By Nelson Schneider - 08/14/22 at 05:44 PM CT

To celebrate my birthday this year, I asked Chris to crack open the lovely Bunkers & Badasses Deluxe Boxed Set I gave him for Yuletide two years ago (but which arrived last year thanks to the supply chain cock-up) and run a game for the MJ Crew. His body language suggested that instead of asking him to run a new tabletop game based on an IP he absolutely loves, I’d just dumped a bucket of dead hagfish over his head, but he said he’d “get around to it.” So, while I waited for Chris to come up with a less-than-creative excuse to get out of some B&B mayhem, I decided to crack open my own Deluxe Boxed Set and paint the included Vault Hunter miniatures.

I’ve been painting tabletop gaming models for many decades, and frequently enter them in my county fair, where I typically take home blue ribbons, and one year even won Best of Division for my “Troll Scoutmaster.” Unfortunately, with the COVID pandemic in effect, I haven’t participated in the fair, and haven’t painted any miniatures since at least 2019, with my last real efforts being representative figures for the MJ Crew’s “DragonLance: Age of Mortals” campaign, which ended in 2014. Unfortunately for me, everyone on my Mom’s side of the family develops presbyopia at around age 40, and I wasn’t spared this affliction. It got so bad that last year at about this time, I had to start wearing bifocals, after never wearing any kind of glasses prior to that.

Thus I was quite nervous about breaking out the old paints and brushes again, as I was filled with concern that I simply couldn’t see well enough to paint teeny-tiny pewter or plastic figures like I could when I was younger. My fears were for naught, however, as my progressive lenses (which still don’t allow me to see ‘systemic racism’) work well enough that I had no trouble seeing just how… small, chintzy, and lacking in detail these B&B miniatures actually are.

Included in the Bunkers & Badasses Deluxe Boxed Set are a collection of Vault Hunter miniatures representing the playable characters from the first two ‘Borderlands’ games, for a total of 10: Brick, Lilith, Mordecai, Roland, Axton, Maya, Salvador, Zero, Krieg, and Gaige. I was curious to see how other tabletop gamers dealt with these figures and their glaring lack of detail in some aspects (such as Lilith’s hands and Maya’s face) and overwhelmingly nitpicky details present in others (such as Mordie’s entire outfit made of belts, like a character out of some terrible manga), so I searched around online for some images of these miniatures… and came up completely empty-handed. Not only are images of these miniatures in their stock, un-painted state rare online, images of them with paintjobs simply don’t exist.

Perhaps Gearbox and Nerdvana overestimated the crossover appeal of a tabletop RPG based on ‘Borderlands.’ In spite of the overwhelming popularity of the DLC, “Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep,” the Greater Nerd Community doesn’t seem to have purchased B&B in significant numbers or, if they have, aren’t sharing their thoughts online – which seems inconceivable!

Left to my own devices, I occasionally used official ‘Borderlands’ character art for inspiration, but with the New-U System and the wide array of cosmetics in ‘Borderlands,’ I also put my own spin on the Vault Hunters.

The Big Guys

I started painting with Brick and Zero, since they’re the biggest – and thus most detailed and easy-to-paint – Vault Hunters in the box. We all know Brick has been in touch with his feminine side recently, plus with Matt playing Brick during our coop game – and Matt’s love of pink – I decided to give Brick a lovely pink shirt… with torn-off sleeves. He’s also sporting a Torgue-brand rocket launcher. Zero was, quite honestly, the easiest Vault Hunter to paint, since he entirely consists of large, flat surfaces and his costume is 99% black and silver. Krieg is the last miniature I painted, largely because I dislike him, but also because, for a Big Guy, the scaling for this miniature seems off. Krieg should be as tall as Zero and as beefy as Brick, but this miniature is neither, even accounting for his hunched stance.

The Little Guys

Mordecai honestly looks pretty stupid doing Jazz Hands without a weapon OR a bird-thing in-hand. Axton and Roland turned out okay, in spite of both miniatures lacking in facial detail. I’m pleased, though, that I was able to get everyone’s skin-tone looking right. Lastly, we have Salvador, the Gunzerker, holding a pink-and-purple Grog Nozzle, since, if you are gunzerking and NOT holding a Grog Nozzle, you are doing it wrong. Also, since Salvador and Chris are functionally the same person, I decided to mod my Salvador miniature to make him look more like Chris: Goodbye Gunzerker, hello Gutzerker!

The Ladies

In my world, bra sizes start at F-cup and go from there. Unfortunately, there’s no Moxxi miniature in the B&B box, so I modified the other ladies to have head-sized chest-melons, but tried my best to keep their signature clothing styles intact. So Lilith has a purple t-shirt with a really stretched-out collar, Maya has her signature yellow onesie/leotard-thing, and Gaige got a new/bigger anarchist’s hoodie. If you think this is disgusting or misogynistic, then fuck off and stop being mastraphobic! Anyway, I’m really disappointed in the lack of facial detail in the two Sirens (Gaige actually looks pretty good), as well as their miserable little Trump-hands.

In the end, I can absolutely understand why no one else is posting pics of their painted-up Vault Hunter miniatures: The miniatures themselves kinda suck (except Brick, Zero, and, to a lesser extent, Gaige). Both my old D&D miniatures by Ral Partha and Warhammer miniatures by Games Workshop exhibit far higher quality. Of course, most of my old miniatures are metal instead of plastic, and probably not made in China!