New D&D minis for 1/72 scale

You may have heard that there's a new version of D&D out, and that WizKids is making miniatures for it. In the past D&D minis, especially of halfings and gnomes, have been very useful for 1/72 fantasy gaming, but is the new line of any use? Let's see.

Special guests from the one-inch guild are on the left to help Sven on the right with the scale comparisons. To their left is a quickling, a svifnerblin fighter, a stoutheart halfling female bard, and a rock gnome female sorcerer. These are all common random singles from booster packs and can be purchased very cheaply online; I got each of these for 50 or 75 cents each. The other minis are a lightfoot halfling rogue and a gold dwarf female cleric. These are both found in the Starter Set, and since they're in fixed quantities, they're a little more expensive to buy individually.

The shorter minis seem to be short enough to work as halflings and other small humanoids in 1/72 scale. The art direction for the new edition calls for larger heads for halflings and gnomes to emphasize their shorter proportions; I understand this was a controversial choice in some ways, but it does mean that those minis look like something other than really short humans. If they had been human-sized they might have looked odd, but since they're little folk, they seem fine. The halflings could even pass as dwarves given their squat proportions.

Also, I was surprised that the dwarf mini looks just about like a human in 1/72. A little on the stocky side, but pretty close. This is the only dwarf offered in this line for the time being, but it makes me curious what future dwarf sculpts might look like.

Finally, the other minis in the Starter set. As is my wont, I purchased the set with the intent of selling the ones I didn't need. I figure someone might be curious about size comparisons for these guys, so here they are. Not surprisingly, they are too large for my purposes, though that barbarian might make a decent giant.

Human female ranger, Northlands fighter, Drow elf ranger Drizzt, Sun elf female wizard, Sven the comparison viking.

Drizzt and the sun elf are still for sale. Again, check out my sales page!

Photos of the new Caesar Miniatures fantasy sets!

I mentioned these before. I just stumbled upon these preview shots on a Russian minis forum.

Pretty sweet to finally see what these look like. They all look pretty great, though I'm not sure the painjobs and photography do them justice. They all seem to be of the same magical, not-flat casting that Caesar is known for. The lizardmen have a thick, primitive look to them, and the ratmen look suitably short and nasty. The zombies are duly shambling and horrible; the crawling poses are a particularly nice touch. The modern zombies largely look like they would fit in with their fantasy counterparts, if not vice versa.

These images are being hosted by a Russian hobby shop, which suggests to me that these figures should be for sale soon. I have no idea when, of course, but stay tuned! In the meantime, what do you all think of Caesar's new offerings?

Update (11/20): Michigan Toy Company has these in their catalogue for pre-order, including most of the same preview shots as above. Here, here, and here.

Alliance orcs, set 3

Who makes the best plastic 1/72 orcs? A few years ago that would have been a strange question, but the state of 1/72 fantasy minis has slowly blossomed so that there are now choices to be had. The basic choices for 1/72 fantasy, as readers of this blog probably know, are Caesar Miniatures and Red Box/Alliance. A lot of people are put off by the cartoony look of the Caesar orcs and prefer the LotR-inspired models by Alliance. But I didn't mind the "greenskin" look and prefer Caesar's modeling to the flat sculpts we seem to get from Alliance. Their 3rd set of orcs, though, seemed to have a lot of interesting sculpts worth checking out. I haven't seen a review of these yet with height comparisons, so I thought I'd feature them here.

The set comes with 9 (presumably) male and one (obviously) female sculpt. The males are shown above. Unlike the other more uniform Alliance orcs (see 1/72 Multiverse for a review), these guys have a lot of variety, from almost unarmored to the heavily armored fellow near the middle. While still fairly flat, the poses are also fairly lively.

The one downside is the height. These aren't quite as short as Sven as they appear (due to shorter bases), but they still are not quite human-sized. This shouldn't be surprising, really: Alliance is clearly inspired by Lord of the Rings, which describes orcs as a little more runty than we often see in modern fantasy. But I like my orcs to be a little more imposing. I'm guessing the new half-orc sets Alliance is releasing would fit my tastes a little better, as they're clearly based on the more menacing Uruk-Hai.

The female orc from this set is on the right; I featured this sculpt in my post on female character minis. It's a little taller than the other figures in this set. It's also not obviously orcish, meaning it could be used for an orc or human character, depending on how you paint it.

All in all, it's a fine set with a lot of variety, and if you don't mind the their size, they're worth picking up.

Update (11/12/2014): Benno's forum member "zirrian" asked for a comparison between Alliance orcs and LotR figures from Games Workshop, and I realized I could oblige. Here it is:

Caesar orc, Alliance orc, GW "Mines of Moria" goblin, Sven

Another update (11/14/2014): Sam has done an excellent job of painting these figures, and you can see his work at his blog. He was also kind enough to link to this post, so thanks!

Sale reminder

Hey all, I'm still selling loads of Twilight Creations minis. I also just put up a few of the new D&D Tyranny of Dragons starter minis on eBay. Check out my sales page for more info.

Bump in the Night minis

Like these and other Twilight Creations minis? I'm selling a bunch in small lots. Check out my sales page for more info.

Bump in the Night is a now-out-of-print board game from Twilight Creations. It has some interesting minis well-suited for fantasy gaming, and since other minis by the company were close to 1/72 scale (the preferred scale of this blog), I thought I'd check out a copy of the game and see how they looked. Was this a wise decision? Let's see.

Here's a set of the player minis. There are six sets in six different colors, plus 14 child minis for the monsters to scare. That's 36 monsters total. We have some bats, Death, a cat, a ghost, a goblin, and a poltergeist. On the plus side these have a lot of character, and they portray creatures that are not easy to find in 1/72 scale. On the negative, you can see they are just a little large, something that is especially apparent with the ghost mini.

Some comparisons. The cat and the bats are compared with a few Reaper Bones familiars. The familiars are already a little on the large side for 1/72, as they are technically for 28-32mm scale. And the Bump in the Night figures are even larger, though since they are still smaller than Sven, I don't think it matters. I mean, that Bump in the Night cat is probably about the size of a 1/72 scale golden retriever, but I doubt anyone at the table would notice. The Bump in the Night goblin is stylistically similar to its counterpart from Caesar Miniatures, but is likewise much larger. Maybe it could be a goblin brawler, a giant among goblins (like Brandobras "Bullroarer" Took, a hobbit tall enough to ride a horse).

Comparisons with the specral figures and some modified Caesar undead. You can clearly see how much taller these are.

Verdict? It really depends on how much the scale differences bug you. I think the cat and bats are perfectly usable, the goblin somewhat adaptable, and the spirits useful perhaps as solo or boss figures. I didn't show any of the child minis, but they are almost as tall as Sven. The plastic is a lot more solid that the rubbery "Zombies!!!" material Twilight Creations is known for. The minis all have great character and are just a little cartoony. The tall "ghost" figure is particularly frightening despite, or because of, its larger size. I paid about $22; if you can find it for that or less and you like the figures, go for it!

The Gnoll Set

The mods are complete, and the gnoll squad is fully assembled! As I mentioned before, these are mostly Alliance elves with heads and tails from World of Warcraft boardgame minis. Getting some Splintered Light 18mm hyenamen might have been simpler, but this is the stuff I had on hand.

I had taken a bunch of pix, but unfortunately a lot of them are blurry, and as they've been primed already I can't retake them. Here are the ones that turned out all right.

The backline: Archers and magic-user. The gray figures are Arcane Legions mummies.

The frontline, viewed from behind. I'm reserving judgement on the manes I sculpted until they're painted. Right now they look crude, although I do like the mohawk look. It fits with the snarling anarchic vibe I picture for these guys. Punk gnolls!

Sven trying to fit in. The green guy is the original boardgame piece with a Warhammer Skaven bit for a sword. I like how this turned out.

Primed and ready for painting. It almost looks like they were made this way originally!

No idea when these will get painted, but the sooner the better. More posts coming soon on other topics. Watch this space!

Bags o minis! Twilight Creations, etc.

I recently mentioned Twilight Creations in a news post. I've since gotten ahold of a bunch of minis from their board games. Their minis are a bit smaller than most board game minis and are a good fit for 1/72 scale.

Let's start with their Zombies!!! minis, which are their most well-known figures. Shown are the male and female zombies from the original series, available in the core game or various expansions, and also available in cheap "Bag o" sets of 100.

These are made of a very rubbery plastic that bends easily—the other figures on this page are made of firmer, less flexible stuff. I don't particularly like the first sculpt, with that weird overlarge arm, but I used the heads from these for my 1/72 zombie project. The female sculpt is a lot better, especially if you trim off the severed head it's holding. It could easily be used for witches, hags, ghosts, and other monsters. Also sometimes available though seemingly out of production are bags of zombie dogs (useful!) and zombie clowns (idiosyncratic! though possibly adaptable to more general purposes). I've also mentioned the figures from the Zombie Zoo expansion and from the 3rd edition of the core game, which I'll also show here.

Photo cred Twilight Creations

So long as I'm mentioning content from previous posts, here are the minis from Dante's Inferno, available in sets without the game from Twilight Creations' store. Lots of neat 1/72-ish monsters.

I also just got Twilight Creations' new Cthulhu!!! game, especially for the minis. Here they are.

The two on the left are player minis, of which there are three each. They're just a hair bigger than Sven, who is standing on a larger base, but could be useful for pulp gaming. The stars of this game are the next two figures, the "byakhee" monster and the cultist figure, of which the game includes 25 of the former and 75 of the latter. The monster is a little odd but surely useful for something. But the cultist is great! There is no "Bag o Cultists" that I know about, which is too bad, because lots of gamers could use a bunch of generalized dudes in robes. They are again a little tall, but could easily be made shorter since they are in robes. The one odd detail is the face; I can't tell if the figure is open-mouthed or just has a large nose. But the robes are perfect, and the pose is pretty evocative.

Lastly, something a little different, figures from a "Bag o" set not made by Twilight Creations. These are from a "Bag o Chthulhus" made by Fantasy Flight, intended as counters for their out-of-print (I think) Call of Cthulhu card game.

There 6 of the large figure and 36 of the smaller ones in the set. These are made from a very hard plastic with a lot better detail than many of the Twilight Creations figures. Any of these could be used as statues, gribbly monsters, or in the case of the large sculpt, He Who Sleeps himself.

Edit 10/21/2014: I mentioned the Bump in the Night minis, which I'll show below: see this post for more. Also, see my seller page for information on buying some of the minis on this page.