Tuesday, March 23, 2010


I picked up this Sky Sweeper Jet from the current G.I. Joe toy line to convert into a futuristic jet for the Shadowrun setting. I figured I could use it as a transport type vehicle with limited VTOL capabilities. This is a neat little model that comes with landing skids which is a big bonus. Of course the cockpit will need to be re-scaled. I'll use the same method I used on the Skip Tracker model of using a plastic strip forward on the canopy to denote the size of the cockpit then I'll paint the rest of the canopy as the hull.

This is the spot I'm going to place the plastic strip which should make the entire model look appropriately scaled for 28mm miniatures. I'm also planning on adding some door/hatches to make the model look even more to scale.

Here's the shot of the model with a few modern and sci-fi miniatures from various lines. From left to right those lines are; Foundry, Void, Reaper, Copplestone Casting, and Games Workshop. I think it scales nicely out of the box. It might also make a pretty good shuttle or small craft for a sci-fi space setting although I feel the wings are a bit too long wide for that. Perhaps a drop ship type craft as well.

Another shot from the front with a Void militia model. The engines are a little tweaked because the support pieces are made from a softer plastic but I think I can fix that.
A 3/4 view from the other side with a Reaper Chronoscope miniature. I can't express enough how nice it is to find this kind of toy with landing skids. Making any kind of landing gear from scratch is a nightmare and really taxes my feeble scratch building skills.

A shot from the back with a Games Workshop Necromundia figure. I think it's going to make a nice little vehicle for Shadowrun and other futuristic games. It only cost about $15.00 so I may be able to afford a few more painted in other colors or with different role variations.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Shadowrun in Miniature







Well I've decided to start a new project doing a set of miniatures for Shadowrun since I'm currently playing in two long term Shadowrun games. I've already got quite a few human modern and Sci-Fi style minis so I'm not going to spend any extra time on human minis unless they are security types or gangers or other NPCs.





My plan is to focus on the meta-human races. My short term goal is to do several of each race and do male and females. Because some races are going to be harder and more expensive to convert and aren't played that often anyway I'm not going to have the same goals for each.


I plan to build 10 Elves evenly split between males and females and spread pretty evenly between archetypes. Elves are probably second only to humans in popularity and they are somewhat versatile. I'll probably avoid doing a heavily armored street samurai type but I'm going to try and cover the other common runner types. Obviously I'm going to be using lithe minis for most of these figs and either doing head swaps or sculpting ears.


I plan to do at least 8 Orcs. Orcs are a fairly common race especially for combat characters and hackers. I'll probably lean more heavily on the combat side with the orcs. I want to do at least three females but I might do four if I can find good figs for conversions. I'm going to have to look for some big human minis for these guys.


For starters I'm only going with 4 Dwarves. They aren't that common as runners. Obviously I'll probably do at least two riggers and a female shaman. The fourth will probably just be a generic runner. It's going to be hard to find good dwarf minis. I'll probably have to look at Warmachine for the mechanic types.


Trolls are going to be hard. I'll probably use Ogres for base minis and I'm only planning on making 3-4. Hopefully I can find at least one suitable female fig. These are also probably going to take more sculpting than the other conversions.



Of course another part of the project will be doing vehicles and drones. Fortunately I have a lot of options out there. The Infinity game has some nice combat bots and there are some other lines out there with some good stuff. Even some of the constructs from D&D could make exotic drones. Very small scale tanks can be turned into tracked drones as well.

Well hopefully I will be able to get some good stuff together. At the moment I just plan to add post to this blog but if things get going I might do a blog just for the project.