Zombicide: Invader -- the Miniatures

Hi everyone,

after a good start into the hobby year 2019, work life struck me HARD in April and kept me tight in its grip since then. Well, now I managed to escape into a short vacation, and I want to use this time to do at least some hobby catchup.

First up: Zombicide: Invader from Cool Mini Or Not 

Here the Kickstarter link with all information. As many of you know the game was finally delivered this summer to its backers and is now available for retail.

I actually did not participate in the Kickstarter campaign for different reasons but when people started selling the game and its stretchgoals on Ebay, I had a closer look at the miniatures and I fell in love! No idea why it took me so long but sometimes it is like that I suppose. 

Anyway, I am a big fan of the Artworks of Adrian Smith and he was in charge of the character designs for Zombicide: Invader, giving the game a unique style.

The excellent cooperative Zombicide games from CMON are known for somewhat cartoonish and exaggerated  miniature design. While I love it, maybe not everybody's cup of tea. Not so in Invader thanks to Adrian's rather serious and sinister designs. 

Another thing is that CMON really stepped up their game in terms of miniature quality! The material of the new miniatures is crisper and less bendy than previously! In fact the new miniatures look FANTASTIC! Easily on a similar standard than many other tabletop miniatures.

In total, there are something like 326 miniatures in all boxes and stretch goals of the kickstarter combined:

In particular, there are 80 survivors. 

The miniatures are in "true scale" (and not heroic scale as GW miniatures). This means that the miniatures are realistically proportioned. Despite that they fit roughly in scale to the GW miniatures and thus might be compatible with the Warhammer 40k universe (but this will be subject to another post).

SURVIVORS

There are 6 in the core box, 3 soldiers (from the White Squad) and 3 civilians (see here for details):

Jared (soldier, USA)

Magnus (soldier, Noway)

Baraka (Soldier, South Africa)

Vivian (civilian, Wales)

Mitsuki (civilian, Japan)

Cole (Civilian, Australia)

The survivors in the Core Game as supported by a Peacekeeper Bot:

and a remote Falchion Sentry Gun:

The Kickstarter features three additional members of the White Squad:

Massimo (soldier, Italy)

Jee-Hye (soldier, Korea)

Graham (soldier, UK)

Next up we have the elite Black Squad from the Black Ops Expansion Box:

Jean (Soldier, France)

Kyle (Soldier, Canada)

Maria (Soldier, Chile)

Andrei (Soldier, Russia)

Fiona (Soldier, Mars)

Solomon (Soldier, Sierra-Leone)

They are supported by the XN35 Crawly Bot:

as well Meteor Sentry Gun:

Next up, there is there are the veterans of the Green Squad contained in the Dark Side box

Miranda (soldier, New Zewland)

Drake (soldier, Germany)

Reese (soldier, Argentina)

Miles (soldier, Portugal)

Umkos (Thass)

Radka (soldier, Thailand)

They as well have a support bot and remote gun:

Vindicator Bot

Maul Sentry Gun

The Dark Side expansion also introduces three companions (only part of the Kickstarter though):

Olive (Companion, Explorer, Luna)

Lukas (companion, tactical expert, Lithuania)

Markus (companion, instructor, Netherlands)

Then, there are three survivor gangs as optional buys in the Kickstarter. 

First, the Plague Gang with 5 members (these are actually designed by Stefan Kopinksi):

Pat (civilian, Norway)

Carmen (civilian, Spain)

Finn (civilian, Czech Republic)

Tuck (civilian, Northern Ireland)

Sydney (civilian, Canada)

Then, there is the Orphans Gang (which I am missing because don't like, sorry!)

And finally, the Kabuki Gang:

Ieman (civilian, Japan)

Naosuke (civilian, Japan)

Oiwa (civilian, Japan)

Takuetsu (civilian, Japan)

Yomoshichi (soldier?, Japan)

Samon (civilian, Japan)

Then, we have a large number of additional, promo survivors which are all (?) inspired by famous characters in the pop culture (many of them Kickstarter exclusive):

Gavin "Greaser" Morley (Paul Bonner, Zombicide Artist)

Allyson Cardenal (civilian, Nicaragua)

Rea "Tank Girl" Varella (civilian)

Dr Fischer (civilian)

"Frank" (xenos)

Kilgore the Headhunter (civilian)

Commander Amadi Senai (soldier, Bane, Batman: The Dark Knight Rises)

Captain Warlock (civilian)

Val (civilian, Diva Plavalaguna, 5th Element)

Corporal Inshish Vak (soldier)

Sergeant "Ook Ook" Svoboda (soldier)

"Butcher" Carl Steiner (civilian)

Feydra Kahl Feydra (civlian)

Nura Satar (soldier)

Morton Luckless (civilian)

"Eightball" (soldier, Thiago Aranha from CMON)

Mercedes Palomares (civilian, Mo'Nique)

Dorian the Grey (civilian)

Trooper 19-82 "Squierelly" (soldier, Roy Batty, Blade Runner)

Trooper 20-19 "Pink" (soldier, Pris, Blade Runner)

Lara Hansen (civilian, Leeloo, 5th Element)

Trooper Carlota Mendez (soldier, Vazquez, Aliens)

Morty (civilian, Marty McFly, Back to the Future)

Doctor Whutt (civlian, Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future)

Katie Benedict (soldier, Starbuck, Battlestar Galactica)

Richard Kindred (civilian, Rick Deckard, Blade Runner)

Ix-nix-zik (civilian, shrimp, District 9)

Preacher Karl (civilian, Karl Urban, Judge Dredd)

Major Sharp (soldier, Rita from Edge of Tomorrow)

Doctor Stakefrieze (civilian, Morpheus, Matrix)

Madame Singleton (civlian, Aunty Entity, Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome)

Cloud (civilian, Nebula, Guardians of the Galaxy) 

Lieutenant Emma Vogel (soldier, AI?)

Count Hugo Harker (civilian,  Raban Harkonnen, Dune?)

'Doctor' Dick Morton (civilian, Rick, Rick and Morty)

Commander Morton (soldier, Morty, Rick and Morty)

Gold Coast Gary (civilian, Ruby Rhod, 5th Element?)

Doctor Falconer (civilian, Stephen Hawking)

XENOS

In addition to the survivors, there are of course many different xenos miniatures.

First, there are the "normal" xenos, which are in the Core Box with a few additional sculpts as part of the kickstarter: 

Xeno Workers, of which there are 7 different sculpts in total in the whole Kickstarter

Xeno Hunters

Xeno Tanks

Xeno Seeker Workers (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Xenomoths (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Xeno Spoiler Abomination 

Juggernaut Abomination (Black Ops Expansion)

Babyface Abomination 

Stomper Abomination (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Widowmaker Abomination (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Mother-In-Law Abomination (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Xenium Horror (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Shadow Abomination (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Brood Mother Abomination (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Brood Children, I.R.I.S. Sentry Gun, and Flinger (all Kickstarter Exclusive)

BuddyBot (Kickstarter Exclusive)

Finally, there are the "Driller" Xenos as part of the Dark Side Box and Kickstarter exclusives:

Driller Workers

Driller Hunters

Driller Tanks

Driller Blitzer (Kickstarter exclusive)

Driller Abomination

How big are the new Chaos Terminators?

Hi there!

Just a mid-week quicky: GW published a few images of the new Chaos Terminators, and I immediately asked myself, "how big are they?" Are they scale-up in any way? Maybe even Abaddon size?

Let's sse:

First old vs new:

Turns out they are almost the same size! :-( I was hoping for some significant scale-up to bring them closer to "true scale", but looks like this did not happen.

This leaves them also much smaller than Abaddon, who was also wearing a terminator armour if I remember correctly?!

I moved the Terminator up a bit to match the level of the boots, i.e., taking into account that Abaddon stands on quite some rubble (and a Primaris Lieutneant ;-)).

Well, too bad...

Shadowspear -- Size comparisons -- Chaos Troops

Hi again, 

after building the most amazing new Chaos miniatures of the Shadowspear box, of course I could not resist to make some size comparison pictures:

1. The Greater Possessed in comparison to the Primaris Space Marines:

As you can see they are indeed even bigger than Primaris Marines.

The next picture shows a comparison to one random "normal" Possessed.


In the above picture, the lines in the background mark the length of one centimetre. One the far right, is the Black Legion Chaos Space Marine converted  from a Primaris Marine in  Mk X Tacticus Power Armour.


2. The new Obliterators in comparison to the old ones:

Obviously, the new models is much larger and even bulkier. But interestingly, the head stayed almost on the same height level.

Here you can see how the Obliterators give some heat to some poor Primaris:

And the proper comparison with scale in the background:




3. Chaos Space Marines in power armour.

First of an image showing the evolution of the Chaos Space Marines over the last ~20 years:

From left to right: A "classical" Marine as we used (and loved) them over the years, next a Marine from the Dark Vengeance box, then in the middle the one from the Blackstone Fortress, then the new one from Shadowspear and finally a Primaris-sized one.

Interestingly, the biggest jump in size appears to have happened with the Dark Vengeance Marines from many years ago! Then the one from Blackstone Fortress is just marginally bigger and gave us an outlook at the new scale of the Chaos Marines.
So, not surprisingly, the Shadowspear Chaos Marines are the same size.

Unfortunately, this means that they are still significantly shorter than the Primaris Marines, which are basically "true-scale" sized, and what I would have loved to see. That also leaves them somewhat smaller than their Deathguard cousins (this is a bit hard to see below though, sorry!):




Here some more combinations:

1. Power armour: oldest versus "how they should be":

2. Adding in the Shadowspear Marines, which are going to be the new standard for the next decade, I guess...

From the back, Shadowspear versus Primaris:

Let's have a look at the heroes:

From left to right: Classical, Fabius Gallus, the villain from Dark Vengeance, Blackstone Fortress, Shadowspear, and Primaris scale at the end.

Some more heroes, namely good old Huron and the new outrageous Kharn:

It is hard to see in the image because of his leaning pose, but the new Kharn is actually Primaris scale! You can see this by checking the length of his limbs and so on....


For completeness, here the comparison of the Venomcrawler to Primaris:

And finally a little "family portrait" of all the new units:

To conclude: the new sizes of the Obliterators and basically the Possessed sit very well with me, while I wished the new Chaos Marines in Power Armour to be a bit bigger. Now, given the Obliterators and new, fancy Abaddon's size one could wonder how new Chaos Terminators would be sized. The new artwork (featuring Abaddon) together with some of the unsolved spoiler from the Daemon machine also gives hope that they might be around the corner. We will see soon I guess...