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This was one of the half-finished minis in my end of the year finish-it-up pile. When the news about David Bowie's death broke I pulled him out to finish him. Shadowrun first came out in 1989. This figure (originally a Ral Partha, now from Ironwind Metals) came out in 1993. At the time the future aesthetic was terribly 1980s, and all the male elves looked like Bowie's Goblin King from Jim Henson's movie "Labyrinth". He is a decker. This involves having actual computer implants in his skull and having to carry around, in his hands, a gigantic 1980s-style keyboard and computer, because the future is not wireless. Ah, well. I'm not sure how well the figures sold, since Shadowrun is not necessarily a game that lends itself to minis scale combat (being prone to car chases and virtual reality). I like them anyway, as a bit of '80s retro-futurism noir.

These are old Ral Partha sculpts from Iron Wind Metals. They are assorted deckers and /or riggers from the Shadowrun game, i.e. people Of The Future who use computers in a virtual matrix and puppet combat drones in the physical world. It occurs to me that decker miniatures are not much called for, since all of their relevant gameplay is in online virtual personas which don't tend to look like people and in an environment where mapping out positions is impossible, so tabletop gameplay with minis is ... a little diffuse, at best. So I wonder how much demand there actually was for figures of the "meat space" physical reality of the deckers, the people who (this is so '90s a vision of the future) carried big physical keyboards in their hands and had to be physically wired into the computer network, including physical implanted wire plugs in their skulls! I love these figures for their outdated vision of future tech. Also they are lovely little sculpts. Anyhow, I have here the elf man from the set 20-572: Elven Deckers - Male & Female; the woman (who turned out to be an elf) from set 20-524: Riggers & Drones (5); the human woman decker from the set 20-501: Deckers (3);and the orc man decker from the set 20-595: Assets Inc. I: Shadowrunners. At the moment I've primed them with Titanium White and washed them with Burnt Umber. The hair is only blocked in so I can do the faces; it will be elaborated later. I am still working on the faces, although I like this first one: Elves are supposed to be a bit full of themselves, so I tried for a haughty look. Speaking of an obsolete vision of the future, this one is wearing cut-off jeans. I'm dissatisfied with this one's face. Fortunately in-game there are prosthetic "Chibi eyes", so I can paint them over weird and claim that's what they are. This guy is full of personality, although you can really see how bizarrely retro the idea of the tech is. Yep, he has to lug that thing around wherever he goes because there's no way a portable computing and communication device could be made, I dunno, pocket sized. As usual, this thread may be sporadic as my painting time is almost random between art projects.