“Even through the medication, my head is killing me.  And I hate using my mouth to speak." - Dorian the Grey (Zombicide: Invader)   Welcome back to The Art of Caesura! Last week we started looking at Dorian the Grey / Dr. Sera Vale - the medic on my Space Station Zero team today we're going to look at how she fits into that team.  As I mentioned last week, from everything I've seen and read, Space Station Zero is a really lethal game. Your guys can just fall through the floor in a mission and then have to roll on a table after the battle where they might just die. There are many other things that can kill you: poison gas, bombs, station security gone haywire - and these are without even mentioning the enemies you face - who are trying to kill you! All this being said, having a medic is kind of essential (and with an Explorer vessle, like mine - The Relentless Astryx - it actually is a requirement).  In the game, the Medical Officer can heal your guys - shocking, I kn...

Please state the nature of your medical emergency. - Star Craft   Welcome back one and all to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! This week we're back with my Space Station Zero gang, and this time we're looking at the Medic.  In Zombicide: Invader parlance, he's Dorian the Grey (get it? Get it? Like Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Grey" because he's a grey-style alien . Good, we got it). In my crew and short story from a few weeks ago , he's a she, and she's called Sera Vale.  I started with a Grey Seer zenithal undercoat. I carefully painted Contrast Space Wolves Grey (lots of greys in this post...) just over her skin.  I painted the kind of undersuit with Apothecary White (which, keeping with the grey theme, is basically just a pale grey).  Then out came The White to highlight and define the harder armoured areas.  White was followed with black. I painted the iconic alien pistol (maybe in my crew it's a medical tricorder or dermal reg...

Madame Singleton’s work as an archaeologist  and preserver of ancient cultures has led her  to many strange places in the galaxy. - Zombicide Hello one and all! Welcome back to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! Today we're picking right up from where we left off last week with the Ace Pilot for my Space Station Zero crew, Rhea Sol (AKA Aunty Entity (Mad Max), AKA Madame Singleton (Zombicide: Invader).  The Explorer vessel has access to two specialist units: Chief Engineer (better than a normal engineer) and Ace Pilot (better than regular pilot) so obviously I took one. The Ace Pilot has excellent Reaction (noticing things and dodging damage) with special abilities that let her role extra dice for Reaction tests and re-roll 1s. Not bad.  Wanting to capitalise on her Reaction I gave her one of the 3 coveted pieces of equipment that I have across my whole team: a Hyper-scanner. Like her Awareness ability (giving her two extra dice for Reaction tests), the Hyper-scan...

  Welcome back, one and all, to The Art of Caesura! Today is a brief but special post to wish a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful wife (it's kind of a big one this year).  This one's for you Jules, we all love you! Happy birthday! And I'll see the rest of you back here next week!

A thousand xenos enter. No xenos leave. - Zombicide Website Welcome back to The Art of Caesura! Today, we're continuing our coverage of Space Station Zero / Zombicide: Invader! We've already had "Time Masters" (my short story) and then looked at the NOT Judge Dredd character and today we have NOT Aunty Entity (Tina Turner's character from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). In Zombicide she's called Madame Singleton and in my Space Station Zero crew and short story, she is Rhea Sol, my Ace Pilot. If you're not totally sold on the idea that she was modelled after Entity, check out the promo image that had to be reworked for NOT IP infringement reasons:  No, you're right, there's no resemblance whatsoever! And the reworked (and final) version: Anyway, the aspect of this paint scheme that I am most happy with is the skin tone. It looks a little reddy in the image below against white-primed rest of the model, but with the rest of the details in, I think it ...

  Gaze into the fist of Dredd - Brian Bolland, Judge Death Lives (1981) Welcome back to another Friday on The Art of Caesura! We're just entering Space Station Zero in terms of our coverage here on The Art of Caesura. Three weeks ago we looked at inspiration I drew regarding the miniatures for this game. Two weeks ago, we set the scene with my narrative about my crew, and last week we took a look at the painting process of today's miniature: Preacher Karl / Judge Dredd (or Soldier Garrick Thorne as he is known in my crew).  As the only Soldier in my crew (as an Exploration ship, I'm only allowed to have one of each crew-type until I've fulfilled every role), he better be ready to kill some stuff...and survive!  The Soldier's innate ability ( Combat Specialist - Once per turn, when the Soldier makes a Combat Challenge Test, they may select any two dice from the results and reroll those dice) will make him more reliable at killing. He will use his free Side Arm fo...

“Skedaddle boys ... it’s the law!” Dredd - 2000AD Welcome back to The Art of Caesura! Last week, we embarked on this journey through space and time to look at some models that I painted almost exactly 3 years ago but never showed you. They are from Zombicide: Invader but I plan to also use them in Space Station Zero. We're starting things off with a bang, with one of my favourite minis of the lot (though you're going to hear me say that a lot): Judge Dredd! <Ahem>...Excuse me, for legal reasons, this is NOT Judge Dredd but rather Preacher Karl. As an aside, it's always fun to try to figure out what the inspirations were for the official names that CMoN gave the characters. For this guy, I presume the "Preacher" part is: a reference to another profession where words carry power (Judge vs Preacher) and also perhaps to Garth Ennis - comic book writer best known for creating Preacher but he also wrote a significant amount of early Judge Dredd. And then the ...