From StuartL - Running with Sharp Objects - Local History and Sarah's Library Cart - 50 Points

Hello again,

    For my second post this week, I have a library area themed offering for the Local History section. As a British ex-pat living in the centre of Japan, I have lots of options. The three great unifiers of Japan (Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu) all came from the area near where I'm living. Numerous famous battles were fought nearby including the Battle of Sekigahara which gave Tokugawa the Shogunate. Heck, the Mitsubishi Zero was developed and produced at a factory nearby, so that would be an option. So, with all those possible options, I have opted to go for.... my hometown area of Teesside in the North East of England. Everyone knows Japan has a lot of cool wargame related stuff, let's talk about a less well known area of the world. 

    Teesside is, as the name implies, the area around the Tees river in the UK. There are no big, famous cities in the region, though York, Durham and Newcastle aren't far away and have a bit of history to them. Nope, Teesside is kind of boring. It is also kind of poor. The main industries in the region are the type you don't really want to live near, chemical works and steel mills, though more and more they have been closed down and moved overseas. When I was a child we would get yellow and orange clouds, perfectly normal, right?

    So, we have a small population, not much in the way of sightseeing, any good points? Well, Pendraken miniatures is in the area, and the Battleground show is held in late November, so those are worth a visit if you are in the area.

    With all of the preamble out of the way, it is time to look at the local history. And... there isn't much of note here either. In the top 20 events in Teesside, only a battle between the English and the Scots in 1138 would be related to wargaming, and it isn't a period I usually focus on, so I went looking further afield. Rather than looking at regular history, I started looking at 'future history'. Fellow challengers, I would like to invite you all to step into the future with me and take a look at the impossible events that will occur in the far flung time of er... 2019. 

    Back in the early 80's there was a Science Fiction movie made set in the futuristic dystopia of 2019. That movie wasn't really a big hit, but went on to become not only a classic, but the core of a whole aesthetic look. Blade Runner set the tone for the whole Cyberpunk genre for years after its release and still has an impact on the designs and styles that are used for that setting now. The director of the movie, Ridley Scott, was born in South Shields, a little to the north of Teesside. When he was making Blade Runner he was looking for inspiration for the setting, and part of that came from the various heavy industries around the region.

    The opening scene for the movie, dubbed the Hades Landscape (YouTube video here if you want to see it), was heavily influenced by the chemical factories in Teesside. Apocryphally the chemical works were used to shoot the scene for the movie, but it was later confirmed that they just provided the inspiration for it.

    So while the rest of the world may quickly be heading towards a grim, dreary future, just know Teesside has been a hellish dystopia for decades already. 

    Of course, we need a model to go with all of that, so I'd like to present my own Blade Runner.

    The model is a 3d print from a maker called Unit9 who does all sorts of cyberpunk related minis. I copied most of the colours from stills taken from the original Blade Runner movie. I didn't paint the correct patterns on the tie and shirt, but I feel the overall look is close enough. The figure also has a cybernetic hand and an SMG that Deckard obviously didn't have in the film. 

    

    I should have some more cyberpunk minis before the end of the challenge, as I had a few more printed out. In my previous posts, you may have seen me make reference to writing a set of skirmish rules for my own game system. While I am currently writing the rules for a fantasy setting, it is my hope that they can be expanded to cover other genres, including cyberpunk. We shall see.

    And with that, I am off to the next section of the library. I think I will visit the Gift Shop next, so to pay for my trip on the library cart, I have (yet) another Reaper Bones mini.

    

    This model is quite heavily armoured, but I wanted to take a break from metallics (see my recent 40K posts), so I opted for a dark red leather look for the armour, making her look more like a savage barbarian ranger.

For scoring:

2x 28mm = 10 points

Local History = 20 points

Sarah's Library Cart = 20 points

TOTAL = 50 Points.

    That's all from me for this week, see you next Friday.

From Millsy: You are a master of understatement Stuart! Saying York "has a bit of history to it" is like most of us saying "I have a few miniatures in my pile of shame". You are spot on though when you relate Tineside to the grimdark environs of Bladerunner although I expect the latter has better noodle bars.

Your very own bladerunner has plenty of noir about him just like the movie version and feels like he'd have fit right in on screen. Maybe this is Deckard 2.0 and he's short a human-like hand having had a couple more interactions with other (yes I really said that!) replicants? Nice work on the barbarian too, you've got a restricted palette but have kept things interesting which isn't easy.