I needed a break from my paperwork so I am started to paint my robot vermin.
Picture of my robot vermin being painted. When I grab a paint brush and a tin of paint this will be my sixth or seventh interation through these sculpts. I usually will use two new colors to paint or touch-up the miniatures at one time and perhaps a third to touch up the miniatures I have already painted.
Set of 5 UNPAINTED 28 or 32mm Sci-Fi robot vermin can be found at HeadBunny Games. HeadBunny Games is offering a 10% dicount when making a purchase from their website. Use the following discount code: " winter23 ". "Can be used as vermin, drones or swarms of technological pests."
Were the vermin come from and whether they are being created by humans or an AI? "No-one knows." In a post-apocalyptic world they fit in to the scenery. They seem to provide one or two services, one is surveillance and the other is sharing to resources with memebers of of their order. They mainly obtain energy from sunlight and from the air. THey also can share energy through a Bluetooth like apparatus. These robots are made from the readly available junk that perminates their environments around ruined industrial areas. They are self aware and are able to protect themselves if needed.
Updated on 12/13/23 @ 12:50 pm. Added label and edited second paragraph: background story.
I found another site where the author has assembled a collection of his DIY stuctures and scenery depicting what looks like a post-apocalyptic scene. To add to the ambience, rust and grime has been added affectivly to the structures.
Universal Studies, Mortal Engines
The antagonist Shrike, was a resurrected one that was rebuilt in last century. Ninety percent robot, but he still holds on to his human mental facilities (however slight they may have become over the decades, there is no one left to judge). Built as Stalker and mechanical warrior and having received a commission from the Lord Mayor of London, Shrike is on his way to arrest and kill Hester Shaw, a protagonist in Mortal Engines.
“Shrike moves through the suburbs streets with his head swigging slowly from side to side. Bodies drift in the flooded rooms, like cold tea bags left too long in the pot. Small fish dart in and out of a pirates mouth. A girls hair coils on the currents”...
Mortal Engines, book 1, Philip Reeve
Oh, oh!
“The flash of a crimson robe out in the Digestion Yards caught Tom’s eye. The major of the pirate suburb had come down to look at his latest catch, and he was strutting along the walkways outside the cells, surrounded by his bodyguards. He was a tiny little man, stooping and hunched, a bald head and scrawny neck jutting from the cat fur collar of his gown.”
Mortal Engines, book 1, Philip Reeve
Table of Contents
Part 1
The Hunting Ground
Valentine
The Waste Chute
The Out-Country
The Lord Major
Speedwell
High London
The Trading Cluster
The Jenny Haniver
The 13th Floor Elevator
Airhaven
The Gasbag and Gondola
The Resurrected Man
The Guildhall
The Rustwater Marshes
The Turd Tanks
The Pirate Suburb
Bevis
The Sea of Khazak
The Black Island
In the Engineerium
Shrike
MEDUSA
Part 2
An Agent of the League
The Historians
Batmunker Gonpa
Dr. Arkengarth Remembers
A Stranger in the Morentains of Heaven
Going Home
The Eavesdropper
Chudleigh Pomeroy Sees It Through
Wine and Nibbles and the Dawn of a New Era
Idea for a Firework Display
The Cathedral
The Shadow of Bones
The Bird Roads
An alternative cover and edition
Mortal Engines, Universal Pictures, November 27, 2018
"The Jenny Haniver was no elegant sky-clipper, but was in fact a culmination of bits of junk scavenged from junk yards. “There was an envelope of silicon silk from a Shan Guo clipper, twin Jeunet Carot areo engines off a Paris gunship, the reinforced gas-cells of a Spitzbergen war-balloon, it is amazing what one can find at a junkyard”.
Mortal Engines, book 1, Philip Reeve
“So we all go,” She tells herself. “Even the richest and most powerful are only meat for cheshires in the end. We are all nothing but walking corpses and to forget this is folly. Meditate in the nature of corpses and you will see this.”
Emiko, Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi
The author puts a lot of work into this diorama. The military vehicle is plastic kit, but the structure is scratch built. I was amazed while I watched the author add details after details to this diorama. Watching this video was a truly rewarding experience.
“Man, is his blindness, greed, and arrogance, has fouled the God given earth. His ant-heap cities have emptied their filth into the rivers and the sea and turned them into vast sewers. He has poised the air with deadly fumes. These fumes, I suppose, were not only products of industry but of radioactivity…”
Dr. Calthop
Flesh, Philip José Farmer
I have just completed the last in Farmers Grand Master series.
This video will take you through the process of converting two hard-played with Matchbook models into a Post Apocalyptic Zombie tanker. The authors steps through multiple steps to convert these models into a realistic Mad Max themed vehicle.
"Lunatique" is short Sci-Fi Short Film presented by DUST that depicts a post-apocalyptic world. The story-line is quite abrupt, as you might expect a depiction of a post-apocalyptic world to be. However, that being said the cinematography in this short clip more than makes up the difference.
Dashboard of a Spinner, a futuristic flying vehicle
Blade Runner 2045 is a cinematic feast for the eyes. There is plenty of vivid color, texture, and dramatic music scores. Not to mention the realistic din of a large city. The plot was intriguing, however I not all that sure that I got whether the boy or the girl survived or did they both survive?
LA is mega metropolis with peoples of all types of cultures. It seems that LA has grown and uses San Diego has its garbage dump.
San Diego is now a large scrap yard and garbage dump.
Hit with a dirty bomb Los Vegas is a waste land.
This is my first Post-Apocalyptic shanty and my second scratch-built shack & shed. It is number 12 in the Shacks & Sheds series. I built it in 1/72 scale for war-gaming terrain and it will be one of many eventually!
It is built to represent an all steal construction, steal plates that might have been savaged from abandoned or grounded ships. You can see other elements of steal plates that have been left to the sand and rust. The shanty has seen occupancy by many bands of post-apocalyptic adventurers. It has been attacked by the elements and with chemical and biological weapons.
Sometime last year Plastic Soldier Review reviewed the miniatures from 35 board games. The author did not review the miniatures from Gear World, so I have taken it upon myself to review these miniatures.
Gear World contains 100 soft plastic miniatures. They come in red, green, blue, and white and measure 20mm from the bottom of their base to the tip of their bayonet. The base measures 3mm, so the miniature itself is 17mm. These miniatures are used only for markers to mark territories and other possessions of each player.
Although there isn’t too much in the way of facial details there are some details on the rest of the miniature such as rucksack and ammo pouches. There is only one pose.
| Method | Maximum Movement Points |
| Foot |
1
|
| Horse |
2
|
| Riverboat |
8
|
| Ship |
10
|
These special rules apply for the first round:
Players skip the Build Phase entirelyI previously made a post on the five phases of play. Within I mentioned that several of the five phases are dynamic. The Production, Trade, and Transport phases or GearWorld are dynamic phases, meaning that during these specific phases determination of whether these phases will be resolved are determined by a die roll.
Die Rolls
1-4: Players resolve the phaseIf the phase is skipped players proceed to the next phase.
Reading through a twenty-four page rule booklet once can be a painstakingly slow process, but to turn around and read through it a second time is pure joy. In order to understand all the games nuances reading through the rule-book a second time I will do.
The rule-book includes many illustrations, and sidelined boxes that illustrate and describe the games five phases. Here are the five phases with a short description :
|
Strength Points
|
|
|
Land
|
1
|
|
Horse
|
1
|
|
Bridges
|
2
|
|
Riverboat
|
3
|
|
Weapon
|
3
|
|
Skyworks
|
3
|
|
Ship
|
5
|
|
|
|
|
Movement Points
|
|
|
Horse
|
2
|
|
Riverboat
|
8
|
|
Ship
|
10
|
|
|
|
|
Building Costs
|
|
|
Weapon
|
1 iron, 1 coal, or 2 gold
|
|
Riverboat
|
3 scrap
|
|
Skyworks
|
1 scrap. 1 iron, 1 coal, and 1 gold or 4 gold
|
|
Bridge
|
1 scrap, and 1 iron
|
|
Ship
|
4 scrap or 4 gold
|
|
|
|
|
Turn Order
|
|
|
1.
Build Phase
2.
Production Phase
3.
Trade Phase
4.
Transport Phase
5.
Battle Phase
|
|
