Quarantina Quompetiton #3 - Warzone Comfort Zone

This week at Scale Creep HQ, it's very firmly the mid 1990s, and we're revelling in the gonzo classic of early editions of Warzone - the game that captured our hearts with nuggety sculpts of balloon-muscled idiots toting chunky guns and chunkier-yet shoulder pads.  The challenge: to paint some vintage Warzone minis with a two-week deadline to evoke the Spirit of the 1990s.  Let's see how our contestants got on.

Spevna’s Man-Crush

This guy fits all the criteria laid out in the intro.

Balloon-muscled? Yep.

Chunky gun? Bet your arse!

Chunky shoulder pads? He could have been an extra on Dynasty!

Idiot? It’s a safe bet that he hasn’t got much going on upstairs.

I love this mini. He looks like he has walked straight off the screen of an Arnie movie, or an early 90s computer game.

I don’t think I’ll ever use him for Warzone, but he’d make an excellent hired heavy for games of Rogue Trader or Grimdark Firefight.

He’s an old mini, so wear and tear has left him with a nose like Bill Cosby but I think it just adds to his charm :)

Sean's A Guy with Fuck Off Big Guns, An Amazon Religious Fanatic, and A Demonic Proctologist Walk Into A Bar

My knowledge of Warzone is even worse than my knowledge of 40K, but when the idea was thrown out there with a few examples of the figures, I was drawn in. A short trawl on eBay offered up these three at a reasonable price. Fun fact, you can still get Warzone figures from Prince August here. So don't pay ridiculous amounts for them.

First up is Big Bob Watts from the Capitol faction. For some reason my brain keeps on referring to him as Bubba so that's what I'll probably call him. These guns are just ridiculous, but that's what makes him such a fun figure. These figures make me feel like they are designed as people doing 40k cosplay.

Next up is the Blessed Vestal Laura from the Brotherhood faction. This figure came with the bottom half of her spear missing. so I lopped off the stump under her hand and rebuilt it from scratch. It's a little wonky but gets the job done. This figure looks like an Eldar with boobs to me.

Lastly we have this guy. I have no idea who or what he is, I could not find him anywhere on the internet. He looks like he would fit in the Dark Legion faction. I have decided to call him Il'Ifldh the demonic proctologist. My version of Dr. Zoidberg if you will. (Note: I rolled up his name on the Demon table from Slaves to Darkness.)

Well, there you have it. Three completely bonkers figures that I'll have to figure out how to put into a game soon.

airbornegrove26's Imperial Blood Beret:

This Blood Beret gave me a real throbbing Bonner! You know when that happens you gotta make'em Airborne!  I can see this Red Beret Rambo dropping into the jungle getting into all sorts of trubl.  

He's got his big gun, with bayonet already affixed, what looks like a grenade launcher as well.  No scope my kinda guy going iron sights.

 As a football player I'm in love with the huge shoulder pads.  Those things are big enough they look like they might choke him out if he turns his head. 

CAPTAIN CROOK'S Mishima Dragon bike

Something something shoulder-pads

What could be more awesome than a giant hoverbike styled after an oriental dragon? That was the question I asked myself as I ordered one of these bizarre Warzone Mishima corporation hovercraft things, designed, apparently, to take on the swampy jungles of Venus or somesuch fluffy explanation.

There's not one element on this model that is symmetrical. NOT ONE.

When it first arrived several years back I was immediately horrified by the size, weight and many parts that characterised this 'miniature'. I immediately hid it in a dark drawer and tried my best to forget about it entirely.

Some things are better left undisturbed...

When this challenge was announced, I smiled smugly, confident that since I owned not one single Warzone mini, I could get on with painting my orks unmolested. Then a bestial roar erupted from the depths of my shame-cupboard and this model flew forth, borne aloft by the rage of 1000 generations of angry, angry ancestors, demanding that honour be satisfied. So I built it and painted it. This fucking thing weighs almost half a kilogram. The end.

Curis' Imperial Wolfbane Commandos

Last time I went to visit the great sho3box he treated me to a day out at the Prince August factory – the current producers of the classic Warzone miniatures.  And it was the greatest day ever.

cheetor (left) and Curis (right) being all cool at Prince August.

I feasted upon the piles of vintage blisters with great plans to rebuild the exact same Imperial Army of my youth, and recapture that giddy joy of being a nerdy teenager.

The derpy eyes betray the anxiety of standing on a non-standard 32mm base.

The initial test Wolfbane (left) was bumped up to a modern 32mm base to allieviate the very 1990s problem of feet spilling over the base edge.  But the more I looked at it, the more I realised I'd betrayed the Spirit of the 1990s.  The second Wolfbane got the classic 25mm base with dark green drybrushed sand.

An actual shelf in my house, or a highly contrived setting to make you feel it's the 1990s?  Answers in the comments!

The fledgling squad is a blister of four Wolfbane Commandos plus an HMG specialist blister, which is an exact copy of the first Imperial Mega-Corp purchases I made as a teenager.

The BazPaz's Brotherhood - Inquisitor Nicodemus and Vestal Sister Maria. 

These crazy eyed religious types are all about helping you find God at the business end of their pointy things.

The Prince August factory is only about 25 miles from where I live and worth a visit, although sadly there’s not much Warzone on display.

To be honest, when I first saw Nicodemus, his combi Chainsaw/Autocannon reminded me of Ash from the evil dead. He also has his favourite bedtime reading material, ‘The Book of Common Slayers’ tucked under his robe.
Sister Maria loves nothing better than hymns as she ‘converts’ her enemies. The hills ain’t alive with the sound of anything by the time she’s finished.


Both of these will add nicely as fanatical muscle to an Inquisitorial warband for 40k/ Rogue Trader and were nice to paint too

Rochies Beefier than Bovril Necromagus

I was sort of in the same boat as Crooksy, when this was announced I was all like "grand, no pressure on this one, I dont own a single warzone mini, I'll just plod on with these blood angels" But then of course the enthusiasm picked up. Everyone started showing their stuff off. And the next thing I know, I'm on ebay, purchasing this sorry bastard for a pittance. I mean look at him

Jaysus 

Couple of days in the bath and a good auld scrub got him back to basics, which was when I realised his gun was different. It wasnt the penis replacement for whatever steroid ravaged genitals lay under that fetching loincloth, it was a gorkamorka shoota! And you know what? I liked it. So a flurry of brush strokes later and here we have Supreme Necromagus Big Mc Largehuge, ready to flex his way across the galaxy

"come rub oil on your necromagus" 

Seeing as hes the only warzone model I have, and I've enough of a pile of unpainted stuff as it is, hes probably going to end up leading a chaos cult or some such, but we'll see how it pans out. Anyway, cheers for looking and fair play to the rest of the lads for some proper nice work! 

Whiskey Priest's Necromutant 

I bought a whole bunch of these chunky monkey's straight from Prince August nearly a decade ago in a fit of slightly confused enthusiasm. They have lain in that drawer ever since. I've dragged individuals out for a quick inspection on occasion but never got any further than undercoating a Razide.
So when somebody (I've no idea who is to blame for this) suggested we all do some Mutant Chronicles figures I pulled out this funky looking Necromutant and got down to it. I love his silly gurning face and his stupid big gun.

Anyway, these guys are supposed to be the elite foot soldiers of the Dark Legion forces. Recycled from the dead of the battlefields across the Solar System they trudge towards earth ready to destroy the living and to add to their own numbers.

This chunky bad boy might look familiar to some you and that's because he was sculpted by the Goblinmaster himself, Kev Adams. See! You can see it now can't you.

He was actually great fun to paint. I almost made the mistake of going with green hair and just turning him into the Joker but I quickly pulled the handbrake and just stuck with the ghoulish white hair.

Having had a rake around in the drawer it turns out I probably have enough Dark Legion figures to do a small army. I do hope nobody suggests we put a game on or something....

Bulldoglopez's Cybernetic Boogie Boyz!!

WE HAVE MUSCLES!!

What's going on out there in internet land? I'll tell you what... shenanigans. HEAVILY MUSCLED HYPERTROPHIED CYBERNETIC SHENANIGANS!! These Warzone figures are ABSURD. Like... 90's steroid Image Comics absurd. Big guns and even bigger biceps!

Totally not using steroids

I wanted to evoke the look of late 90's comic book superdudes... you know... biceps that have biceps that have guns that have biceps. THAT.

Ridiculous

These Cybertronic whatever-whatevers kind of look like what I imagine T-600's would have looked like if Joel Shumacher (RIP) had directed a Terminator movie. I painted these juiced up killing machines using a dead flesh triad from Reaper. Striations. ALL THE STRIATIONS. What do these cybro's do to stay so buff? I dunno.

CYBER!! Look at those BULGING BICEPS!

I tried to keep the rest of the color scheme pretty militaristic with lots of drab greens and a little bit of desert yellow here and there. Overall i'm pretty happy with the result. Stay cyber out there cyber dudes!

So Creepers, what do you think?  Who has captured the distilled Spirit of the 1990s best? Cast your votes in the comments and let us know your favourite!