First up, for the "scout" bonus round of our challenge group is a Lurking Panther from the Darwin's World post-apocalyptic campaign setting.
From the Terrors of the Twisted Earth:
"Descended from the mountain lions and puma of the old American wilderness, the lurking panther has had to evolve certain features to compete with the more dangerous predators of the Twisted Earth. The lurking panther’s long spindly neck allows it to observe its prey’s movements by placing the head high above, often among a tree’s branches or poking through thick underbrush or sand; in addition, its eyes sit on the end of pliable stalks, which further allow it to conceal its body behind cover and still observe unseen."
I'm aware that it looks more than a bit goofy but it's from the period in time when I was determined to have minis for all my RPG monsters, before the (Pathfinder) pawns bug bit, but I was damned if I wasn't going to complete such a simple paint job.
Second up there's the first of my dual-role miniature for a new project.
This is an a Iron Lords sniper from the (newly revived!) Anvil Miniatures range. I am rather fond of their definitely not Space Marines honest guv!" aesthetic, and as soon as I got into my local Kill Team scene I jumped at the
He will be pulling double duty as a soldier in the Dynasty setting - a long running sci-fi politics RPG run by a friend of mine. Think West Wing meets Babylon 5 (or The Thick of It meets Red Dwarf if you're feeling uncharitable).
To cut a long story short, my current characters dad came to power by consolidating the survivors of a post-apocalyptic high tech earth and somehow made the jump to
The period that I am calling the Warlord Era wasn't examined or simulated in any depth, beyond the outline our GM graciously gave me to kick start this project so I'm going to be working on my 28mm sci-fi minis with this setting in mind. There may be games.
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Powered Battle Armour was used by all faction in the Warlord Era, but most extensively by Solarin and his lieutenants towards the end of the war after they had captured significant portions of the Earth's remaining industrial capacity.
The armour pictured here is a relatively advanced model of local produced armour, especially as the Warlord factions had little access to nanotubes from which to make the much more flexible combat suits used by the Juntas marines. Marks are hard to put on this era of suit production, as many secondary systems were a cottage industry and un-standardised compared to the main task of producing the main suit structure and systems. This is illustrated on this particular suit by the exposed filtration tube on the front left of suit.
This non-standard application may have been to do with where the suit was operating. Although we do not know where this photo was taken, the use of the urban camo cloak suggests an urban environment (Solarin forces rarely repainted powered battle armour as they had to be redeployed quickly). Additionally it seems strange that PBA units would be issued with sniper weapons given their relative utility as close assault troops. This all suggests that this particular unit was operating in an area hostile to unarmoured troops, perhaps an area of high CBRN contamination, uncontained industrial pollutants or even an area still heavily infected with JS1E1. There are at least 2 documented occasions where Solarin set up long endurance missions with PBA forces in infected environments, essentially operating freely along enemy lines while having a safe, uncontested area to retreat into.
