Daily life in a capitalist dystopia.

This weekend I finished the cyberpunk food stalls. And I couldn't resist dusting off (literally! what mini's and terrain I already had that could be used for cyberpunk skirmishes.
And I couldn't resist setting up a little scene:

Another day in the Snafu Estates food market. Celene was among the crowds of sprawlers, seeing who was being sloppy with their gear or cred sticks, as her twin sister Lunae stood at the edge of the square, eyeing up a mark. Lothar was working his side gig as guard for "Sloppy" Joseph's Cajun Ramen stand, and Bruiser was at the local CAT terminal, shooing sprawlers off as it was downloading whatever VR-anime he was was into this week.  Boss Rogan was about to order a can of "Chemisty" powerjuice from Bunny's stand when "Cheshire" his shadowbacker's avatar popped up beside him: "Look lively, trouble's here" it said, a moment before the twin doors to the plaza slid open...

Boss Rogan receiving warning from Cheshire, his shadowbacker's AR avatar, as Lunae and Bruiser (their decker) can be seen in the background.

Lunae (just at the left edge of the image), Bruiser and Lothar. "Sloppy", with his sixth sense for trouble, has already ducked behind the counter of his food stall...

 Celene was just about to grab a fistful of creds from a sleepy salaryman's open tote when, just in time, Rogans warning came in her earpiece. A split second after, a CorpoSec squad walked in. "Citizens, please remain calm, this is a routine patrol. Please be ready to present your idents!"  "Routine patrol my ass!" Lothar thought, seeing them in full combat gear and on guard.


As I had them all out, I thought I might as well take a pic of the whole collection:

 The whole lot (Not all are suitable for Reality's Edge though... The back rows especially fall outside the scope of the rules.)

The sprawlers/operatives and a Gov.Mil heavy combat section in powered armour behind them. At the  top right you can just see "Cheshire" an avatar of one of the many Shadowbackers operating in the Sprawl.

At the rear a trio of Exo-Frames, two Police riot suits flanking a military grade special ops unit.
To the front:  a pair of special ops operatives, considered to be loose cannons by many, and a 10 man SWAT unit. I've also got a crew of mini's and a second crew of CorpoSec troopers, especially to build and paint for Reality's Edge.

I'm currently reading through Reality's Edge rules, and so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. The way the rules are written are rather inspiring, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they perform in an actual game!

Seen you next time!

The faceless crowds

Yesterday a bag of 1/50 scale railroad  passengers arrived at my home.
Today, they are finished... It must have been the fastest turnaround I ever had for mini's!
Well, mini's, tokens rather.
I've been looking forward to getting my hands on Reality's Edge, a cyberpunk skirmish wargame from Osprey. For certain scenarios in the game you need up to 3 "mobs" of bystanders on a 4" diameter base and up to 6 separate ones on 1" bases.

 Yesterday I set to work with some plasticard and a circle cutter. Luckily the figures are styrene, which means I can glue them to the base with regular plastic glue.
Today I had a quick session with the airbrush, to get them finished. I wanted them to represent the "faceless, grey masses of humanity" that often feature in cyberpunk fiction. So, I decided to do them monotone grey, a simple zenithal shading job, up from black primer, followed by two tones of grey. The base I painted with the darker tone of grey, followed by a rough pass with a ivory sand paint, to get a bit of contrast between the cold grey of the figures, and a slightly warmer tone for the base.

Cleaning mold lines and attaching them to the bases (The Space Marines are there to ensure I leave space for a miniature in the base: the rules allow for certain figures to hide in crowds):

All assembled, ready for primer:

 Painting done. Monochrome and anonymous, so the terrain and operatives can shine:

 And with two of the food stalls I'm also still working on.

Maybe, just maybe, at some point in the future, IF the monotone does turn out to clash with the painted terrain too much, I may add some muted colours with washes here and there. But at this point, I'm considering them finished.

Can't wait go get my hands on the rules themselves and dig in!

See you next time!

High-tech lowlifes street food.

I had a long weekend this weekend, which gave me a bit more time to do hobby stuff. As a result the airbrushing stage of my three Cyberpunk food stalls has been finished. They are made by Micro Art Studio for Infinity. But they will work for any cyberpunk setting. Mine aren't quite as gaudy as the originals, though I did add some decoration. What is left now is adding some washes, detail painting and weathering/chipping/grime by more "traditional" painting. As I was at it, I also did a set of data terminals and an info hub. Because you do need something to hack at some point. ;)

Here are the WIP pictures:

The info hub is a first attempt at airbrush OSL, but I'm not as neat/skilled as I would want to be with it. I think it's acceptable for a scatter terrain piece, though. 

Roofs and doors are kept separate, so mini's may make use of the cover they provide. 

I may add some bits and pieces to the stalls in the future. To show they are food/tech/whatever vendors. Perhaps as loose inserts, so I can get more functionality from them. Now to find a source of tiny sauce bottles, takeway cartons/bowls, etc...

See you next time!

Post vacation update.

Well, that took me a while now...

Lots of stuff took my attention away from the hobby for a bit:
-Studying for a qualification that would net me a "permanent" contract at my workplace. (I succeeded on the exam, so now I'm once more in permanent employment. Yay for financial security!)
-Work was busy, so often in the evenings my batteries were drained.
-The efforts to get my mother into the necessary psycho-geriatric care are still ongoing. But there seems to progress.

But I've now arrived at the last day of my three week summer leave, and have remedied the lack of hobby progress...  I had to spend the first week of it studying for the qualification exam. After that was done I could get down to serious relaxing.  I had brought my painting kit along on vacation, plus a squad of my Word Bearers and a squad of Chaos Cultists I'd paint for a friend. I figured I'd finish one or the other this vacation. That's not exactly how it went.....

I finished both! As well as a second squad of Word Bearers, when we went home for a day in-between!

Here they all are:

The gunnery squad. Both the unit champion and the specialist have been partially magnetized, to give them a measure of flexibility in their loadouts.

The assault squad. Here only the specialist is magnetized.

The cultists are un-based, as my friend will handle the basing himself.

Part of the reason they all went so fast is because I had a clearly set out goal to paint these to a tabletop standard and not lavish too much time on them (I will be taking more time for centrepiece models, but rank-and-file I'll be focussing on speed and looks en-masse.)
I had taken a headstart on the basecoat a while back with the airbrush, giving them a zenithal primer and airbrushing on the red of their armour. After that it was mostly just basecoating the details, giving the models an all-over wash and adding some selective drybrushed highlights here and there. Basing was done equally quickly with a GW basing mix (Agrellan badlands, I believe) followed by a wash and a drybrush.
I've currently got an Aspiring Champion, a (Finecast) Dark Apostle and a Master of Possessions ready for primer. Those I'll spend some more time on painting. And I'm building a unit of 10 possessed and a Hellbrute to be the second batch of rank-and-file models to speedpaint.
That should get me the core of a Word Bearers army in a relatively short amount of time.

My goals for this project are to:
A. Get an army done within a (for me) reasonable amount of time spent. (Not counting the occasional hiatus. Like the one the past few months, between doing the basecoat and actually finishing the models this month....)
B. Finally do something with the stockpile of Chaos models I've had since 4th/5th Edition 40K.
C. Actually, finally, own a fully painted, functional army, other than my Orks, which are now 3-4 editions behind the times. (They still work, but I lack all the fancy gear from the Post-Stompa era...)

Ofcourse, this throws a spanner in my plans to work on preparations for the release of Reality's Edge, the Cyberpunk skirmish game from Osprey... But eh, the muse flies where she flies.

See you next time!