Chummers and drekheads; A Shadowrun log

[Yorrik]

My friends and I have started up a Shadowrun game, and I decided to convert and paint a mini for each character. Miniatures are somewhat unnecessary for Shadowrun, but it seemed like a fun challenge. There are four characters in the game:

Fusebox, a troll adept who specializes in hand-to-hand combat with a lightning-theme.

Big Exit, an ork drone rigger who wears a bomb collar.

Unkind Conspiracy, an elf street shaman with a meddling streak.

Data Drain, a human hacker with a dark secret (she's a vampire).

Most of the minis will be coming from Hasslefree and have not yet arrived. Finding a suitable mini to represent a Shadowrun Troll is a ngihtmare, however, which means that I had to go off the reservation for suitable parts. This is what I've managed to come up with for Fusebox:
For his legs:

For his head:

For his torso:


It's going to be a lot of sawing, pinning, and greenstuff, but I think I'm up to the task.

[Yorrik]

Managed to saw, cut, and grind the various pieces into usable bits. I've cobbled the pieces together with supportive chunks of greenstuff to produce a workable framework:



Tomorrow I'll sculpt the musculature and whatnot. I plan on adding some gashes and other wounds to the fists - Fusebox is a brawler and routinely mangles his hands through the course of his work. While I was stripping the head of paint I accidentally knocked off one of his horns. Fusebox's player decided that it was appropriate for him to have (violently) lost a horn at some point, so I've decided to leave it off and sculpt on a broken nub.

[emperorpenguin]

Awesome! I used to love playing Shadowrun back in the early 90s. I had a Troll Street Samurai, gotta love the Remington Roomsweeper!

[Brother Muninn]

Fusebox is looking good. I was a little worried about how the torso would fit onto the legs, since it looked to me like the ogremage was leaning forward, but it looks like you straightened it out just fine. Look forward to seeing it Thursday.

~Muninn

[Yorrik]

I got the remaining miniatures today:

From left to right you have:
Unkind Conspiracy (who will be getting a skirt, gobs of frizzy hair, a cowboy hat, and some sort of amulet)
Big Exit (who will be getting a bomb collar and some tusks)
Data Drain (who will be getting a hoodie, a commlink, and a taser).

Following an evening of sculpting, I managed to finish Data Drain. Her commlink looks like a walkie-talkie, but I feel that's appropriate since out Shadowrun game is looking for some of that retro-anarchist feel.

The Hasslefree minis are very well-proportioned, which was a bit of a surprise for me. I'm used to working in "heroic" scale, which is the scale that Fusebox is built in. Trolls are supposed to be big, but FB looks to be 10 feet tall when standing next to the others - just one of his burly arms is bigger than Data Drain's entire body! FB's player is fine with the cartoonish difference in size, and I'm warming up to it also.

[Yorrik]

SO here are the minis lined up int heir various stages of completion:

Now, as you can see, Fusebox the troll ended up at a wildly different scale from the others. I wrestled with it for a while, but I finally decided that I just needed to find a different mini for him if I wanted to preserve the visual coherence of the set. So, back tot he drawing board!

[Brother Muninn]

He's a big-un alright. You should still finish him so we can use him as some kind of martial arts oni in some future RPG.

~Muninn

[Waylander]

Is he really that out of scale for a troll?
Looks alright to me

[Yorrik]

Alright, I've been picking at the minis and have got them all converted up. Big Exit and Data Drain are done, and UK and Fusebox are still WIP.

Data Drain was done first. I'm reasonably pleased with her, even if the sweatshirt makes her look a little paunchy:

The symbol on her sweatshirt is supposed to be a smiley face with fangs. DD is very subtle and secretive about her vampiric nature, you see.

Big Exit is my favorite mini so far. The base mini is a fantastic sculpt, and I was able to make the conversions (greenstuff tusks and bomb collar) without any problem:

I don't know what possessed me to give him a Confederate Flag belt buckle, but there you go.

UK is still WiP, but the conversion is done at least. I'm trying to use more color than you might expect from a cyberpunk setting, and I'm pleased with the results:

I'm tempted to paint her coat with colored patches or perhaps a spray-painted symbol or something. UK is a Raven shaman, so maybe a raven of some sort will make an appearance.

Finally, Fusebox's player wasn't thrilled about the replacement mini I found, so we're going with the first (huge) mini. I've made peace with it, and have started on the tattoos:

As you can (sorta) see, Fusebox has an elaborate full-sleeve tattoo portraying a tree in full blossom with a sneaky dragon hiding among the branches. I'm pleased with how it is coming along.

Hopefully I can get some better pictures taken soon.

[Yorrik]

Quick update with better pictures, taken by the ever accommodating Brother_Munin.
Unkind Conspiracy:



Data Drain:



Fusebox:



Big Exist. I realized today that the character has a cyberhand. That will be an easy fix, though:



And the whole team lined up:

[Veteran Sergeant]

Awesome! I used to love playing Shadowrun back in the early 90s. I had a Troll Street Samurai, gotta love the Remington Roomsweeper!

Shadowrun was one of my earliest RPGs. We had a copy of 1st Edition in all its confused cross genre implausible cyberpunk madness. The Rocker archetype was hilariously bad. By 3rd edition however, it was actually a pretty solid game. I couldn't reconcile the changes made to the game and setting for 4th edition though. Felt like FanPro essentially ruined it, and lost sight of what had made that game so cool in trying to make it more futuristic trans-humanist, and less gritty cyberpunk.

Totally off topic though. Nice work with those figs. The troll turned out really good.