Thursday, February 20, 2014

Twilight Creations demons as 1/72 monsters

I've mentioned these figures before. Twilight Creations, best known for their "Zombies!!!" games, put out a boardgame called Dante's Inferno, which fittingly includes a number of demonic monsters. Mike at Bunker Talk found out that they work pretty well with 1/72 figures, and Twilight Creations actually sells them separate from the core game for very cheap. I'm going to start a project with a few of these, so I thought I'd finally photograph them.
Here are all the poses. The Beelzebub figure on the far left is a bit on the large size, but there's only one of these per set. The other poses, of which there are four each per set, are a much better fit to Sven the 1/72 comparison viking. As you can see, the poses suggest all kinds of monsters: classic demons, medusas, gargoyles, and all sorts of other creeps.
Here's a closer look at the snake woman, along with a medusa archer from the Age of Mythology game and a Nuwa figure from Arcane Legions. The little imps on her arms make this a very peculiar figure, but luckily the pose makes modding easy, as I show with a simple arm swap using some Warhammer skaven bits.
The imps from the medusa can be salvaged with a bit of careful clever knife work. Here they are, along with the more classic demon figures from the set, plus some other devilish mods which I have previously discussed.
I like these figures a lot. They aren't exactly prize sculpts, but they have a lot of personality. The material is a little bendy, but much more durable than the famous zombie figures from the same company. They help to fill in a lot of monster types that would otherwise be difficult for the cheap fantasy miniaturist to find, and they are diabolically cheap (muwhahaha!). Now I just wish that the figures from Zombies!!! 12: Zombie Zoo were also separately available.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Ask the CFM: Rogues, assassins and other dishonorable skulkers

Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
It's "Ask the Cheap Fantasy Miniaturist", where I try to answer reader questions about 1/72 fantasy miniatures. In this installment, reader Eric asks:
I was wondering, have you found 1/72 rogues, thieves, assassins?
My answer [with updated comments]:
Good question! The Caesar Miniatures Adventurers set has a few figures that would make good rogues, as does Orion's English Pirates set. Valdemar has had this set of assassins in their preview gallery for months (Paul managed to get ahold of set), but there's no word on when it would ever be produced, and it would probably be expensive. [The Valdemar assassins have been in production for a little while as it happens. It's about as expensive as I feared, though.] 
I've got ahold of some D&D-scale halfling miniatures that are good as 1/72 human-scale rogues; there are a few such mins out there that I think would work [More suitable D&D minis for 1/72 rogues can be found here]. I suspect this 15mm set from Splintered Light Miniatures would be good for 1/72 halfling rogues.
As I read your comment, I got the idea of doing head swaps between these Zvezda peasants (especially the hooded ones) and, say, these Orion Vikings, for a passable rogue/assassin conversion. I've already used the Zvezda heads to begin some cultist conversions.
Reader Shintokamikaze also reminds me that just as various 1/72 pirate sets make great rogues, many 1/72 ninja sets, such as this one from Caesar Miniatures, have great hooded assassin types.

Got more questions for the Cheap Fantasy Miniaturist? Please send them along and I'll do my best to answer.