Project Cornetto

* Please note, I have slap dashed this together to show it off. I have taken no time or care in what I write, and my mobile can be a pain sometime. I will go back at some point to correct spelling and grammar, but for now, I just want to get it published **

Skip to the end for pictures of the cornetto project in all its splendour. I will also do a thread at the end listing websites and places I have bought stuff from.

“When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth” – Peter – Dawn of the Dead.

“Let’s go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for this all to blow over” – Shaun. Shaun of the Dead.

These two quotes resonate with me and have done since I was first introduced to the respective films. Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s was a great time for any geek. The 80’s gave us great movies, both action and horror and the 90’s gave us great TV that poked fun at the 80’s. I will always hold SPACED dear to my heart as we eked forth from 1999 to 2000. It was the perfect comedy with, so many references to things I enjoyed about my own life.

The episode with Tim playing Resident Evil all night to the point he hallucinates the zombie apocalypse around him, was sublime and a wonderful precursor to Shaun of the Dead. “Hey deadhead, take a bite of peach.”

I’ll never forget my first experience of playing Resident Evil on the PS1 and playing for hours on end. I digress.

I have always been a fan of zombie related material. As end of the world scenarios go, the planet slowing dying out from things that are already dead makes for a relevant story. Though I like films with intense fast zombies, there is something so much more threatening about the slow nature of a zombie virus and just being swarmed by hundreds of slow-moving reanimated corpses. Like you have a sense of hope that you can outrun it, but no matter how fast you are they will always catch up to you. Inevitable death.

Whatever the reasons, I love zombie things. Original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favourite films of all time and I have always loved the idea of turning a Mall into a fortress during the apocalypse. The we were graced with one of the finest comedies ever written with Shaun of the Dead. Again, Shaun of the Dead ticked all the boxes for me as did all the Cornetto movies. The works of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are just sublime and an inspiration for many things in my nerdy life.

Later down the line, I was hooked into Walking Dead, however I watched the series before I read the comics, so for a spell, I was blind to the stories lines and characters of the comics and how much grittier the comics were over the TV show. Either way I loved them both, so to see it supported by a game back in 2016 was a no brainer buy for me. (No brainer pun was not intended but totally left in now that I have written it).

I went full in on backing the Kickstarter on a whim that the game had solid rules. I was so pleased to find the rules were solid and fun and held massive replay value. The core box is a perfect little set for taking on holiday and just throwing down on the table. It’s certainly one of my favourite games to play straight out the box, especially for value. However, title of best boxed game for value, I still feel belongs to Flames of war and Open fire/Hit the beach sets.

The game set me on a path to collect all I could collect for the Walking Dead All Out War following the campaign and I achieved this over the following years. It’s one of the only games I still play on a regular basis, along with War Cry and Flames of War. I have plenty of others to dip in and out of, but AOW belongs in my top 3.

I picked up spare sets over the years and increased my Walker collection to gain over 150 Walkers.

I am incredibly pleased to hear its return was announced, as I was a little crushed at the news it was ending and no longer going to be supported. I totally understood why and that there’s really not much more to be released, as all worthy additions and expansion had pretty much been covered. It made sense that the last outstanding set would be the final comics set in the commonwealth. What I felt was the biggest shame was an end to production on what had been released. I didn’t want the community to die out with no new players coming in, as it was no longer supported. Let’s hope the revival sees the next generation of gamers being hooked in.

Following its initial release, I got to painting my models for AOW and saw my Ronnie walker featured om the Mantic page. I had painted it whilst watching the Beasts of War Boot camp. I really wanted to go, but timing and money would not allow. However much of what I watched planted an inspirational seed in my mind.

The layouts and tables on the boot camp event, were stunning and possibly some of the best gaming set ups I had seen to date. It spurred me to pick up a lot of 4ground stuff, but money being an issue in the past, I only picked up a select few items to play with AOW. I wanted to achieve what they did on the boot camp but was far off from doing so.

I was also very keen on the idea of making my own character, as having the option to make your own characters for AOW was a lovely addition. I spent a lot of time thinking of custom characters I wanted to see introduce to the game and naturally through this process, I was keen on bring in Shaun and Ed from Shaun of the Dead.

The idea was now in my mind that I wanted to play AOW but set in the same world as Shaun of the Dead, with a ‘get to the pub’ scenario. Essentially base the game to a familiar UK setting.

The journey began not long after AOW release, where I started to buy up building and mats to suit the post-apocalyptic zombie world. I put together a fine collection, but it was all very USA themed. Not a terrible thing as the main game is set in America. I still had the idea to set it in the UK. I always kept a look out for a MDF pub or kit that bared resemblance to the Winchester, with the idea to kit bash to convert. However, there was a lack in the department back then.

The closest we came at the time was a model from Antenocitis Workshop when they expanded their apocalypse range. This only appeared before they closed, so I missed the window to buy it. The loss of Antenocitis was a big one as it was a source for many resin pieces, I picked up for AOW.

So, I spent a few years picking up bits here and there from TTcombat, Sarrisa Precision, Antenocitis and Debris of War. Lots of other bits from Salute events. Anything that looked like it would be in place in a Walking Dead world, I would try and pick it up.

Skip forward a few years and I had made no progress of my Shaun of the Dead All Out War. However, with the advancements in the hobby, we had entered the age of the 3D printer. “The age of MDF is over, now is the time of the 3D printer”.

I avoided buying anything 3D printed. I didn’t like the look of printed models at the beginning, but it has come on in leaps and bounds. We had also seen improvements on Contrast Paints and Speed paints in the last couple of years, which has really helped me improve my painting game/batch painting.

I have learned so many new and different techniques thanks to YouTube and I am finally settling with a refined version of SLAPCHOP that is allowing me to paint many a grey model that has been sat on a shelf and put colour to it in such a way that it is table top worthy with a few brush strokes. It has spurred me to ramp up work on my grey AOW collection.

But my biggest hobby inspiration came in the form of Martin Krasemann and his YouTube channel The Solo Wargamer. It ran under a different name back in 2021, but the Solo Wargamer was an unexpected blessing born from the Covid years.

The Covid years were a traumatic time for most and the impact continues to resonate to date. Those who were able used this time as a massive boost to hobbying for xyz reasons. It also brough many outside folk into the hobby world, but let’s face it, a real pandemic killed a lot of people. It was a dark time, and I can only hope those who it impacted on and survived have begun to heal mentally and physically. Same to those who lost someone during this awful time.

My family, YouTube and hobby got me through this time. As a member of the emergency services, I still worked all through the pandemic, which was a lot of pressure. As many can sympathise, having a hobby is a great outlet to relieve those kinds of day-to-day pressures.

I got more into solo games (Naturally), and I had more reason to work to making my collections and terrain collection look good. I spent a lot of that time buying up wild west stuff.

Then The Solo Wargamers channel appeared. A hobby god appeared to me and said, look what can be made in your own home. Martins work was a hobby epiphany for me. His work overwhelmed me with inspiration that has left a lasting mark. His Dark Ops saga based on The Division and his series of modern war videos, just propelled me to achieve similar terrain and models. I loved the idea of modern warfare game set in a division like setting. I loved the Spectre Ops rules and started buying up modern war stuff to copy The Solo Wargamers work. Thankfully, he posted many VLOGS that details where he buys things and how he makes his terrain, which became my base line.

From Solo Wargamers work, I was inspired to make a city scape that mirrored his own. I even began work on writing my own modern warfare combat rules. I completed this recently and I’m ready to test with friends, but that another story.

Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of other inspiring hobby enthusiasts out there that I follow and have aided towards my venture, but it was the Solo Wargamer that lit the match.

I have always loved Mel (Terrain Tutors) works, Ash Barker (Guerrilla Miniatures), more recently with Lee at Tabletop Skirmish games and of course the Beast of War. The VLOGS over the years have spurred me to make much of my own terrain, particularly for Blood and Plunder.

I now had it in mind to build a town. Once I was settled on this idea, the dormant Shaun of the Dead AOW blend sparked into life again. So, in 2021, I concluded that I wanted to build a cityscape that was generic enough to be used for both American and UK settings.

So, I scoured eBay for 1/43 scale vehicles and began to collect both American and UK vehicles, primarily looking at emergency services as this is where the real visuals change on a tabletop when involving vehicles. Any old car looks good on the road, but the distinctive differences of UK and American emergency vehicles really set apart the local. I opted to focus on NYPD stuff and UK police. NYPD stuff seemed quite easy and cheap to obtain. I got quite lucky with some UK stuff in 1/43 and every so often a decent model pops up for cheap. However, I did find that UK stuff was more scarce or overly expensive.

Other vehicles I just picked up over time via eBay bundles or Amazon. I checked on a weekly basis for 1/43 vehicles to start stocking up.

Now following suit with Solo Wargamer, I picked up the terrain tiles from TTcombat as a base to building on. This is sold as a 4×4 or 2×1. Just due to my finances, I started with the 4×4 but over time bought more 2×1 when I realised what I was trying to achieve with custom bases per 1x1ft. I closely followed the Solo gamers designs and layout, but then wanted to add my own touches.

Furthermore, following Solos VLOGS, he advised of mistake made when making the pavement tiles and finding them hard to fit together as the sheets of MDF he used were too small. I find similar issues as I could find no 3mm sheets that cover the entire 1x1ft tiles. There would always be a gap. I resorted to using A3 size MDF sheets from eBay and then having to cut small slithers to fill the gaps.

To change things up from Solo. I used Vallejo texture paint over sand and grit. I found this to create the perfect tarmac surface that didn’t act as sandpaper for models. A pot from eBay cost a £10 and stretched to cover quite a few tiles.

I was then hit by a curve ball. The announcement at the closure of 4Ground. I love their kits and was devastated to hear the business fold. I had my eye on the shopping mall since it was announced and then seeing videos of Justin and Gerry playing AOW on the layout, just made me so jealous. So, I bit the financial bullet and during their closing down sale, bought all I needed to create a massive Mall.

I wanted the Mall due to my love of Dawn of Dead and I knew I would be able to incorporate the Mall into more games than just AOW. One of my first test games of the Modern Warfare rule set I have been working on, involved a diamond heist at the mall. When I finished playing (Spread over a few days due to time and testing) I was left with a sense that A) The rule worked. B) That was F***king epic. My own rules created such a narrative drama, with vehicles driven at Police, Officers pinned by automatic fire, human shields grabbed, lucky shots from beat cops taking down suspects, taser deployments, suspects surrendering at gun point and one van almost escaping with the loot. It flowed so well. But again, this is another story and I will post pictures explaining some bits. I came up with the DRP system which is my own dice mechanics to simulate the possibility of fully automatic fire and mag dumping without it being too overwhelming of everyone was to suddenly shoot and entire magazine. I’m quite proud of this mechanic.

Anyhow… I bought the Mall and spent a lot of time building that over the past couple of years in tangent with my city. I ended up buying another 4×4 TTcombat tile set to blend with the city I had already begun work on. At this stage it was only an idea to have 4×4 running into another 4×4 to create a town and a Mall on the edge of town.

I then ended up buying more tiles to create more unique tiles and this resulted in a further 2ft extensions. Theoretically if I put all the town stuff together, I have a 10×4 city table and mall.

Now with the idea leaning more toward UK based town, I started buying up small scatter pieces unique to the UK. Train modeler and new 3D places on eBay provide so many options now. I found an eBay site that sold O and N gage scatter but also had an option for 28mm. This gave me road works, temporary traffic lights, BT boxes, phone boxes and post boxes. Mix this with Debris or war and the rubbish stuff and I could create small scatter pieces to blend into the terrain.

Now Solo recommended using magic cards to put scatter together as a single piece to make it easier to deploy on a table. This was genius, but I changed from card to thick clear card protectors. This allowed me to create a see-through ridged base that would blend with any surface it was placed on. This would also give me an idea later.

I was now becoming more comfortable with the idea of 3D printed protects and they looked so much better within the past year, that I began to look for models to represent UK homes. Again, I followed recommended 3D prints from Solo which led me to designs by Corvus Terrain. Corvus appears to the lead for modern 3D printed buildings.

I found a local printer team who produced a bunch of terraced houses and bunch of shops for me. Not only this but *Insert hallelujah choir here* The Winchester public house in all its glory. Yes, finally I could have my Shaun of the Dead project fulfilled.

So, this arrived to me in December 2022. Just in time for me to injury my back and be off work for a couple of months. Injured back, bad. Immobile time at home, good. I spent my immobile time well and painted up all my houses. I put extra time and effort into the pub, but as I was stuck to a chair, I made use of this time to smash through so much painting.

I as a nerd, did all the research on the original pub and terraced houses local to the area. I found the best colour match the brick work using colour forge Trench Brown.

I used sand and grit to give texture to all the flat roofs on any building that had a flat roof. All greys were from Standard Grey spray and Matt Black for everything else. Colour forge is my go-to for sprays and my FLG sells for a decent price, so happy days.

So, to take things a nerdy step further, I researched a lot about Shaun of the dead and ended up finding little bit to enhance the pub and make a decent replica. I used phonebooths, I found the brand of jukebox and coin game used by Ed in the film, I stuck them all inside the model and used mantic terrain to flesh out the interior. I freehand made the bar from spare bit and card parts from Battle systems. I made lots of posters and fridge stock images to make bar paraphernalia, including hog lumps. I went full on.

I then had the same idea to make one of the terraced houses Shaun’s home. So back to research, I found the number of the property and studied the film to get the door colour and garden layout. It’s actually a massive corner house, but the 3D models were fine to represent. I picked up a small 3D printed shed, and hand made a fence system to connect the houses with 3 gardens and 3 front gardens. Just MDF and coffee stirrers. Bit of paint and flock and the gardens and houses were complete.

To enhance the houses to fit the theme of an apocalypse, I took the idea from Solo again to board up the windows with newspapers. Similarly, to what is can be seen in 28 Weeks later opening when they return to the UK after the outbreak. It’s a nice idea and works well for hiding interiors. I use thin sheets of clear A4 thick paper to glue in as windows and then PVA’d on random section of homemade newspapers on photoshop. I even stuck in some Sainsburys bags and Tesco’s bags, shrunk down to suit the size.

This then inspired me to create shops for the area. I didn’t want to copy Shaun of the dead exactly with a corner shop as I wouldn’t be able to find a suitable building to represent. So, I instead opted to pick up some Sarrisa stuff to create a local Tesco’s, like expresses local to me, Again I made a custom print sheet of signs and posters. Fitted the windows and glued everything in place. Again, Standard Grey sprays help so much for urban environments.

As I became a bit more mobile, I moved onto working the street tiles from TTcombat. I had my layout designed and carved out to create the pavements. After applying the texture paint, I coated the tiles in cheap black spray then a dusting of standard grey. The cheap black stuff was a mix of £5 local shop and £1 Poundland spray which worked well but you get only a £1s worth. Did enough to act as a good base for the grey to cling to as the MDF absorbed a lot of the black. The grey over the black over the texture paint gave an almost perfect tarmac colour.

I then used light grey through an airbrush on the pavements and then lightened the further with dry brushing administratum grey followed by fine dusting of Ushabiti bone from Citadel. I gave the roads a light dry brushing of just Ushabiti bone but primarily wanted the roads to remain dark.

I used paint pens to add in road markings and highways maintenance signs and lines. I chose not to go for UK street markings such yellow lines or give ways on each tile to ensure they were generic enough to be used for both UK and US settings. Due to having several tiles to add to the 4×4, I used these to create unique roads. I added in pedestrian crossings and road works using the depth provided by the raised tiles. I made a couple of construction site tiles following a similar design to Solo Wargamer, taking a step further, I made a hidden trench on one of the constructions sites to be used as a further burial area, hideaway.

I did face one issue. The shape of the Winchester. To fit the Winchester on a tile, I had to redesign the roads, and this had an impact on any connecting tiles. I had to fully redesign the entire layout to fit around the Winchester. Doh.

Never mind. I had enough tiles to swap in an out many pieces. So, when not using the Winchester, I had plenty of road tiles to feature without the pub.

Eventually I ended up with plenty of tiles to fit a large city scape and then some. Plus, a large shopping mall.

Having finished the tiles, I went back to some old café kits and small shop and spruced them up to fit the area. I turned one into a pharmacy and used 4ground stuff to kit out the insides. Same with the café. I copied Solos idea of Starbucks as its very recognisable.

The UK shops I had 3D printed, I chose to go with local food and hardware store. I already had America buildings, so I was happy to have pure UK stuff for my UK set ups.

All the pieces were falling into place and much of the scatter I copied straight from Solo or was lucky enough to have bought from Antenocitis before it closed.

I told my friends at work who are also hobby nerds that I was working on a city piece and teased images. I lovingly dubbed the project ‘Cornetto’ to keep them interested and teased.

Skip ahead to this year and I was stocked up on Cars, building and tiles. As a side project, I have always had fun turning faux fur into grassy mats. I created a 4x 4 mat a few years ago as a test and it still features in my games. I bought fur for a 6×4 mat which actually ended up 7×5 when cut, but this sat in the attic for years festering.

Thanks to a warm summer, I decided to get the mat out and turn it into fields. I did this spurred on by the idea of

1. A) 15mm games.
2. B) Warlords Epic Napoleon.
3. C) 02 hundred Hours in 15mm Scale and lastly
4. D) have a fur gaming field mat for both 15 and 28mm games.

I had a boost after watching A field in England and had an idea to make an English Civil War Skirmish Game. I wrote some rules for this too and a warlord’s spur gave me enough 15mm to fulfil the warbands for two forces.

Using the mild weather, I got to work trimming, shaving, cutting, painting, spraying a faux mat.

I used caulk to make the dirt road and paths, followed by sand pressed in to give it texture. Thanks to the unprecedented hot weather in Autumn. It dried super quick. So now I had a rural 7x5ft gaming mat.

Perfect.

Now for some pictures of the progress so far.

I painted the starter set from the Kickstarter box and it wasn’t long after this I fell in love with the game.

Whilst watching the hobby bootcamp, I painted my Walkers including Ronnie Walker. The picture did well on the Facebook group and ended up featured by Mantic on their FB page. This was a good moment for me.

*Redacted by order of the Imperium of Man*

1. So the Winchester came first and the tiles soon followed to fit the design. I laid out the basic plan of where I wanted things and got the base black and grey done.

Following the highlighted pavement, I put colour onto the custom tiles depicting a construction yard and three dug out mass graves. (yeah let’s face it, it’s dark, but also a documented strategy used by both the UK and USA for dealing with mass casualties follow apocalyptic scale pandemics).

You can also see roadworks to match how the Solo Wargamer did his. Using a couple of scars straws as the pipes.

I also used a cut off to make a circle which will become a small roundabout.

Foolishly, I only took images of the end product, not the process.

As mentioned in the history I used a primer of Trench Brown and then used citadel browns to pick out the brick work. I think I used khorne red for the read areas. Standard grey for the grey areas and then all highlighted with administratum grey and ushabiti bone.

I seem to remember for the windows; I used a grey contrast either spacewolf or slightly bluer contrast paint and then just a light white dry brush in the centre. Really simply but gave it an unexpected decent look as a solid window. It looked great for just messing around.

Once the Winchester arrived, I threw it on the paint table so quickly. This was at the time I injured my back so would be glued to a chair for a good month.

During this time, I also received a couple of custom models from Heroforge for represent me in the Walking Dead game. I painted this in tandem with the pub.

But I was stuck in a chair and didn’t want to just leave it as a paint pub. So I carved up the inside of the 3D print and began to create an interior.

Redacted by order of the Spanish Inquisition. Which no one would have expected.

Seems trying to write about this project via my phone is turning into a pain. With my phone auto correcting everything and small keys, it’s been hard to summarise my work. I only use my phone as that’s where the hundreds of project photos are stored. Tomorrow I will figure a work aground to get all those pics to my pc without the cloud causing issues and hopefully continue the blog without it repeatedly crashing or doubling up on entries.
More to come. Watch this space for the end product and battle report.

I must be overloading with trying to get more than five images on. I am going to try and break it down as much as I can. I’m not getting any error messages and all that seems to happen is it looks like things submit, but then nothing happens. All my writing disappears as does any pictures I upload. So I will try this a different way.

With my back starting to heal and a bit more mobility, I moved back onto finishing the road tiles and adding details.

I spray up a few more tiles and hit them with the light grey airbrush. I then used a homebrew black in wash to soak the tiles, wiping away excess. Back on my gaming/work table, I started to dry brush the already primed tiles.

I used administratum grey and karak stone to dry brush the pavement and road. I only light drybrushed the road as the darker colour gave it a really good tarmac appearance. I  broke up the paving slab colours with karak stone and then finished with an agrax eartshade select application. I would take drops of earthshade and blob some areas and smear others, then rub it in roughly. This gave it a nice stain over the lighter tiles. Then I followed the recess lines where the ink wash had originally settled, to again emphasise the gaps between each slab.

To note, as I don’t think I mentioned before, the slabs were created by gluing down sheets of 3mm MDF to TT combat tiles and then carving deep with a Stanley knife to give the appearance of individual laid slabs.

I then finished with earthshade again to flick droplets all over the tiles. This gave the nice appearance of rain stains/general wear and tear.

I started to pick out the unique tile to bring them up to scratch with the others.

Yep. I was overloading.

I finished the mass grave and added in some of the bodies from Antenocitis workshops to finish the touch. Very grim.

I finished painting the road works, where I had copied Solo Wargamers idea of card straws and filler to look like protruding pipes.

I then started to add more textured paint over masking tap to create the illusion of repair works on the road. This ended up being a bit of a long process and so I skipped to just painting corvus black over the road still using the masking tape. This saved so much time and looked the same as the sections where I applied more textured paint.

I dry brushed on corax white road markings for pedestrian crossings, but I had already decided that I would not add any other UK style road markings as I still wanted to be able to use the tiles for American roads as well. I will make unique roads for the big build but this would be separate from the tile system anyway.

90% of the tiles were now don’t, so I began to do some testing with buildings and other ideas. One idea I had was street lighting. I found some wired Christmas lampposts that fit the size perfectly and were battery powered. I haven’t implemented this full but as a test run, it didn’t look half bad to have working lampposts. The wires were still lightly visible and they would be difficult to fully hide with just the tiles, but scatter and other things would make this simple enough. Its biggest pain is that it they are wired in a single strip, so you have to figure our best placement first before moving like a nokia snake weaving back and forth across the tiles.

I’ll probably only use the lights for special occasions.

Before I began work on my Cornetto project and having already been inspired by the Solo Wargamer, I started to spruce up terrain pieces I already had.

This was turning the café into a starbucks and adding details to the brownstone flats. I scribbled on graffiti using acrylic paint pens, which were perfect for graffiti in this scale. I was particularly pleased with how Mr Sparkle turned out.

I set up a quick table for Marvel Crisis to test out my buildings, but it was when everything was place down that I was even more keen to build the UK setting.

To hark back to the first post on the history of this project. I mentioned that I had built a faux fur mat 4×4. Here are some shots of the mat in progress and then with both 15mm and 28mm terrain over the top,

It worked well in both scales which is what encouraged me to make a 6×4 mat.

The process was relatively simple. The only issues to working with faux fur was keeping it somewhere it can remain flat for time to dry.

To start I would shave out the areas I wanted to become textured road. I would then shave about 15mm sized pathways to represent the gaps between fields. This served a double purpose of both being small foot paths, but also gaps to be filled with edges of fences that wouldn’t bounce around on the fur. One the fields were outlined, I used a mix of general acrylic paint from any craft store and a comb, to brush the paint into the fur staining it.

I used more selective greens through an airbrush to cover smaller fields and add variation colours to greens already present.

I used caulk mixed with brown paint to spread onto the areas of the road and paths. Pair of latex gloves and water made this spread easier.

I left it to cure for a bit before I went in with a tooth pick to create diverts and tracks in the dirt. I also pressed in sand to give a rougher texture.

Once fully cured, I hit the roads with a dark brown airbrush and followed up with stone and ushabiti bone dry brush. The mat made for a perfect 4x4ft rural zone. It came out better than hoped and looks great for both 28mm and 15mm.

I did add a couple of tufts and also spread a bit more grit along the sides of the paths. I dotted a few flowers here and there just to give a bit of variation to the ground scatter.

The mat rolls up and folds out neatly and I have had no issues with it and its still in use it today.

This will become my baseline for what I hoped to achieved with the 6×4 when I finally got around to it.

With the tiles complete, I moved back into buildings and modern models to suit the setting.

I picked up a shop and construction buildings from Sarris Precision. Using standard grey spray and some white, I primed both the models. I chose to make the small shop a local UK mart of a USA mart, however I made a magnetised sign to swap out on demand. I chose the UK location to be Tescos as this is quite recognisable in the UK. I didn’t mind gluing Tescos poster as it didn’t really matter if I swapped the sign out to a Walmart or whatever.

I gave the roof a layer of grit and sand to give it texture and then added the thin clear sheets to make windows on both the store and construction site. I added posters glued on from the inside with PVA.

I managed to pick up some more body bags from Antenocitis before they closed down and spread them out in the mass grave.

I have plenty of bin bag piles from both TTcombat and Debris of war. I painted most black but also painted a few piles as hazard bags for the grave site. To enhance the bin backs, I used the clear study card sleeves to group scatter together with an invisible base.

I made myself some custom A4 pages full of posters, newspapers, shop signs and rubbish to print of cut and glue to add depth and trash to the bags. The effect was very pleasing to the eye.

Following the recommendation from the Solo Wargamer, I picked up some wood beams around 40mm x 40mm and scotch tape to make cheap Hesco barrier.

Oddstv.minaitures on Instagram also gives instructions on how to build the Hesco barriers.

I used custom posters made by the Solo Wargamer to stick on quarantine signs to the barriers. I then put it all down with some cars and building to see if the product will look good mixed together. I was liking how this looked, it was really coming together.

Having picked up lots of Uk street scatter, I got to painting all the small bits and the terraced houses/shops.

I kept to the same paint theme for the Winchester to match the houses with a base of trench brown and standard grey on the roofs. I hand painted in the window frames and doors with just whites and different coloured doors.

I used the thin clear sheets on the windows and glued on the inside lots of newspapers to show that residents were trying to hide away in the apocalypse.

I turned the UK shops into local recognisable locations. It was only natural that the coffee store was Starbucks and the food shop was Greggs. I made the other store a hardware store as the sign came with the 3D model. I again used clear sheets for the windows but had to a lot more measuring and cutting to ensure they fit into the grooves and gave the appearance of glass in front of posters.

To note, the coffee shop was an old TTcombat model I had laying around, but Starbucks works for both USA and UK.

With the buildings and scatter done at this stage, I moved onto painting some models for both modern warfare situations and Walking Dead.

Not long after painting the Winchester, I had an inspired idea to customise some of the Walking Dead models I had and paint them to fit the theme of the board. So I painted some NHS paramedics and using head supplied from 7TV, I painted up some construction workers.

 I bought up a bunch of extra Walkers from the core game and chopped and changed a bunch of head to keep the visuals fresh. I started work on painting the 150 walkers I now had each in various stages of being painted. I put this on hold around January and didn’t return to the Walker until start of December this year.

I did start painting up modern models for if the world were to end that day or just for modern set games. I picked up some Police officers and firearms officers from Antholonica Blue Light range. I did some head swaps with 7tv Police wearing custodial helmets.

I picked up some riot models from offensive minis who I eye up every year at salute. My partner bought me them for Christmas last year. I also picked up riot vans from ebay. They are just Police vans but they look suitable as Police Riot Carriers.

I really enjoyed these models but the piers de resistance came with an etsy page called the Meeplesmith. I am sad to say this page seems to have gone so maybe he shut shop.

The meeplesmith had 3D prints of Shaun and Ed. I made enquiries to scale and if there was another option to Shaun’s head as he was wearing the tie both on his shirt and on his head which made me itch. Meeplesmith came back to me to say he cant change the head due to the files, but he could rescale to fit the Walking Dead bulk. He did this for free for me, which I was very grateful for.

The models arrived not long after The Winchester and I had to get some paint straight on them. I hand carved off the head bandana, but this did give Shaun a funky head. I didn’t mind though, the models still looked great and scaled perfectly to Walking Dead.

Once I had finished the models, I had to get them into the City which gave me the idea to turn one of the terraced houses in Shauns place and customise it with a few little easter eggs like the Shed in the garden. I even researched the colour of the door as mentioned in the history post.

I then finished my modern warfare models. This encouraged me to continue work my on own rule set and the shopping mall models.

Having now finished all my city tile, I moved onto the shopping mall and getting it all built and put together. As I had gone full on, I made is 8 stores in length and then two floors. It looked great as it is but I wanted it to sit right on the tiles and blend with my city.

I customised some of the shops to suit what I wanted in the Mall. I still had a few bits outstanding but sadly Tymeagain has not responded to any of my emails or web messages about my missing items. Im currently £60 down and need to keep chasing this.

Anyway, I finished the Mall as best I could and then had on order Spectre miniature new stuff.

This encouraged me to finish writing a modern warfare rules set, with my first draft now completed. I really liked the idea of rule generic enough it could be applied to any modern situation, such as cops vs robber or SAS vs insurgents. I was always inspired to write some rules that covers SWAT as initially I wanted to write a dedicate SWAT game for the tabletop based on the old Sierra video games. SWAT lives on as a fond memory of mine.

This evolved into a full ruleset to cover many aspects. I know what I have written is looks like a complicated mess, but when I applied the rules to  quickly made up scenario of a diamond heist in the mall, the way it played out narratively was sublime. It gave me hope that I had written a viable game.

I wont go into it fully here, but here are some screens of the game I played out when testing. The gangs arrived in two vans and breached a loading bay without alerting security.

Once in the store the alarm was raised. The security guard remained inside their officer and required roles to contact the Police and make the required test to report what was happening. Two squad cars were dispatched and the beat cops entered the mall just as the gangs were set to head back to their vans.

The Police push forward providing constant updates which built toward the need to call in SWAT. After some small exchanged gun fire, the inexperienced gang members pinned the Police and sent civilians running. One civilian was taken hostage in a panic move by the gangs.

The security guard tried his luck at negotiating, failed miserably and ran back into the office. SWAT were eventually dispatched, whilst the beat cops kept the gang pinned. A few lucky shots took out the suspects, who were playing defensively.

SWAT arrived and split into two team. One cautiously moving up to secure the exit and the other pushing forward hard with a ballistic shield.

The SWAT team pushed right up to the gang but some fully automatic fire put pressure and stress on the ballistic time. A couple of beat cops were seriously wounded too.

The ballistic team recovered and overwhelmed a suspect causing them to surrender. A further suspect was tasered as they tried to flee and the beat cops secured him. Lots of the gang fled to the vans, but outside the covert team had made progress. A Whiley look out spotted the inbound SWAT and forced them to cover, but was snuck up on and tasered.

The rest of the gang pushed the first van out they way causing the SWAT to pull back and dive to safety. The other SWAT team breached the loading bay with flash bangs injuring the suspects but they still managed to flee. The Sniper team with the covert movers managed to disable the fleeing vehicle by pure luck. Had they not, the van would have easily left on the next move if they won the initiative and the suspects would have escaped. It was a win to SWAT but also a very close one. Had the game moved on from this scene, my rule would have allowed for a highway pursuit which would be fun.

Enjoyed the snaps from this random game.

As the days got warmer this year, I found it to be the right time to work on my 6×4 faux fur field mat. I used the same techniques as before and added a little more foliage detail along the paths with flock. The mat was actually 7×5 foot but that made no different to me. The hot weather helped the caulk cure very quickly and having learnt from the previous mat, I chose better caulk that was already brown and it work gorgeously.

The field turned out so much better than I had hoped, but at this stage, I was still only looking at it for 15mm gaming. I haddnt even considered its potential for Project Cornetto.

I stuck with dirt roads as my idea was that they were such a size I could lay anything over the top to give the illusion of more fields or modern roads.

It was around this time, BlackMagicStudios changed the way I look at certain materials. I had been using caulk on fabric to make dirt roads and other things, but in one video it was recommended to use 3mm rubber mats. I picked up a meter mat for £14 on ebay and this was a perfect base for making roads or cobbled areas. I tested a theory of using a cobblestone roller on drying caulk over rubber and I was given perfectly textured durable mats.

This would become the basis for the modern roads I was to make for Cornetto. Flexible, durable and worked with Vallejo Earth Texture paint.

With a field in my back pocket and a city ready to be played on, I was well on my way to fulfilling an idea of a big Walking Dead game.

I had floated the idea many times with my nerdy colleagues, to play a big game of sorts. My original suggestion was a game of Walking Dead All out War set in the Mall. This was cool and I was up for the idea, but I wanted something more.

We rapidly approached December without a solid plan. Other ideas were RPG’s following on from a Warhammer 40k RPG I hosted when we had a social trip with work to GW HQ in Nottingham.

Everyone loved the game even those who had never roleplayed before.

Ideas were banded back and forth and it was suggested that we play a big game on December 9^th. I then stupidly suggested, hey why don’t we do something based on what I keep talking about with a Zombie day. I could host and we could do a bit of RPG and a bit of tabletop.

What the hell was I thinking. With less than a month, I had just offered to basically put together a hybrid game of Walking Dead AOW and an RPG. Not only this but host it at my little house and invite 14 others.

Then I made ridicoulas claim that I will put together a Walking Dead table set in the UK. Sure I had a lot done, but it wasn’t ready. I still had so much I wanted to do.

Then I had the stupid idea to take my city a step further an include a rural district with farms and houses.

I set the bar high and now had a challenge to be good to my word. So I got straight onto ebay and ordered a bunch of stuff from the King and Country 3D printed range.  Bought from Cnc_universe, they arrived quickly and if I am honest, some of the most beautiful 3D pieces I have ever seen. I think with the print lines hidden in the stone work, they are a dream to paint and dry brush.

Painting the stone houses as very time consuming and I had to stock up on colourforge sprays with a few trips to the FLG.

I picked up some more scatter and looked to find more vehicles to fit the theme and would arrive in time.

I also wanted some Walkers that looked like soldiers, so I ordered from Patrick Miniatures on Etsy which arrived in time for me to slap paint on.

I dusted off the Walkers sat waiting to paint.

I taught myself how to use Oil washes having never done so before and in the space of a month, I had painted all 150 Walkers, Solider Walkers customised with hand made scrim to represent British soldiers.

I couldnt help but feel the Walker eating a deer, looked like Shaun with his tie, so I painted him as a Walker Shaun. It works really well.

I hand made some military tents using BBQ sticks, foam card for a solid foundation and then wetwipes and hot glue. Sprays and washes did the rest and other than long drying times, easy to make.

I randomly decided to make scaffolding using scotch tape and BBQ stick and they came out really nicely. I like them for what was a 5 minute job.

I put together road signs that had hidden messages or jokes for the players arriving. I made custom roads using the 3mm rubber and grey spray. I then made these more British by adding in road markings from a Sarrisa stencil, as I didn’t mind these being unique to a UK setting.

I made checkpoints with hanging Walkers, sandbags from air drying clay and memorial walls using hundreds and hundreds of tiny cut out pictures I put together from internet resources.

I then had an idea to make more street detritus separate from the rubbish bags. I didn’t want to glue leaves everywhere or discarded rubbish/posters, so using the same thick transparent card protected I used to make bases for the scatter, I just smothered them in mod podge and water and chucked leaves, tescos bags, posters, newspapers and other rubbish images shrunk to size. They came out perfectly and really helped blend with the table and make the streets look even more deserted. What a win.

Using the slap chop technique I painted a whole bunch of characters from the Walking Dead Game and they looked great even with minimal work.

I also had friend 3D print me some custom models for the game including my partner and kids. They weren’t to feature in the game, but they wanted minis having got jealous of my model.

A helping delivery came in the form of a backed kickstarter for AMC Walking Dead RPG from Free Leagues. This couldn’t have arrived at a better time and with the early PDFs and then the physical copy. It gave me the chance in what little spare time I had to write a blend of RPG and Walking Dead All out War.

At that point I had 10 confirmed as coming to the event.

So to make the game my own, I wrote the character cards to represent each of my colleagues. I arranged and sorted all the possible cards from AOW that may be found by the players. I put together note books, maps, custom threat trackers and streamlined table top rule for the game.

I even went as far as to call the event The Fallen Kingdom as it was to be set in the UK. This included providing the group with welcome packs that included pencils, note books, a zombicide dice for stress and measuring widgets that I engraved with FALLEN KINGDOM. I used art work from the RPG to flesh it out and make it unique to my game. I hand made some player cards and laminated the stats for the players.

I then made some bitten cards, trying to emulate the design of the AOW cards, which was tough but they looked great. It meant players had a chance to survive a successful bite if they fail in AOW combat.

Finally I had the idea to explore interiors on maps rather than physically in game. As many of the interiors were not complete yet and seeing as terrain models are quite small, I wanted players to have the chance to break into houses or shops and then explore whats inside.

So using a free interior designer program, I made colour floorplans, added a 1” grid via photoshop and printed in A3 followed by lamination… boom explorable interiors with a dry wipe surface.

Not to toot my own horn but, toot toot. I thought it was genius.

The idea of the game and gameplay would be for my colleagues to work together as a team to protect a group of civilians months after the outbreak. They were housed in a farm house at one end of the map and would need to explore the land during the winter. They had carry limits, effects from the cold and a time limit to find food and bring it back to the civilians and eat themselves or face becoming exhausted or sick.

I used the stats from the RPG to help with narrative elements and searching. When combat takes place it focuses on the area and turns into a small version of AOW using its dice mechanics and weapon/item cards.

I had written search charts for all the present locations based on a success system, put together story arcs with positive and negative outcome and random encounter tables.

This was stressful and exhausting, but when I finished painting the last model and laminated the last player card, I was done with two days to go.

What a whirlwind. An epic marathon rushed at the last minute. My biggest panic was the Walkers as I follow a blood technique from the Walking Dead AOW FB group, that is the best looking technique for blood and drying blood that I had ever seen. Issue is that it’s a long process involving numerous layering. I didn’t think I would have the time to do it and then matt varnish, but I did and it worker. I didn’t have as much detail as I wanted on all the models, but it matters not as I can go back in with detail over the varnish and just varnish again.

I had added little details like leaves glued to everything to represent the passing of time and abandonment. The last vehicles such as the Royal Mail truck arrived and received a quick wash and leaves.

I was happy to call it all ready.

It then took me two house to set it up the night before, as the tables were bigger than expected, the height difference between the 1” high tiles proved a challenge to meet with the grass mat. I knew it would and I knew using my terrain I made for blood and plunder based on the Beast of War VLOG would act as perfect undulations and hills to go under the flexible faux fur mat. Once done the city and rural area blended together perfectly.

With all the building, cars and scatter in place, I took a step back and marvelled in my creation. My partner even teared up as she was proud of what I had achieved. She wasn’t happy that I had just redesigned our house and was kicking her and the kids out so I could play toy soldiers with other adult man children, but the beauty of the table in all its splendour brough a tear to her eye.

Cornetto and the Fallen Kingdom was done.

Can I truly call it complete. No of course not. The project is done, but it is also never done. I will always want to add more and I want to do more tiles and locations to keep it interchangeable and fresh. More house more shops, more locations. I will likely never stop, so I cant call this complete as I will no doubt add more. However my plan for Cornetto and building a terrain scape ready to represent Shaun of the Dead in the All Out War universe. This was done.

One of my final touches, was to add more to Shauns garden, but finding out what records they threw at the zombies and then scatter the albums and covers around my tiny version of Shauns garden.

Voila.

I had no idea how this was going to play out. I was stressed and tired from building all night and I now had 8 of my colleagues looking at me. I say looking at me, that only when I commenced. Hell they spent a long time just pouring over the table. I cant blame them. I spent ages just scrolling through the map as it were.

Each player brought their own custom model to represent them, or borrowed one of mine that visually matched their appearance.

I put all the pics up on the Walking Dead AOW FB group and the feedback has been lovely. I’m humbled by the positive comments.

I really enjoyed a recent comment on the facebook group when I posted all my images; I cant seem to see this comment anymore but it mentioned that each time they looked at a picture, they discovered something new with every viewing. This brought a great sense of joy as I meant I had accomplished something I had intended when trying to make the board immersive and detailed.

So here’s the board in all its glory before I take you down the path of the 8 survivors who showed up and set forth towards the fictional town of Docking. Keep an eye on the road signs, they held in jokes and messages meant for my work group. I will add images with captions as I go and bring you on the summarised version of an 8 hour, no breaks, epic gaming marathon.

This project was a labour of love and I look forward to playing more games using all the terrain. I will play Shaun of the Dead, when I get around to writing a full scenario for it.