sellable for people wanting setting flavor added to their undead. (Though a  Zombification upgrade sprue for the Cannon Fodder, Space Dwarfs, and Bull Dogs might be fun).

     

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  • Yronimos Whateley

    Seems to me like a cohesive Creatures of the Night set with flexible, interchangeable bits, in a style that hasn't already been beaten to death by all the other manufacturers making generic zombies, is more of a winner for me than either a kit of more of the same, or a box of mini-kits for making a collection of specific monsters.  So for that, I'll stand by a generic "creatures of the night" set that can build a box full of generic zombies, but can do a lot more besides thanks to a good variety of non-zombie head and arm bits in addition to zombie bits, and some nondescript bodies to add them to.  A "formorian" faction, if you will.

    On the other hand, it's sounding like some of the replies above are touching on what would effectively be a zombie "army builder" set with lots of standard-issue zombies that emphasize numbers and generic zombieness over versatility, which might be an advantage over the sets that other companies are making:  rather than a wide variety of fiddly bits, instead go with sprues of simple standard-issue shambling zombie bodies with the arms sculpted on the bodies, and a minimal selection of generic zombie heads to glue on top in different configurations.  Not a lot of variety in the boies, perhaps, but how much variety do you need in generic zombie poses, anyway?  And, after all, zombie factions by their nature are more of a quantity-vs-quality prospect!  Nobody cares generally about individual zombie personalities, they just need a bunch of dead guys to hack up with machetes, chainsaws, and boomsticks!  And at this point there are so many zombie options out there, that "hero zombies" (zombies who do have a little backstory and "personality") are easy to come by from Reaper or any of the other hundreds of mini manufacturers out there.  For many zombie gamers, a source of cheap, quick-and-dirty, generic, no-frills zombies is what is needed and desired.  ZOMBIE ARMY BUILDER!

    Those old GW vermin sprues were cool, it would be nice to see a Wargames Atlantic style equivalent out there - some "gremlin" type horde critters, evil fairies/sprites, spiders like the smaller ones from the Giant Spider kit, alien bugs, snakes, snails....  One large frame with three or so versions/poses of each type of critter who makes the vermin roster, along with scenic bits like toadstools, eggs/nests, or meat-eating plants, with four or so frames per box, and you've got a great handful of vermin swarms and stuff to decorate bases or dioramas with.  Add addiitonal boxes as needed, if you need to field say, hundreds of gremlins!  I think that's a bit different from the humanoid monsters mentioned in the original post, and scratches a different gaming itch, but it's one that does touch on very similar horror territory to the other ghosts, ghouls, and hobgoblins, and generic zombie hordes, being touched on in the discussion.

    And then, one might suggest a Gothic Horror Animal set as well, for a collection of fairly earthly but creepy wolves, rats, bats, angry cats, rabid dogs, ravens, vultures, and the like... I'm probably not the only fantasy gamer around who could use some simple, basic, normal wolf packs, familiars, and that sort of thing, in a gaming industry that seems to favor gigantic dire wolves and more exotic monsters instead!

  • BVD

    @Yronimos Whateley

    I don't know "cohesive Creatures of the Night set with flexible, interchangeable bits",  sounds a lot like it could be a box of different sprues for making a collection of specific monsters that happen to be mixable to me and it would likely be the smart way to design it.

    I would argue that with most monsters, a sprue with a signal focused racial subject is in general a more versatile set idea over a sprue that is trying to cram everything on it. Take the old GW vermin sprue, while it does get a lot covered, it’s also all solid pose in part because it has to be to cover all those body types which is fine for a small wild animal/familiar/terrain type sprue your using to add flavor to your game board or bases in limited amounts but that can be a bit repetitive for a warband box which is what we are really talking about here.

    Now that said I can see ghouls and Zombies being on the same sprue (add a crouch pose and you’re essentially done with ghouls). I don’t think it’s as doable for werewolves and ghostly spirits though(too many stereotypical body differences) and it’s really shouldn’t be done that way for wolves which frankly should have their own box by now from someone since they are common encounter in RPGs and skirmish games. 

    As to a Zombie Army Builder, it would sell but so would an upgrade sprue or two with hatless undead heads and weaponless undead arms to convert civilian partisans and military sets of the historical scale into Zombies.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    A lot depends on how close to modern stereotypes you go, which seems to be what standard kitchen-sink fantasy is running on:  exaggerations of exaggerations of exaggerations of templates set many decades ago in a couple classic movies.

    For example, this guy is one of the earlier depictions of a werewolf, but he's just as easily a ghoul/zombie, an ogre, a slasher, or a Hills Have Eyes style cannibal hillbilly in modern terms, while being not quite any of those things:

    He doesn't have silver bullets or full moons, and he doesn't have An American Werewolf in London style special effects.  What he does have is a roughly human body, twisted somewhat into bestial form, wearing rags, which is a great place to start for all sorts of these stock creatures of the night - maybe not quite as gaunt as he could be for general-pupose hungry dead use as well, but we've got a solid enough foundation there....  To say that he has a roughly human face to go with that body doesn't really do justice to what we really have here:  yes, that's a human face, but a human face which has fallen far from humanity, replaced with a bloodthirsty madness.  You can do a lot with five human heads of that sort, on gaunt, ragged bodies, or on Cannon Fodder bodies, or Dark Age Irish or Late Roman bodies....  The same gaunt, ragged body with a Max Schreck style Nosferatu or ghoul head, or wolfman head, or rotten zombie/skull head, or tormented ghost-face works just as effectively, and all of the above can be mixed-and-matched into the same fomorian horde of creatures of the night....

     

    The questions, I think, are....

    Do we keep playing on the same monster cliches everyone else has been doing, only more so, or stop copying D&D, Warcraft, Warhammer, and Hollywood, and go back to the source material a bit?

    Can the market even handle going back to the source material anymore? 

    After all, it's been such a long time since ghosts, ogres, witches, goblins, elves, fairies, ghouls, vampires, and werewolves split off of the original creature-of-the-night templates, I'm not sure modern gaming can shake free of what these creatures are 'supposed' to look like, based on maybe a century in some cases of the popular culture versions.

    But, I think a back-to-basics approach is one whose time has come:  when flipping through some new "old school renaissance" retro-RPG books, the art is full of creatures that don't fall into easily-identified fantasy cliches, and I might be in a pulp horror "echo-chamber", but it seems to me that the back-to-basics approach has started catching on more and more in horror gaming, too.  I think some gamers, at least, are ready to go back to the drawing board, where a fresh, new generation of monsters can be drawn from.

    I think the chief hold-outs here might be zombie-apocalypse gaming, post-TSR D&D/Pathfinder, and GW's Warhammer, and I might be imagining things, but the fortunes of some of these holdouts might be changing, and no longer need to hold as much sway over how things are "supposed to look/work/act/be" than they once had....

    For zombie-apocalypse gaming, I suspect a 60-figure Modern Zombie Army Builder solution that supplies more stock modern zombie bodies and fewer heads and arms than a typical WGA set would contain (10 small sprues, each with six shambling bodies-with-attached-arms and 12 heads), to be more valuable to zombie apocalypse gamers than something like, say, a 30-figure French Infantry (1914-1940) style set, except with zombies that have been fudged to work in both fantasy and modern zombie games, and given more head and arm options than the subject really demands (6 or more sprues, 5 posed bodies each, with multiple separate arm options and dozens of heads, with perhaps some extra half-sprues with additional options....)

    Kitchen-sink Classic Fantasy gamers, I think, are in a very different situation from zombie apocalypse gamers, and could better make use of a less specific Classic Fantasy set.

    I THINK you could probably make a one-size-fits-all generic zombie set that would work for both kitchen-sink fantasy gamers and modern zombie apocalypse gamers, but I think doing so would demand so many compromises, it wouldn't make anyone particularly happy.  And, I THINK you could make a fantasy zombie-only kit that would be identical to the ones being made by everyone else, which would make anyone building a fantasy zombie apocalypse happy, but not much of anyone else, with or without a separate modern zombie apocalypse set.

     

    But, for best results, I'm really thinking the modern zombie apocalypse stuff might best be kept separate from Classic Fantasy, probably as an Army Builder set, while classic fantasy might best served by favoring variety of fantasy monsters that could be built and used in other settings, over the number of standard-issue zombie apocalypse zombies that could be from setting-agnostic parts....

    And I don't think there's any reason that parts from a Modern Zombie Army Builder set and a Classic Fantasy Creatures of the Night couldn't be interchangeable with each other!  There's no reason that a carefully-designed Modern Zombie Army Builder couldn't work just as well in a fantasy setting to build a fantasy zombie horde, or an equally carefully designed Classic Fantasy Creatures of the Night couldn't be used to add a little variety to a modern zombie horde, or that heads coldn't be swapped from one kit to the other, or heads from both used to convert historical figures or Death Fields figures into undead.  The two kits would simply serve very different niches, by design:  fielding large numbers of generic shambling zombies on one hand, vs. a smaller assortment of more customizable ravening undead/fomorian bogeymen on the other....

     

    As for a zombie-head sprue for converting other figures, I'm not necessarily opposed to such a thing, but the more I think of it, the more I'm beginning to think that the target audience for such a thing would be limited:  modern zombie apocalypse gamers would, I think, be more invested in putting a load of generic modern zombies on the table, and an Army Builder would provide them all the zombies needed (as many as 60!) to do that, with lots of extra heads to stick onto soldier bodies, for example, for zombie soldiers.  I'm not sure they'd be interested in a sprue of heads without bodies for that purpose (but I'm willing to be surprised if I'm judging their market wrong!)  

    Meanwhile, fantasy gamers would be in a similar boat:  they could kitbash spare zombie heads onto the bodies of Dark Age warriors or knights or whatever, but could always find uses for creatures-of-the-night bodies in rags, too, while most would be wanting complete zombie bodies to build from.

    So, I'd be surprised if a zombie accessory sprue would have much demand.  I'd buy a couple, but my tastes are possibly a bit odd compared to the larger zombie customer demographics!

  • JTam

    Half realized:

    https://blog.untilsomebodylosesaneye.net/2022/10/mean-little-critters.html?m=1

    Seems kind of pricey at $30 for two sprues?

  • MD

    @JTam 

    Someone wants a Blood Bowl team... 😉

    Semi-seriously... the Necromantic and Shambling undead Blood Bowl teams aren't *massively* overpriced (14 figures plus some accessories for about US$50). Most of them have head or face options and are nice sculpts.

  • BVD

    @JTam I think kind of pricey is what you would get with that idea (particularly right now given current events), I mean its not something one would buy armies of normally, it really is more of "add fun terrian to the table" idea.

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  • Grumpy Gnome

    @JTam  Mantic tends to be expensive unless you get lucky and find some on sale or second hand on eBay. That looks like a neat sprue but too spendy for me. 

    Home of the Grumpy Gnome

    https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/

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  • BVD

    @Grumpy Gnome Actually it depends more on what you buy and where,  compared to GW they are rather cheap.

    Edite: or they where at least, wow I am guessing England needs some postal reforms.

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  • Grumpy Gnome

    @Brian Van De Walker  When I think of inexpensive, I think of less than a Euro/Dollar a figure, depending of course on the quality of the figures. This Mantic offering is not a bad price per figure I suppose but the aesthetics of the actual figures are not really grabbing me. I have plenty of Mantic scatter terrain... but all bought either on sale or second hand.

    Home of the Grumpy Gnome

    https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/

  • JTam

    Thirty dollars for 22 human sized miniatures wouldn't be too bad.  But these are one piece bugs and birds and such.

  • PL

    Grumpy Gnome is right. He talks about what you call "common sense" (in French, we say GOOD sense, "bon sens"), as the question of the price of things risks to become more and more important...

    Due to rising prices, I now have to choose between buying a "baguette" (250g of bread) or a miniature. In the last 30 years (1992-2022), the price of a "baguette" has exactly doubled (from 0,5 to 1€) in France.

    A historical good quality mini is about 1€ too (foot soldier : Perry, Victrix, Fireforge, Warlord). I find that's a good basic price, fair and honest... In my daily life, I can buy both a "baguette" (necessity) and a mini (pleasure) for 2€ ! That's OK for me, life is good.

    A GW's basic mini is now around 4-5€ (five days of bread !) : I volountarily stopped buying from them (that's a kind of boycott : really outrageous prices, unfair politics). Nothing to add.

    A mini from WA costs less or more 1,5€ each. It's a good average price, no problem for me. Miniatures are not a matter of life and death, and there are hobbies that cost little, like hiking in the mountains.

    Everyone has their point of view, but personally, I only buy things that I really like, at reasonable prices. If the "creatures of the night" are interesting (aesthetic AND price), I will make my choices.

     

  • JTam

    @Brian Van De Walker 

    How many boxes of one particular WGA Box do you think the average customer buys? 

    I doubt many buy more than one or two particular boxes, (with the exception of some Deathfields sets.)  Saga or Bolt Action, one or two boxes will do you.  Skirmish games are king right now.

  • BVD

    @JTam Depends, but I think if we are talking actual gamers I would say its really around 2+ on average (skirmish maybe king but a lot of people build shelf armies that go beyond one box lists, not mention other factors).

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