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I'm introducing a full cyborg (think General Greivous in Star Wars or Robocop if unfamiliar with Rifts) as an npc into a Starfinder game and was wondering if anyone had a suggestion for what mini to use. I've got the official one from Palladium but, like most of their products, it looks IMO substandard and dated (understandable given it is from the early 90s). Any suggestions for modern sculpted minis? Here are two examples of what I'm looking to resemble.





The closest I've thought of at the moment might be some sort of Infinity heavy armor fig like Mobile Brigada but I'm not sure if the red color and bubblegum crisis nostalgia is clouding my judgement, lol.

Mantic enforcers might work.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Mantic enforcers might work.

Thanks. I initially thought about them but my info was out of date and I discounted them. I only remembered the original restic ones and the "lighter" ones weren't bulky enough and the captain (the only enforcer I remembered) looked like he was a fat man wearing a mechadiaper from the back. Plus the issues with restic. I agree that the helmets/heads are quite close to the borg art I'm trying to resemble and they now have normal plastic minis for a few years.

 warboss wrote:

Oh, man. This is giving me all the mid 90's nostalgia feels.

Why did Palladium have to so transparently become such a mountain of gak?

I have no suggestions, other than maybe some kind of space marine/ necron kitbash to get that bulky cyborg look. Good luck in your search.

Thanks and agreed. The original Kevin Long Borg pic was one of my favorites and Rifts is the game that got me started in hobby gaming (albeit with a Robotech character in a Rifts campaign). The failure of Robotech Tactics at backers' expense means that I won't be buying even token amounts of anything Palladium related (which is why I didn't back Savage Rifts) going forward so I'm looking for an alternate mini.

 feeder wrote:

Oh, man. This is giving me all the mid 90's nostalgia feels.

Why did Palladium have to so transparently become such a mountain of gak?

In my opinion, you grew up and they didn't. Someone could probably come in, buy the IP, and do something interesting about it, but Palladium isn't that someone, I think.

Siembada has said he only kinda-sorta uses the RPG rules for his games. You know, the ones he wrote.
He's been infamous for years for taking manuscripts authors spent months or years on, with feedback, throwing them out and rewriting them over a weekend. Which explains a lot.
The mechanics for the Palladium system are basically a very homebrewed D&D knockoff extended to try to add vehicle combat and such with mixed levels of success. You can get fun results with them... but why not use something betteR?

I think there was a short-lived 90s/2000s line of Rifts minis, but I'm guessing they're unavailable or horrible.

 Balance wrote:


I think there was a short-lived 90s/2000s line of Rifts minis, but I'm guessing they're unavailable or horrible.

They're still available and just as good as you'd expect for minis that, like most of their book line, were mediocre upon release in the mid 90s iirc and not ever updated. Here is the official borg set I have.

https://palladium-store.com/1001/category/Miniatures.html

What about from Infinity?

If you want to go cheap you can get Titanium Man Heroclix and rebase him.
Repaint if wanted... there are also other older figures you can get for next to nothing
that are decent sculpts, with a new base and a coat of paint you cant tell
where the figure came from.

https://www.trollandtoad.com/p134601.html

 Stormonu wrote:
What about from Infinity?

Those are TAG's, so about the size of a Warjack, for warmachine, or a dreadnought in 40K. They might be a good base for something on scale with a SAMUS, or Glitterboy though.

You'd have to do some conversion work for the guns, but how does this look?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Games-Workshop-Necron-Pariah/123101747460?hash=item1ca96f9904:g:9e8AAOSwkOda2JwB (link is to some guy's ebay post)

I just popped in to say Kevin Long is why I got into Palladium Games when I was a kid. The cover artwork, the superb work in all the Robotech books, etc. It had nothing to do with the rules or Kevin's work, lol.

Stormonu wrote:What about from Infinity?

Spoiler:

I've been looking at infinity (hence my mobile brigada idea above) but I've found that the heavy armor guys are the better size fit than TAGs (even the small ones like Geckos). As suggested above, TAGs would be a great stand in for powerarmors like the glittery boy for your example and ultimax with the recent blackjack release though.

Genoside07 wrote:If you want to go cheap you can get Titanium Man Heroclix and rebase him.
Repaint if wanted... there are also other older figures you can get for next to nothing
that are decent sculpts, with a new base and a coat of paint you cant tell
where the figure came from.

https://www.trollandtoad.com/p134601.html

Thanks. I looked initially at the prototypical Iron Man and especially War Machine minis in the clix line but wasn't familiar enough with the rest for other ideas.

Elbows wrote:I just popped in to say Kevin Long is why I got into Palladium Games when I was a kid. The cover artwork, the superb work in all the Robotech books, etc. It had nothing to do with the rules or Kevin's work, lol.

Same here. His Robotech core RPG book (the 1988 edition) is literally the reason I got into gaming as mentioned above. In 1990, a student had the book on his desk in class and I recognized the "robot" from the cartoon that I enjoyed and I struck up a conversation about it. Once I got the core Rifts book, the borg art was instantly added to my favorite list as well (followed by more of his NGR art once that book came out).

The NGR is great!

 Mmmpi wrote:
The NGR is great!

NGR was indeed (for its time). The industry had yet to move largely to a standard of full color art, more complex digital layouts, and cohesive rulesets (even industry leader TSR was still putting out clunky 2nd ed in two column B&W at the time). It was my first (and only at the time) rpg experience so the clunky rules didn't bother me but the cover art was top notch as well as some of Kevin Long's final interior art.. plus you got a small comic book in the middle of it too! On a side note, I've been looking at the Mantic peacekeeper enforcers mentioned above as a possible borg replacement and I think they're a good albeit chunky stand in for the NGR series of upgraded borgs.

It's a shame that more people didn't back the Rifts Kickstarter otherwise we might have had a few miniatures 8 years from now.

 stanman wrote:
It's a shame that more people didn't back the Rifts Kickstarter otherwise we might have had a few miniatures 8 years from now.

More people would have if they hadn't fethed up the RRT KS so badly.

...and if the rules would have been anything approaching decent.

As to the original question, I'd say that your best bet are indeed the Mantic ones, unless you manage to find some Bubblegum Crisis' boomer minis :p

EDIT: ...what do you know, GZG are still doing their BGC line

https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/bgc-figures/bgc-02.html

Albertorius wrote:As to the original question, I'd say that your best bet are indeed the Mantic ones, unless you manage to find some Bubblegum Crisis' boomer minis :p

EDIT: ...what do you know, GZG are still doing their BGC line

https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/bgc-figures/bgc-02.html

Spoiler:

I forgot about boomers despite my saber/brigada comparison above. At the risk of sounding like a gaming princess and the pea, that's spot on for the boomers and really good for a red borg but a bit too old school looking for my tastes. It's a well sculpted mid to late 90's looking mini (as opposed to the Palladium one that looks like it came from the mid to late 80's but was released in the mid 90's)

stanman wrote:It's a shame that more people didn't back the Rifts Kickstarter otherwise we might have had a few miniatures 8 years from now.

I suspect most people, to borrow a quote from Carmen, were willing to just sit back and "watch it burn" instead given the lack of prepartion shown in the campaign. Besides, with all the disclaimers and indemnifications that he put into the wording of his project (ironically the one fully fleshed out part of the campaign was the CYA section!), he could have sent backers a circular disc with a picture of a borg glued onto it and it would have met the terms of his very one sided terms and conditions even before we get into additional layers of protection that the shell companies and international status of those involved provide.

Aberrant Games has these two guys:

http://store.aberrantgames.com/abg2021.html



http://store.aberrantgames.com/abg2023.html

It's a good robot mini but it's a bit far from the visual reference I posted in the OP. After the suggestion above of a heroclix mini that I wasn't familiar with, I decided to do a search of the range to see what else I may have missed. I found a war machine that is sculpted a bit leaner and more movie universe style than others I knew about. I'm not a fan of the traffic direction pose but the overall shape might work. I'd obviously have to cut off the back mounted machine gun and add in back cooking pipes and a rifle.

Well, I got the minis and quickly stripped and converted them over the last two days. The mini is definitely tall and lanky which I think is ok for the modern version of the borg (less so for the original inspiration). I didn't realize that the angle didn't show off the back cooling tubes much but here's the progress pic so far. The standard equipment now (at least in the Savage Rifts version) seems to be a giant two handed chainsword and the light rail gun so I tried to incorporate both in my second attempt on the left. I wasn't particularly happy with my original attempt on the right due to the traffic cop raised arm pose.



A comparison pic from the current art:

Great start! Paint should be easy. Just some red and a dark wash and off you go!

I didn't know anyone ever made boomer miniatures - that's what the Rifts borgs art was based on anyway...so that would have been pretty ideal. Also, there may be some 3D printed stuff floating around? Surely someone has produced some.

 feeder wrote:
Great start! Paint should be easy. Just some red and a dark wash and off you go!

Thanks. I think my first attempt was trying too hard to be literally the same as the art (or as close as I could get for free with my bits box and some effort) to the detriment of the model overall. I'll definitely be going with red for the borg but might throw in some black as well similar to the Nomad Infinity minis pics in the OP.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
I didn't know anyone ever made boomer miniatures - that's what the Rifts borgs art was based on anyway...so that would have been pretty ideal. Also, there may be some 3D printed stuff floating around? Surely someone has produced some.

I haven't seen any 3d models for free download but if you have any you know about them feel free to post links. In my customary image search prior to starting a project, I found a deviant art account with a borg 3d render in addition to the official board game images though. As for boomers, Alberto posted images and links to some classic boomer minis above.

Those both look great.

Thanks! Just a quick update...I worked on them over the weekend but found out the hard way that the clix details are relatively shallow compared with normal figs. A thin primer coat and two very watered down red base coats plus a wash all but obliterated some details like the the eyes and mouth to the point where I wasn't able to detail them further. I had to strip the models again in acetone (hopefully the quick dips don't destabilize the CYA glue) for a repaint. I'll have to but a red basecoat/primer to get it done in one layer hoped plus a wash them highlights.

Edit: Sorry about the edits but Android autocorrect is going crazy over even normal words spelled correctly like coats and detail!