Zombie RV: Game 2 "Enter the Ninja"

Following Sandra's death at the cabin, Hector, Mark and Dave soon picked up a new survivor. A man dressed in a white ninja outfit with a sword slung across his back. The man refused to speak, communicating his needs solely through gestures. Mark soon gave him the name "Dudikoff" in reference to the ninja gear. Dudikoff's silence soon proved frustrating however, and before long Mark was shouting at the ninja to say something, anything. 

As the crew pulled on to a city street that looked promising for supplies, Mark and Dudikoff were keeping their distance from one another.

 

The group began to fan out, with Mark scaling the OTB and Dudikoff entering and climbing the stairs to the roof of the dispensary. Dave lined up a few lingering zombies and squeezed the trigger on his shotgun - and discovered he was out of ammo.

 More zombies were soon congregating, and Dave and Hector were in the middle of it - at least until Dave ducked into the dispensary and out the back door, leaving Hector to fend his way down the street alone.

 Mark and Dudikoff investigated two possible supply caches and came up empty, while Dave worked his way around and up on to the roof of the liquor store, finding a small cache of supplies there. 

 As Hector fought his way towards the last supply cache (in the bed of a crashed pickup truck), Dudikoff leapt across rooftops and jumped down, katana at the ready, on to one of the zombies that threatened him.

 Not to be outdone, Mark jumped down to start swinging his wrench at zombies as well.

 Leaping over a crashed car, Hector checked the pickup truck and found...nothing! 

"Let's get out of here," he said, eyeing the growing zombie horde. Dudikoff nodded, cutting his way free from a swarm of the undead.

 Dave was already running for the RV.

 Dudikoff jumped over zombies, and Mark and Hector tried to make it, but the swarm was just too densely packed; for every zombie they killed, two more shambled in.

The two survivors ducked into the RV and threw it into gear. "Looks like it's just you and me, Dudikoff," Dave said.

"You know, Michael Dudikoff wore a black ninja suit in the American Ninja movies," the ninja replied gruffly. "The white ninja look comes from Franco Nero in the movie Enter the Ninja."

"You could talk this whole time?" 

"Hai." 

"Should... I start calling you Franco?"

"No, Dudikoff is fine." 

More Zombies!

 I've completed another 14 zombies, all from Recreational Conflict, bringing the completed total up to 34. Let's take a look:

 

 Not quite so many in this batch form a themed group as in the last batch I did, but we do have some clergy in here:

 A mix of fairly tall figures, including one that's intended as a zombified basketball player:

My favorite of this quarter is the biker with the giant beard and the pickelhaube helmet. 

Then some ladies:

 The one missing both legs and one arm won't be categorized as a "Fast" Zombie, I'd just like to note. 

And a couple miscellaneous:
 

 The middle one is my favorite zombie out of all 34 I've painted so far, because it's clearly based on the poster art for my favorite zombie movie, THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD:

 That's all the (human) zombies I have at the moment; I've got a couple of Zombie Dogs that I'm going to paint up to use as Fast Zombies in Zombie RV, but otherwise I'm all out... Until my friend Dave gets back after GenCon. He's been digging around in his Pile of Shame, and found some old plastic Wargames Factory Zombies still on sprue that he bought a decade ago and forgot about. Once our Monday Night paint hangouts resume on August 3rd, he's going to hand them over to me. 

I initially thought it was going to be, like, one box of 20 zombies. Which, awesome, my initial target was 50 zombies so that's perfect. 

Oh no. See, after I confirmed that I wanted them, he sent pictures.

 That's one box of Zombie Vixens, a bag containing one box's worth of male Zombies, and another bag containing another box's worth of Zombie Vixens. Each of these three packs contains *30* zombies. 

I'm taking home *90* zombies, not *20*. 

You hear that sound? That's the sound of my acquired to painted ratio screeching off a cliff. I'm not going to add these to the tracker yet - I may refuse the second box of Zombie Vixens - but this is a looming zombie wave. Thankfully I've got assembly line painting them pretty well down pat. 

Do you know what title RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD was released under in Germany?

The Germans called the film VERDAMMT! DIE ZOMBIES KOMMEN, or "Damn it! Here Come the Zombies!" and I might be feeling that a little bite.

 

 Let's enjoy the progress I've made on getting figures painted while I can: 

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 182

Terrain Acquired: 2

Terrain Painted: 8

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10

 

Zombie RV, First Playthrough - "A Cabin in the Woods"

 It has been a hell of a week here at Casa De Adcock, with an emergency trip to the veterinary hospital on Tuesday for my cat Poppy overwhelming my brain and my ability to do anything painting- or game-related for several days. Poppy is home and doing well and it's time to burn off some of this nervous energy with a game. 

Time to take Zombie RV for a test-spin. I used Mike Demana's unofficial campaign supplement to give my survivors a bit more differentiation as well. Recognizing that I had everything exactly called for, terrain-wise, I laid things out for the second scenario in the rulebook, "Cabin in the Woods." Our survivors are paying a visit to Uncle Bob's survivalist cabin in the woods to see how he's holding up and maybe see if he's got some spare gear for them.

Left to Right: Mark, Hector (in back, with rifle), Dave, and Sandra

 There were four search tokens (the cabin itself, the port-a-john, the broken-down car and the boat) and two zombie spawn points, in the northwest and southeast corners. Our crew cautiously fanned out, no zombies in sight, and began to make their approach, with Dave reaching the broken-down car, though not having time to search it before the zombies began to wander in.

 Dave pulled an old bug-out bag from the car and started sneaking towards the boat to see if there was anything to find there. Mark opened the door to the port-a-john and closed it just as quick. "What died in there?" He asked. 

 Things started to go to hell when Hector kicked in the cabin's door, finding four zombies milling around - including Uncle Bob.

 The four zombies converged, but managed to do little more than get in each other's way, with Hector managing to wriggle out of any sort of meaningful injury from this encounter. Instead, he managed to drive his knife deep into Uncle Bob's forehead and make a run for it.

 Mark started swinging at the zombies shambling his way, while Dave came up empty with the rowboat.

 As the zombies began to shamble out of the cabin in pursuit of Hector, Sandra started shooting them as they appeared in the doorway. 

 Unfortunately, as more and more zombies converged on the scene, she was overwhelmed.

 Dave fired a shotgun blast into a cluster of zombies, as Hector signaled for the survivors to retreat towards the RV. He looked glumly at the cabin; he'd seen the floor safe but the zombie swarm was swelling by the minute and he didn't expect they'd survive opening it. Meanwhile, Sandra rose as a Nasty Zombie and quickly shambled towards him. 

 Dave ducked and rolled into the cabin, opening the safe and pulling another bug-out bag from inside. With both bags over his shoulders he stepped out on to the porch. There were a LOT of zombies between him and the RV.

 The RV engine roared to life. Mark was behind the wheel with Hector riding "shotgun." The mechanic floored it, splattering five zombies including the risen Sandra beneath its wheels, stopping in front of the cabin long enough for Dave to jump in before high-tailing it out of there.

 

***

 My big takeaway from this game is I need to get more zombies painted. I had every painted zombie I've got on the table towards the end and had to stop rolling for reinforcements because I had nothing left to reinforce with! 

It's a game that does exactly what it sets out to do - it's a beer and pretzels zombie apocalypse game, your crew rolls in, tries to find what they can before the zombies overwhelm them, and get out. With the rulebook being 10 pages (four of which are scenarios), there's plenty of room to customize as well; I 100% winged it on "running zombies down with the RV" at the end of the game there. I also fudged a bit on zombie movement - rules as written it seems if there isn't a survivor making noise within 9" the zombies just stand still, and that left a corridor that the survivors could move in without the zombies noticing them at all. On a 2'x2' board, I was fine letting the zombies hear any major noise on the table and moving in that direction. 

It played out fairly quickly - I think about an hour, maybe hour and a half at the most? - and I feel like I got the mechanics down fast. It definitely held some surprises for me - At the end of turn 1 I was feeling pretty confident, by turn 4 I was looking at 4-5 zombies shambling towards each survivor. 

Making a note here, before I forget, that rolling on the loot table, the survivors came up with Extra Ammo and food (Supplies), so while they're sad to lose Sandra, they can continue on their journey.  

Here Come the Zombies

 The first 20 Zombies are finished, which means hopefully I can get a game of Zombie RV in sooner rather than later!

 This first batch are 50/50 Copplestone Castings and Recreational Conflict figures. I like that there's themed groupings within the Recreational Conflict line - this batch has four zombies in paper hospital gowns, a zombie doctor and two zombie nurses - one in scrubs and a hairnet, right up front, and one in the little white uniform who's not super visible in the group shot. 

So let's break this group down into smaller groups, shall we?

First up are the Copplestone "Zombie Troopers." This was a fun batch, and I kept their clothing uniform - Army Painter "Woodland Camo" pants, Reaper "Desert Stone" shirts, washed with Army Painter "Strong Tone" and highlighted with the base color. The body armor was Reaper "Midnight Blue," washed with "Strong Tone," then highlighted with "Twilight Blue."

 Next, the Copplestone "Plague Zombies":

 I appreciate that two of them are in their underwear. 

Next up, the Recreational Conflict zombies - Doctor, nurses, and four patients in paper hospital gowns:

 And yes:

 And finally, for now, another three Recreational Conflict sculpts I grabbed from my primed pile:

 The one on the left is a surfer, I just still need to paint and affix the remnants of his surfboard, which appears to have been bitten in half by a shark.

 What's next? I've got another 14 Recreational Conflict sculpts to work my way through. But first...

I have to update another line on the tracker as well - Atomic Laser Cut Designs sent me a complimentary copy of one of their kits! They rolled out a new retail store kit and I'd commented positively on it on their Facebook page, as well as provided some free promotion on my own page. Next thing I knew, a copy of the kit showed up in my mailbox - just hours after I'd ordered a copy! Now I've got two; in keeping with the run-down, seedy and a bit low-life vibes I've gone for with my terrain, they're going to be a liquor store and an adult bookstore. I'm already working on the liquor store, and here's a sneak peek:

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 164

Terrain Acquired: 2

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10

 

HEY VERN!

 Well, another Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is in the books, and I didn't finish these in time to get them entered. C'est la vie; I did phenomenally well for myself this year in the AHPC, having painted 89 figures between December 21st 2025 and March 21st 2026 (and I'm realizing as I go over my spreadsheets that I've missed updating my tracker here on the blog somewhere along the line, so making sure that gets fixed!). I'm very proud of my work and am looking forward to participating again next year. That being said, on to what I've finished today!

If you're over a certain age, you might remember Ernest P. Worrell. A bumbling, accident-prone handyman played by actor Jim Varney, Ernest originated in a series of regional TV ads in the American South - promoting Sprite, Mello Yello, gas station coffee, car dealerships, dentists' offices, ice cream and more. Every ad was filmed from the perspective of Ernest's unseen neighbor "Vern" as Ernest addresses him with a sales pitch. The popularity of these ads was relayed into a series of films in the early 90s, seeing Ernest go to Camp, go to Jail, Save Christmas, and be Scared Stupid. Ernest Scared Stupid was a staple viewing in my childhood and my primary touchstone for the character. Since being reintroduced to Ernest a few years back, it's become a regular Halloween Night watch for me, with Ernest Saves Christmas being mandatory December viewing. 

Well wouldn't you know it, I found a miniature that's the spitting image of Ernest P. Worrell. This is "Skeeter" from Recreational Conflict's "Blitzkringle" line of Christmas-themed miniatures. The grin is a little uncanny, but is not a terrible effort at capturing Jim Varney's rubberfaced brand of comedy. 

And here's a clip for those unfamiliar.

Moving on...

Next up we've got three Boy Scouts from Reaper Miniatures' metal Chronoscope range. These are tiny sculpts! 

We've got a skinny kid in shorts, a fat kid in shorts and a skinny kid in slacks. I was never a Boy Scout, so I had to do some research on uniform colors. Hopefully I'm not on some watch list now for googling "Boy Scout Uniforms."

Finally, we have a 1973 Mustang Mach 1 from Miniature Tanks Company. This is a single piece 3D print, painted with "The Floor is Lava" colorshift paint from Turbodork for a bit of extra pizzazz. I'm really enjoying the modern vehicles I've gotten from them, and am looking forward to ordering more for my table.

So let's update the tracker and get it correct this time!

Miniatures Acquired: 57

Miniatures Painted: 86

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 2

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 2