Here is my second starter gang for Nuclear Renaissance, a posse of loosely affiliated lawmen and mercenary adventurers known as 'The Road Warriors'.
First up is the Road Judge and his 'V8 Pursuit' car, this started out life as a 1:43 James Bond, diamonds are forever, Ford Mustang; a 1973 Mach 1 to be precise (stock photo shown below) this die cast came attached to a base shaped like a section of pavement, the reasons for this soon became apparent, it was a very fragile little car, definitely a display piece and never strong enough to be a real 'toy'.
I decided on a homage to the 'MFP' police cars of the first mad max film, as the shape of the mustang was broadly similar enough to the ford falcons used in the film; there are some obvious differences, the mustang lacks the rear doors and is a lot more svelte and 'coke bottle' than the stubby XA's and XB's of the movies...
Here's a couple of shots of 'Big Bopper'. Roop and Charlie's car that gets thoroughly trashed during the films opening sequence.
The mustang received mesh side windows, a front air dam made from a piece of imperial guard dozer blade smoothed out with greenstuff, a long range fuel tank (another IG bit) mounted in place of the rear window, larger exhausts and a roof bar with lights made from fuses and a siren.
I went for a simplified version of big bopper and March hare's paint scheme, albeit a lot more worn and dirty; the yellow was a sod to paint, using averland sunset as a base with bad moon yellow on top.
I really wished I'd gone for a copy of the films famous black car about half way through the umpteenth coat of yellow!
I also renamed my fictional police force from the MFP (main force patrol) to the MRP (main road patrol)
When it came to painting Road Judge i decided against copying the black leather uniforms of Mad Max's police, and went for a brighter, more cartoonish look, trying to evoke both 2000AD and the flashy Op's of dark future. Yellow armour and gauntlets tie him in to his car, with a helmet stripe to reinforce the point.
Next up is the post apocalyptic Englishman seen in an earlier post, the rather overblown background dicarded and boiled down to a bare name 'The Limey' driving his heavily modified Morris Minor Hot Rod 'Diana'.
Diana started out as a corgi Morris, as seen below, part of a Kellogg's promotion in the late 80's or early nineties.
I fitted larger wheels and a supercharged engine block, plus armoured panels (track guards) exhausts and stowage.
Together I think these two make quite an amusing post apocalyptic caricature.
Last up is Stobart the courier and his 7.5t truck 'Roadrunner'.
In my opinion EM4's Thug miniature really looks the part as a stereotypical sweaty lorry driver (although possibly more of a Brit HGV driver than an American trucker)
I didn't take a before photo of the truck, suffice to say its on a much smaller scale than the rest, and was originally meant to be an articulated truck cab, with a bit of imagination though, it can pass as a light '7.5'ton truck.
The dozer blade, exhausts and rear deck were built from yet more leftovers from the ever useful imperial guard vehicle accessory and chimera sprues, the rear wheels were removed and larger wheels were doubled up in their place; Ben Hur style wheelhub spikes and various junk representing the armour and blast shielding were made from various bits of sprue and rubbish.
My favourite little touch is the roof vent, cut off a matchbox scale VW.
So that's the foundation for gang number two for Nuclear Renaissance, it comes in a little short points wise compared with the sons of Simius, but that just gives me more room to grow! At the bottom of the post is my gang roster....
Soon I'll have more terrain to post up and hopefully at some point in the not too distant future a battle report, we have had a couple of games already but not bothered to take any photos due to some horribly crude terrain proxies i.e. Beers cans and fag packets!
We had a good laugh, the game was very easy to pick up although I don't think we were using the full depth of the rules, house rules and friendly compromises were the order of the day.
Both matches ended up lasting about 45mins to an hour with both ending as victories for the road warriors, the first a whitewash, the second a much more close run thing as my friend got to grips with his characters and the gist of the game. There were plenty of cool cinematic moments....and several WTF moments as well!
For example....With a heavy truck bearing down on him, and nowhere to hide, Limey made an incredibly lucky pistol shot, killing the driver behind the wheel and causing the truck to flip out, missing him by a centimetre and hitting terrain instead, destroying the truck and killing the unfortunate passenger Krump.....
By contrast, by dint of some appallingly bad dice rolls, Krump spent both games firing off his powerful shotgun at anything within range without managing to do anything more than dish out the odd shock token and repeatedly jam his gun.
I might have to do a little bit of rebalancing of the lists, roadrunner seems a little too all powerful at the moment, I might downgrade the armour to make him a little more vulnerable to small arms fire.
Road judge is also a very dangerous character being able to use the speed of his car and his powerful long ranged rifle to make reliable kills on the first turn, which can be a bit of a downer for the other player. The marauders are very focused on getting into ramming range and melee as quickly as possible and some longer ranged firepower might help even things up.
Gang 2 road warriors - convoy
Road Judge (hero) - 30
Driver - 7
Fighter - 10
Lucky - 20
Marksman - 6
Skilled - 20
Rifle - 90
Large weapon - 10
Total - 193
V8 Pursuit (buggy) - 20
Supercharger - 25
Race tuned - 15
Total - 60
Limey (soldier) - 20
Action man - 12
Driver - 6
Fighter - 8
Marksman - 4
Dodge - 10
Pistol - 70
x1 grenade - 10
Total - 140
Diana (buggy) - 20
Supercharger - 25
Reinforced armour - 10
Total - 55
Stobart (driver) - 15
Driver - free
Rammer - 5
Strong - 4
Mechanic - 5
Knife - 5
Total - 34
Roadrunner 7.5t (truck) - 30
Extra armour - 30
Plough - 15
Blast shielding - 15
Total - 90
Judge & pursuit - 253
Limey & Diana - 195
Stobart & roadrunner - 124
Total - 582
