What’s going on?
July 11, 2025For the first time in a long while, I felt like posting on this blog! We’re in the summer holiday season here in Finland, so with work stress decreasing, free time increasing, and overall more (limited) sunshine and general fun, I find myself somewhat more energetic. Got to strike when the iron is hot and so on!
What’s up over here? Nothing much, which seems to be the usual middle-aged thing to say – work is good, eyesight getting worse (just bought my first reading glasses), hair thinning (which I’m not yet ready to accept), marriage still great. Being this old (well, not old-old but you get the point) feels odd in the context of this blog. I started this blog in 2009, at the age of 27, and I’m soon to be 43. Quite a lot has happened since then, both personally and globally!
Linking to the starter post of the blog from way back, I ended up reading it too! Seems like I’ve come full circle – or at least I’m at that point of a loop again. I’m currently working on my own gaming ruleset about zombies. What else could it be, right? Combining my key interests from past years, it’s a solo miniature game about zombies in a scifi setting with a seasoning of corporate satire, as you manage a private military company – i.e. mercenaries – tasked with cleaning up infected colonies somewhere in the outer reaches of civilisation. The crew consists of more or less unsavoury types, with each character having their own (randomly generated) personality, which in turn affects their gameplay: a callous operative will have no qualms about putting down a bitten comrade, whereas a sensitive one might hesitate for a fatal moment, that kind of thing. The game is geared towards emergent narrative, the main inspiration being games like Jagged Alliance, XCOM, and Aliens: Dark Descent on the digital side, and Five Parsecs from Home and FREAKZ! on the miniatures side of things.
The design process and playtesting has given me a great reason to dig out a bunch of miniatures I painted years back, such as the zombies I was working on when this blog kicked off. In addition, I’ve obviously been printing and painting lots more zombies – fast ones this time. On the list are also some private military operatives as well as scifi civilians, all the usual suspects for a game like this. I’ve had a lot of fun doing some headswaps etc, both digitally and physically. For making a horde (well, 20+ minis) and working with a limited number of suitable models, the option to mirror models before printing is pretty useful. It doesn’t really add a ton of variety, but it’s something! So, here’s a bunch of painted models, they are mostly from Lost Heresy with a bunch of Knight Soul Studio heads thrown in. They’re overall lovely to paint, as they’re nice clean sculpts withouth excessive detail.
Click for a larger version
Click for a larger version
Click for a larger version
Glad to be back to blogging! No idea how regularly I’ll be posting, but it’s nice to resurrect this old thing every once in a while.
Dawn of the Lead 
Welcome back to the blogosphere. It certainly does come and go in waves of activity. I think that posts on your game creation process and considerations (and rejections) of various material and mechanisms would be very interesting reading.
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Thanks, also for the good idea! I do find myself wanting to talk about the game design process, so maybe this would be a natural platform to do that.
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Great to hear from you again. I enjoy your posts.
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That is genuinely really nice to hear, thanks!
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I feel your pain, I’m finding it harder to come back and blog. I do like the direction your going, back to game development.
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It’s definitely a thing! For me, most of my work involves writing, writing, and writing, so I’ve found that I want to do it far less in my spare time than I used to. This said, I’d kind of forgotten how much fun documenting this stuff can be.
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Good to read this post and hear what you’ve got planned! 🙂 It’s no doubt going to keep you busy! Mirroring 3D prints is a good idea – I’ve bought some animal/monster types in the past and the sellers have been happy enough to mirror them for me to give me more variation.
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Good to see you back mate – all the cool kids play blogging so you’re in good company 🤘
Nice Zs too!
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Cheers Alex!
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