We always love to see players getting into our games, and one player who often catches our eye with his impressive set-ups and battle reports is Søren 'Bloodbeard' Bay from Bloodbeard's Garage! His Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse blogs have all been great reads, and so when we saw how excited he was about Reality's Edge we thought we'd invite him onto the Osprey blog to talk about getting ready for the Cyberpunk Skirmish Wargame. Be sure to follow his Facebook Page and check out all of his content at Bloodbeard's Garage!

Hello fellow sprawlers. Normally I post my hobby stuff under my blog Bloodbeard's Garage, but I’ve been offered to guest blog here at Osprey Games. So I’ll be writing a bit about the process I go through whenever I jump into a new game.

It’s no secret that I’ve been extremely hyped over Reality’s Edge ever since I learned it was coming. And my own anticipation has grown as I’ve planned projects, models and terrain in my mind over the last year. Now there’s three major reasons for me looking forward to this game:

1) It’s an Osprey Games hardback – and the quality of those books have been super high.

2) It’s written by Joseph McGuire – and I’ve already played a lot of This Is Not A Test.

3) It’s cyberpunk – and I love cyberpunk settings. Deus Ex, Shadow Run, Bladerunner.

In this blog I’ll write a few things about my thoughts on the game, my first crew, some terrain pieces and objectives. I’ll put in some WIP shots of stuff I’m working on – and then later I’ll follow up with detailed descriptions and photos of the finished projects.

An actual review of the rules and book in general, will be published on my own blog.

The book

Reality’s Edge is exactly as I’ve expected; a giant neon and chrome colored sandbox to play with – a 320 pages behemoth of material. Nice little fluff pieces are mixed into rules and item descriptions, so my imagination got going while reading through the book. Most of us will already have a strong idea of own own cyberpunk universe from whatever fiction we prefer, but the book does a good job hammering out the scene with descriptions and artwork.

So where to start

Not knowing the balance of the game or having a campaign in progress, I’ll start by simply building a crew of models I find cool and statting them up. I’ve gone for an Enforcer (I imagine my hero close to how I played Deus Ex), Console Cowboy (because hacking is a huge element and Neuromancer is great) Sprawl Ronin (I’ve wanted an actual street samurai for a long time) and two gangers (to bring the punk into cyberpunk). I left plenty of crypto currency in the bank, because it seems there’ll be a lot of expenses fixing up and bailing out my guys.

Next I planned out which scenario to play first and made objectives/NPCs towards that. I usually do this with every game – so I have the everything ready. I ended up with the Electronic Redundancy JOBOP, with a Griefer Avatar variable and Lock Down Hitch.

I'll need to make a few ICE models (thinking white, glossy samurai), a Griefer Avatar (something painted red and shiny) and some CAT terminals. That’s doable, nothing too big to start with.

Miniatures

Reality’s Edge offer profiles for a host of NPCs and player characters. There’s really every opportunity to get into the bit collection and build something up. This skirmish book offers so many options, that you’ll risk drowning if going for the ‘complete bestiary and objective collection’.

I’ve been collecting cheap bits and random sprues for this other time, wanting to kit bash all the models for this game. With a lot of cutting and glue I’ve build the below team. No green stuff or sculpting was needed. I was aiming for a badass look, with lots of visible augmentations and some punk.

 

Terrain

I always want to play on a fully tied together board – it does everything for my gaming experience. We play for story telling, cinematic action shots and the ongoing campaign. And all this happens for me with a board that fits together.

For my cyberpunk board I wanted to build on what I already had – a huge collection of modern city terrain from my Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse gaming. So with a few specific upgrades, my 3’x3’ board should jump ahead a few hundred years.

‘Asian’ things: Billboards, posters, noodle shops, tuk-tuks, pandas. In all good cyberpunk there’s non-defined Asian stuff mixed in with the English. So a few pieces should make the board pop.

Bright hover vehicles: A few flying cars, trucks and a noodle shop. Get some toy cars, use masking tape to make some scifi stripes, paint in bright colors, use wash to make tainted windows. Perhaps use old ear plugs to make hover exhausts where wheels used to be.

Billboards, adverts and neon: Cyberpunk needs some color among the depressing grey. There need to be billboards and hanging ads in bright or neon colors. Some could be bought, some I can make myself from prints.

Trash and terminals: The sprawl should be filled with nasty alley. There need to be trash piles and discarded furniture around. And then ofcause there need to be terminals in the Sprawl – they are a big part of the game.

Everything should have a very weathered look, so I’m going to use a lot of wash.

Work in progress

Here’s where I’m currently at with a lot of projects. Quick pieces to bring out the cyberpunk feel. All this stuff needs printed paper details (posters, adverts, newspaper scatter), further details painted and weathering.

Hover craft

A flying taxi and a noodle shop. Inspired from the Fifth Element and build on a base of cheap Chinese fishing boat models.  Made from thin wood and not MDF.

Tuk-tuks and hover car

Cheap tuk-tuks made from aluminum soda cans, repainted. The hover car is a broken computer mouse with a few details added.

 

Food stalls

A neat little set of four food stalls from TTCombat. Upgraded them with some cheap keychains I found. The adverts are glued to some model ship scrap plastic.

The community

Make sure to check out the community page on Facebook. There’s a bunch of cool inspiration to get there and the file section is already booming with cool stuff. To help get you started quickly, there’s a lot of printable details for terrain and vehicles in there.

Thank you for reading and checking out my process. Make sure to drop a comment and let me know what you think. I’ll be following up this blog when all the stuff is finished.

To see more from Søren, be sure to check out Bloodbeard's Garage and follow his Facebook Page.