Plasticville O Scale Buildings with 28mm Gaming

For any table top game to work, you have to have terrain that works. I am a stickler for scale, I want things to look perfect and to look as realistic as possible. I enjoy looking for and creating terrain and miniatures that work. For zombie wargaming there are lots of options. Some of the best I have seen after searching a lot are (in no particular order);

1. Printed Terrain; My favourites for printable terrain are Stoelzel's Structures and World Works Games. Print onto paper, glue to foam board and cut and construct. Each building takes me 8 hours or so. For this reason I have created 2 and a half.

2. Plasticville Buildings; A lot of cheap plastic "O Scale" railroad buildings will work, but Plasticville works especially well because it is slightly underscaled. It was intended to be 1:64 with 1:48 windows and doors (according to Wikipedia at least). I find that even small buildings can look overly large on the table. Either way, I love these buildings, and they may be my new favourite way to create modern buildings. On that note, there is a new Fallout miniatures game coming I may play and be creating scenery for. My new "go to" is Plasticville. If you buy used lots on Ebay they are very cheap. I just purchased 7 houses, 1 garage, 1 shed, 3 stores, 1 garage and an apartment building for about $82. If you want interiors (which I do), plasticard is your best option. They do of course need to be painted. I am toying with the ideas of using printable interiors on cardstock. Still working on it. At this point this seems like the best option for cheap, labour free buildings. You can get bulk amounts of furniture on eBay for fairly cheap too. I estimate that for 30 to 40 bucks I will have all of my buildings furnished. At the bottom of this section you can see some of the furniture I'm talking about.

3. 28mm Building Manufacturers; Sarissa, and I'm sure dozens of others. They vary in price but work very well too. These take a lot to create overall, but usually look awesome. For price and effort though, I tend not to get these ones very often.

The Walking Dead All Out War Miniatures Game Review

I got the Walking Dead Miniatures game for Christmas as well as the scenery pack. Here is a review of the game.

Here is the situation after several turns. We have found most of the loot markers, and I have shot and killed Carl. Rick is off to the left about to take some shots at my group leader. Rick has great stats, so I was trying to get a gun for each of my 3 players before I took him on. We have cleared the board of zombies, but there is a car alarm going off from the truck with a marker.

Here you can see each character card and the items they have, as well as the threat tracker (the round circle with the pointer). As the game progresses zombies spawn at an increasingly fast rate. 

The player playing as Rick and Carl also had this guy with his hand up. He tried to attack the leader of my gang, but did not do enough to take him out.

In the next turn or two my leader killed the guy with his hand up, and both me and the other player drew more zombies in our event cards. Plus both dead characters came back as zombies. I had hoped to have a gunfight with Rick, but now there are 6 zombies between us with more coming. In the next turn or two, my characters just moved to the edge of the board evading the zombies.

Overall impressions of "The Walking Dead: All Out War"

Fantastic miniatures, great scenery. The character cards work very well, as do the event cards, counters etc. The game forces you to end quickly however, the threat meter means, you can't stick around and just relax. You have to get supplies and get out.

The Walking Dead: All Out War

The Miniatures: 9.5/10 

The poses are fantastic, as is the detail. These are amongst the nicest survivor and zombie miniatures that exist in my opinion. The only reason that they are not a "10" is because I find the heads and limbs a little big. Every model, including zombies is different. The only pack with duplicates is the pack of extra zombies. The cars are between 1:48 and 1:50, while the people and zombies are 1:55 or 1:56.

Ease of Play: 9/10 

Great skirmish rules for small scenarios. I would be interested to see what Mantic does with larger sized skirmishes. I could see adding house rules, to weaken the "threat meter" to make it more playable for longer games. Very easy to play, but also replayable.

The Game Contents and Counters: 10/10

Fantastic mechanics. I like that you get more with every pack you buy.

Price: 8/10

The core game is very well priced. If you want all of the other packs may add up quickly ($300 Canadian to get the ones out now). Personally, I plan on picking up the two rules expansions with miniatures and the pack of extra zombies. I had created the characters from the Walking Dead with the Warlord Games box sets already.