Noeltide Gnoll Tide

Just in time for the holidays, the gnolls are done! Again, these are mostly Alliance elf bodies with heads and tails from World of Warcraft boardgame gnolls. I continue to suggest modding some Splintered Light hyenamen/gnolls for 1/72 scale, as this was an involved project. Still, I like the results.

The whole gang.

Showing off their tails in a non-rude, non-Braveheart sort of way.

Personalities: the commander, brute, and magic user. The brute is the original boardgame piece with a weapon swap from a Warhammer skaven. The others got their bodies from some Arcane Legions mummies.

Other melee troopers. The Alliance elves were all originally shod, but with paint and some knife-gouged toes I tried to make them look barefooted. A few had bootlaces, though, which I didn't bother to remove and just painted like shoes. Apparently being a demonic agent of evil chaos doesn't keep some gnolls from appreciating fine footwear.

Archers. The heads on some of these seem particularly large at this angle. At the table from above they seem fine, as the first pic on this blog shows.

Comparison shot with Sven. By design they are a bit on the tall side, as gnolls are supposed to be tall and lanky. I think the different figure sources mix well together.

Now I need to decide what fantasy horde I should contrive next. Angels and demons are one idea. Drow and duegar are another. Any preferences?

Hero Forge for 1/72 fantasy?

EY's post on ordering from Shapeways reminded me that Hero Forge is a thing. Shapeways is one of the marquee companies involved in the burgeoning 3D printing industry. They let independent designers upload and sell 3D models that they themselves "print", sort of like a virtual Etsy with a manufacturing division. This has all sorts of applications from tools to artwork to toys, including miniature models.

Hero Forge is a company that had the singular idea; instead of uploading our own models, why don't we make a simple way for customers to design their own, and print those? They had a successful Kickstarter sold on the premise that RPG players could design the perfect mini to represent their character, and by a remarkable coincidence, their website went live this week. It requires a WebGL plugin to work, but you can mess around with their very slick character/model creation tools and see what's possible.

I was intrigued because I realized there was no technical limitation as to what scale these models could be printed in, meaning this would be an option for 1/72 models. So I finally sent an email and asked them: Are there plans to introduce other scales besides the standard 28-32mm gaming scale? And how tall are their halfling and gnome minis? Frequent readers of this blog will see where I'm going with this last question, as I've frequently adapted halflings and gnomes from D&D and other mini lines.

They quickly and courteously responded: they'd like to introduce other scales in the future, but right now they're focused on maintaining their new site. A quick measure of one of their halfling models was "26-27 mm." This sounds a little too tall, but I noticed that you can adjust the height to make the models even shorter (in fact, the races are really just presets for their more robust body modeling tools).

So if you want to give Hero Forge a try for 1/72 models, here's my completely untested recommendation: Make the model you want (of any race you want), then adjust the height so it's as short as possible. Maybe you'll need to adjust other body parameters to make it look right. My guess is that you're out of luck for 1/72 scale halflings and other small guys, but it looks like human-sized minis are perfectly doable.

I should note that this would be an expensive way to get minis; $15 for the cheaper plastic, $25 for the quality stuff that would actually look good painted. I don't know that I'll ever try this myself unless it gets cheaper. But if you need a particular mini in 1/72 scale that you just can't find, Hero Forge may be your saving grace.

Edit: I realized I missed an opportunity to be clever. Let's correct this oversight!

General Gnoll-edge

(Thanks to Mrs. 1Mac for the pun).

I finished the gnoll magic user and leader. Again, these are Arcane Legions mummies with heads and tails from World of Warcraft boardgame minis, plus a fair amount of wood glue and Milliput. The heads on the magic-user's totem are the original mummy heads. The golden blob on the spear was the bit of Milliput I used to hide the bits of pins that I couldn't quite trim off; I have no idea what it actually represents, but it seems to work!

Front...

...and back.

Seen from above, where you can get a good look at them, and vice versa!

WIP shots of the other gnolls. These are made in the same way above, except most of the bodies are Alliance elves. The big guy in the bottom corner is the original piece with a weapon swap. The bottom pic turned out a little blurry, even with some clumsy Photoshopping attempts to fix it; Sorry!

I have a WIP thread at Benno's with some more pics of these guys being painted. This is a busy season for me, but hopefully I'll have a completed gnollish band soon.

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.