Call to Arms 2025 - Escape from Zombie town - Progress #1 - starting.

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Each year at Call to Arms we like to put on a cool game.

I am running the convention again this year - at St Pats college on the 30th and 31st of August - warlords.org.nz has the details.

I am not into competitions much anymore, and especially over 2 days, and when running it I need to be available.

So for most years we do a demo game.

This year I want to go back to my favourite genre - zombies.

I have always wanted to do an escape from town as the zombie apocalypse hits, it means i can use a bunch of my MDF kits i want to finish and paint up a heap of zombicide models and other survivors/villains.

I need to sort the rules out and print out whats needed.

Current theory is that characters are not all expected to survive, So i will do up 30 or so characters and when you lose one, draw a new one. They will all have different rules and abilities and primary and secondary missions.

Layout:

First step is to sort out the layout. I have a lot of battlemats and was hoping to use them for a decent sized table, 8 x 6 or so.

i tried a few combos but came up with one that works for me, so far at least.

I am using my city map, a docks map, and a grass mat. I have some MDF roads i am using on the grass mat to make a suburb, and it works well.

Here is the current layout of the map.

The closest end is a bit precarious, i have 2 longer tables in the middle and a short table with MDF on it at the end. I need to go back to bunnings for another table top.

This is the current layout, as i dig out my buildings and scenery. the furthers corner you can see will be docks and i might have a refinery there or not, and i aim to have a ship in that corner. you can see the residential suburb and the front is the commercial.

This is not the final layout, as I assemble the buildings and dig out scatter terrain, i will rearrange as needed.

i have boxes of toy cars and things i can use. Going to be fun.

Building 1 - Speed E Mart.

this is the first building. You can see on the first photos, its a good kit but I dont like when you can see the scribed in detail that should be raised.

So I have gone over the kit and am adding strips of card to both hide any connection points and to pop out the detail. You can see on the front of the building the electrical box, just some simple strips of card make this look better.

its not always easy to get teh dimensions right and i dont have time to design the card in illustrator and use the Cricut (though i might for some of them), so i go oldschool and just put the card inside and trace it out.

Hinging the doors make a huge difference.

I use some fusible interfacing Weft to make the hinges as its thin, easy to cut, should not break and is cheap. I used to glue it but pva is messy and superglue makes it too hard and brittle. So now i just cut strips of double sided tape and that works way easier and faster.

I have the clear plastic for the windows but that does not get done until the framing is painted.

I will assemble a few more buildings and then use the airbrush to paint most of them. I normally take too long per building but i dont really have time for this, so i need to use quicker techniques.

I bought a great book from Sarissa precision - which has some great tips. If you have any good terrain ideas, let me know.