Cyber Mechanic

Cyberpunk Chopper and repair bots

28mm 

"The future is already here, it's just distributed unequally"

This skilled mechanic and his AI assistants can fix weapons, vehicles, and any high-tech gear you need for your next combat run or burgling Arasaka's core facility or some other near-suicidal heist.  Just don't ask him to fix your cyber implants... he draws the line at anything interfacing with human meat.  

All Reaper miniatures. 

Future Freelancers

Devo Ranks, Cyberist

28mm

I saw this amazing cyberpunk hacker sculpt online a couple of times, and just had to have it!  It was surprisingly hard to get, but shipping from the US was more than worth it.  It's from Reaper's new Bones USA line, which are cast in extraordinary detail from some kind of resin-plastic mix.  Really quite amazing!

Since the sculpt is quite androgynous, I painted Devo up to mark International Non-Binary People's Day on July 14.  The jacket is inspired by modern Japanese street fashion.

 

Jeb Underscore, free agent

28 mm 

 

Rain or shine, Jeb always gets the job done.  He's not a bad guy, mind you, he's got standards.  Professional like.  Bodyguarding, debt collection, bounty hunting, light to medium larceny, that sort of thing.  If you pay him to babysit, he'll gladly play with your kids for a few hours and shoot anyone who tries to hurt them.  Accompanying him on most jobs is Boo, his pet Denebian devil, all teeth and claws and very protective of his owner.

Jeb is a Mark Copplestone sculpt from North Star Military Figures

 

"I won't lie, I prefer shine."

Cetacean cyborg

Jones
28mm scale

Jones heaved half his armored bulk over the edge of his tank, and I thought the metal would give way. Molly stabbed him overhand with the Syrette, driving the needle between two plates. Propellant hissed. Patterns of light exploded, swarming across the frame and then fading to black. We left him drifting, rolling languorously in the dark water. Maybe he was dreaming of his war
in the Pacific, of the cyber mines he'd swept, nosing gently into their circuitry with the SQUID he'd used to pick Ralfi's pathetic password from the chip buried in my head. - "Johnny Mnemonic"

Jones is a cybernetically enhanced dolphin, used by the navy to sweep and hack sea mines during the last war, and addicted to amphetamines to ensure his obedience.  He somehow left the service with his implants intact, but to feed his addiction he now lives in a tank at a grubby fun park, as a low-rent attraction for the children of Nighttown... "Talk to the War Whale!".  One day, razorgirl Molly Millions comes to him with a challenge: a data courier with an encrypted program in his head that only Jones' implanted superconducting quantum interference device can unlock...

 

He was more than a dolphin, but from another dolphin's point of view he might have seemed
like something less. I watched him swirling sluggishly in his galvanized tank. Water stopped
over the side, wetting my shoes. He was surplus from the last war. A cyborg.
He rose out of the water, showing us the crusted plates along his sides, a kind of visual pun,
his grace nearly lost under articulated armor, clumsy and prehistoric. Twin deformities on
either side of his skull had been engineered to house sensor units. Silver lesions gleamed on
exposed sections of his gray-white hide.

I first read "Johnny Mnemonic" in high school in the 80s and poor Jones stood out to me as one of the great characters in a story crammed with delicious cyberpunk detail.  I clearly wasn't the only one; Jones made a memorable appearance in the cheesy Keanu Reeves movie (loosely) based on the story.  I opted for a sleeker look here than in the film when I converted a WizKids dolphin.

"Why are we here?"  "Because Allison doesn't really have any
cyberpunk minis.  Also the dolphin was lonely."

Brutally Enhanced

Grafted nightmare
28 mm

There's no shortage of possibilities in artificial body modification.  Many mods are sleek, streamlined or even invisible, greatly augmenting their wearers' abilities without even changing their clothing size.  But for others, the visibility is intentional: bulging vat-grown muscle tissue, extra or extended limbs, and bulky cybernetics.  The most extreme mods go beyond even the minimal legal restrictions, and must be sought from overseas black clinics, or just a medical school dropout operating in a dirty garage with stolen tools.  The results are often horrific: barely-human monstrosities driven by social disengagement, distorted self-image, and violence...

This miniature is a real mystery! I received it in a swap many years ago, and have no idea who made it or what exactly it's supposed to be.  It kind of has shades of "Weapon X" from Marvel comics, and "Adam" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"Stay back... This guy's one of those Shinjuku jobs..."

 

Treasure planeteer

Captain Karzen Alessandro
28mm

Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!

The right of salvage falls to any spacers who find a wrecked ship with no survivors.  But some are not above bending that condition, including the part about it being wrecked in the first place...  Karzen is a veteran captain who has survived numerous close quarters shootouts, explosions, and decompressions, though not without horrendous scars.  His cybernetically-attached plasma blaster is a brutal but effective weapon, and he never misses.

 This is a Stargrave figure from North Star Military Figures.

 

"Trying to poach my salvage, space squid?  I stole it fair and square!"

Hard-hitting Hannah

Hannah (Stargrave cyborg)
28mm 

Once I wanted to be the greatest
two fists of solid rock

A climate refugee born with tiny arms and hands in the chaotic, sprawling Frankfurt Displacement Zone, Hannah Gupta seemed destined for a hard life.  But her father scavenged and repaired a mismatched set of adult prostheses for her, and she grew up as the kid others came to if something needed to be fixed... or a bully needed to be taught a lesson with a very long right hook.

Now she works the ships, traveling across the solar system from Venus to Triton, but never too far to send her parents a video message and a credit transfer.  And she earns enough that her new arms are custom fitted, with swappable heat- and chem-resistant titanium hands for work, and tactile synthskin ones for play.

And these?  These are her fighting hands.

"A boxing match?  I think I pass, Earther... Perhaps we go drink instead?"

A Stargrave figure from North Star Military Figures.

Mind over matter

Psykers
15mm

If you could read my mind, love,
What a tale my thoughts could tell...

The first children born with what was called "Mehdi's Syndrome" were seen as isolated birth defects: smooth, almost reptilian facial features, large hands, and complete hairlessness.  Many simply underwent facial surgery and led seemingly normal lives.  As they matured, however, it became apparent that almost all of them possessed truly bizarre mental abilities: strong telepathy, telekinesis, sometimes even limited precognition of future events.  Some were taken into government programs, others fled to the lawless demi-monde or remote areas to escape.  All were considered a threat, but also an opportunity for those who sought to control and harness their power...

The Psykers are Alternative Armies figures.

Cyberpunk Oni
15mm

Tough, brutal, yet surprisingly intelligent, Oni are sought after as enforcers and soldiers by many an underworld boss...

I've painted this Alternative Armies figure before, but I got another one in a trade and thought I could do even better!  It definitely needed more than a new colour scheme though, so I added a bit of greenstuff and an old 28mm Necromunda laspistol.  This guy's hands are so big, it doesn't even look out of scale.

Two Special Unit psykers snare a
dangerous foe...

15 mm catch-up

Wasteland Witch
15mm

 

 

I'm a little behind on blog posting!   Anyone following my Instagram can see it all there, but I've neglected this site :(

The Wasteland Witch is a great Loud Ninja Games figure, that I got from Alternative Armies in the "Mutants 1" pack.  Perfect for offering post-apocalyptic PCs a side quest, or rare items.  I liked her so much I made her a little hut or hovel to lurk in:

"Seeking answers, you have come!  Yes... about the Before Times!"

 

Robot Hound
15 mm scale

They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.

An Alternative Armies figure... I added the tail.  Is it a loyal space pooch or a deadly assassination device?  Cyberpunk writers definitely lean to the latter...

Caught at close quarters, they didn't stand a chance...

Soldat de Vide
15 mm

This amazing one-off Steampunk-style Alternative Armies figure caught my eye a while ago, and I'm blown away by it in person.  First, it's just a really cool design; I love the diving-suit-style helmet and old rifle.  But as an Instagram follower said "It looks like 28mm".  I don't take any credit for that, it's such a great quality sculpt that it COULD be bigger and still considered excellent!

If Victorian SF/Steampunk was a slightly larger and less saturated market already, this could easily be the basis for a really cool army...

Shock to the System

Cyberzombie Revolutionary
15mm

It was a night
Hell of a night, L.A., it really was
Oh what a riot
I said yeah, come on
It makes my life feel real
Fear police and civil corruption oh yeah
Is there a man who would be king
And the world stood still

In 1993 Billy Idol released his fifth album, "Cyberpunk".  Its questionable musical merits and cultural impact aside, it gave us the absolutely bomber song "Shock to the System"... and its slightly cheesy but enjoyable video.

The video's loose storyline is of a civil riot of some kind.  A lone camcorder-wielding man witnesses a group of police beating somebody. When they discover that he's seen them, they badly beat him in turn.  The smashed fragments of his camcorder incorporate themselves into his battered body to produce a lurching technological monstrosity with an enormous camera protruding from one eye socket. Totally not a metaphor for anything...

"It'd sure be weird if everyone could record what's
happening around them at any time..."

 

This conversion is based on a Khurasan zombie.

"This won't seem so farfetched in 2021, folks."

Inspector Deck

Cyberspace Operator
15 mm

I move through the third world
my third eye's the guiding light
Invite the fight, we all die tonight

Whether they're carrying out a mission on the mean streets or moving through the world of the 'Net, an operator has to be a lightning-fast expert at fighting and hacking.  Their skills with a cyberspace deck and advanced weaponry are the difference between executing reconnaissance, theft, or delivery without a trace... and being just another dead console cowboy.

The Operator is a minor conversion of Duxis Drone Pilot from The Ion Age.

"Streets are like a jungle, can't let my cypher crumble..."

Cool and the Gang

Cyberpunk Crew
15 mm

For an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

Whether you need to smuggle pirated simsoft cartridges through Yakuza territory in Neo-Tokyo or extract a star scientist's bioengineered child out of a fortified corporate compound in Arizona, this band of hard-hitting underground operatives are up to the task.  Equipped with high-tech weaponry and armour, biological and cybernetic enhancements, and the coolest of long coats (because it's raining... it's always raining), their motto is "No job too big, no ICE too black"...

Figures are Khurasan, duffel bag objective marker is by me :)

The gang encounter hunter-killer bots, courtesy of the zaibatsu they recently robbed.

Cyberpunk Standoff

Cyberpunk Standoff
15 mm

Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah
Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition

On the neon-lit, corporate-controlled streets of the mega-cities of the future, those with the power make the law, and those with the money have the power.  A B-Secur private police officer faces off with a mysterious hacker... Is he a mere criminal, or a revolutionary?  Is there a difference any more?

I've had these Khurasan figures in my collection for years.  They're really cool (especially the gangers), but they're scaled a bit small to fit in well with my other 15mm figures, and so they've unfortunately languished.  I'll see if I can get them painted up and post them in a bit.