Preview - Breaker Kids

I've mentioned over my last three posts that I was trying to get my existing Broken Contract miniatures before my next Kickstarter from Breaker Press arrived.  I made it...with a day to spare.

I was excited when I backed the Breaker kids but much like their previous Kickstarter when the product arrived my expectations were exceeded, drastically exceeded this time around.

When Nick started hyping up the Kickstarter one of the things he talked about wanting to do was not having wasteful packaging.  This resulted in the new models (and the add-ons as well) being packaged in MDF shipping containers that can be used as scenery for your games!

I think any modern or sci-fi gamer would agree that those containers are awesome, and are immediately useful.  But they were part of the pitch, and I mentioned that my expectations were exceeded.  Somewhere around the midpoint of the Kickstarter Nick realized he could throw the slats in that were cut from the containers, and some a-frames to build some scatter terrain.  Having just received the package a few hours ago I haven't built anything with mine yet but when I do I'll show those off.

I really just want to emphasize to anybody who's read this far that I've talked about how awesome this product is, and I haven't even talked about the models themselves, all the above is just...the packaging.  I really hope this continues from Breaker Press and in a perfect world I'd love other companies to see this as an idea they should jump on board with.

On to the kids (and the dog) themselves.  The figure set comes with five figures; one male and one female teen, one male and one female pre-teen, and a dog.

The figures themselves are obviously perfect for Broken Contract but could also easily be used for Shadowrun, Cyberpunk or any modern or near future games.  The textured MDF bases are a really nice touch, especially for gamers that want to step their basing game up to the next level.  The detail is nice and crisp on the figures, and they should be a joy to paint (check back in a week or so).  I'm excited to have some genuinely new and different figures in my collection unlike anything else I've already got.

Hopefully in the next week or so I'll be showing off these figures painted as well as some neat add-on accessories I got with this Kickstarter.

Check out Breaker Press at https://breakerpress.storenvy.com/

-Jay

Some multi-use Clix

I mentionned in my last post that while digging out a few superhero figures I can across some other figures that would work well for Shadowrun (not to mention a variety of other games as well).

This morning I've got 2 of those figures to show.  One of them I do a have a very specific purpose in mind for but the other is one of those  'I can use this for anything!' type figs.

First up is a completely repainted Unus The Untouchable figure.  Unus is an old school X-Men villain and one of the original (if I recall correctly) members of The Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants.  I've never really liked the character and the original paint job was ugly as sin but I might be playing in a PL10 superhero campaign that's basically a 'tights-free' zone so I thought he'd be perfect as my character model if it ends up coming together.  The character concept is basically police officer by day, vigiliante by night using the paragon archtype straight from the DC Adventures main rule book.  That's the plan but I think this guy would also make a decent golden-age era adventurer figure as well.

My second fig is just a touch up and he barely required any touching up at all.  Another cool detective/undercover agent/MiB type who should be useful in; supers, modern and near future games.  Not much to say about this guy other than the fact that when I get a fig like this out of a blind pack I'm always super-happy because I know I would never actually use it for Heroclix so I have no issues with hacking it off the base and it will get used dozens of times for many different games.

Hopefully I'll be taking everybody back to Gotham for a second time tonight!

-Jay

Street Samurai

When I started collecting Hasslefree Miniatures a few years ago with the intent of using them in a modern day survivial horror game there were a few figures that once I got them upclose didn't quite work (in my mind) for my intended purpose.  The great thing about putting that stuff aside and holding onto it until later is that one day it turns out to be exactly the figure you need for a game you didn't even know you were going to play.

Immediately prior to starting this blog last year I pulled out a few dozen unpainted Hasslefree Miniatures to paint and one of them that got put back was 'Grant'.  Grant looks amazing but he was slightly (and only slightly) too high-tech looking for what I wanted.  In fact the major sticking point for me with the figure was that his Ingram MAC-10 looked all modded up in the way I expected an Ingram Smartgun in Shadowrun to look.....

So now I'm looking at jumping back into Shadowrun and after downloading and printing the quick start rules I see I will need a Street Samurai figure who is; bald, armed with an Ingram Smartgun & 2 sidearms.

Welcome back Grant!

-Jay

Time to sweep the streets!

 

The longcoat of the law

I can always tell when I'm getting manic about a project because I start cranking stuff out faster than I need it and before I've even figured out whether I need it or not.

This morning while I was taking short breaks to let paint and washes dry on my Orc Hacker I used the time it freed up to paint another figure for a potential Shadowrun game.  This figure will make a great detective NPC and I had him laying around with some Rezolution stuff I bought a few years ago.  He's a fairly basic looking guy in a long coat with the exception that he has what looks like some sort of body armour fastened to the front of his coat.

I'm not sure whether I'll need him or not but he seemed too cool not to paint.

-Jay

Looks a little lightly equipped to stop a group...maybe he needs some friends.

 

Same guy from the back.  I definitely think the cargo pockets on the coat add a sci-fi feel.

 

 

Orc Hacker

Apparently I've been big on gaming nostalgia lately (painting Starship Troopers, digging out my Warzone stuff, etc) and now with all the talk about Shadowrun on various forums lately a few friends and I have decided to return to one of our old favourite RPG settings.

Being the miniatures guy in our group I took stock of what I had already done that would work for Shadowrun (quite alot as it turns out) and then I started looking at obvious holes in my miniature collection I would need to fill.  The 2 things it looks like I need that I'm struggling abit to find miniatures for is meta-humans and hackers.

The challenge with meta-humans (Orcs, Elves, Dwarves & Trolls for those of you not familiar with the game) is that although there are a ton of sci-fi meta-human figures out there almost all of them are meant to blend stylistically with Warhammer 40,000 and the look of Shadowrun is more near-future than far-future.  The challenge with hackers is that most of the hacker figures I can find are from the Infinity line which are absolutely amazing models but look a little too slick and polished (in my opinion) for a Shadowrun group.

For my first new figure, which is both a meta-human and a hacker, I settled on a figure I scavenged from a copy of Earth Reborn I got a few years ago with his head removed (it was a human with a gas mask) and replaced with an Orc head from an old D&D prepaint.  He`s still a little more high-tech and slick looking than I would like but he can definitely fit with the system.

-Jay

Orc Hacker