Replacements! (Castle Ravenloft monsters in 1/72 scale)

So this is the rather involved and curious project I'm undertaking. I recently thought to myself, why not buy all the D&D Adventure System board games, replace the minis with 1/72 equivalents, and sell the rest on the secondary market? This sort of thing only begins to make sense if you are already collecting 1/72 fantasy minis (and who doesn't?). A few reasons one might be interested in this: you do what I did and buy the full game, keeping the minis you like and selling the rest. Or you can buy all the game pieces separately at places like Auggie's or Hoard o Bits, and get cheaper minis for the game as shown here. Or maybe you just like to see what minis can be found in scale. To be honest, this last point is also part of my motivation: it's a bit of a challenge to see if I can recreate these game minis in my scale of choice, and gives me some direction when considering what minis to seek out next.

This will be first of a series of posts. I'll start with the monsters from Castle Ravenloft, the first D&D Adventure System game. I'm excluding villains for a later post. I'm also excluding the rat swarm minis, as they also work for 1/72 scale, so I have no interest in replacing them. These shots include the original mini and their smaller scale replacements for comparison.

Gargoyles. The replacements are Twilight Creation demons.

Ghouls, also from Twilight Creations. You wouldn't think of them as undead, but they have both the pointed ears and the edible hand of the original mini which is a rather unusual coincidence.

Wraiths. These are mods from Caesar Miniatures undead. Read more about these (and the ghouls and gargoyles) here. Arcane Legions has some clear ghost minis, but they're dressed in Chinese armor, so I decided on something more generic.

Skeleton warriors. This one was easy, just Caesar Miniatures undead.

Blazing skeletons. I despaired at ever being able to find something like that in 1/72, but I realized that they were basically skeletons with ranged attacks. So these skeleton archers from Caesar will serve as adequate substitutes. I suppose some clever work with skeletons and Milliput could also work, if I ever have the inclination.

Zombies. The 1/72 guys are mods between Italeri barbarians, Caesar undead, and Twilight Creations zombies. More here.

Giant spiders. The original mini would probably have been just fine as a slightly more giant spider in 1/72. Other alternatives would be the giant spider from the World of Warcraft game (the blue mini), or the toy Halloween spider.

Kobold skirmishers. These are Reaper Bones minis. Clearly these are spears and not the "javelins" the monster card describes, but they are perfectly fine. The original mini is just a little too tall for my taste, but would probably look okay in 1/72.

Wolves. Depending on your taste, the original figure might be just fine in 1/72 scale. The ostensibly 1/72 Iberian wolf from Arcane Legions is not much smaller. I happen to have three of the Reaper Bones dog familiars, so I'll probably use them to replace the three Castle Ravenloft wolves.

I may feature monsters from other games before I undertake villain and hero minis. They're doable, but may take some work. At any rate, I hope this feature will be at least somewhat interesting, and not entirely peculiar or esoteric.