Zinkies!

It sounds like something Velma from Scoobie Doo would say, but it's actually an apparently failed toy line that I found on clearance at Target. They seemed like something that could work for my peculiar purposes, so I took a chance and bought a couple packs.

The Alien Zinkies in their original package. For under 3 bucks, I figured 36 minis and other paraphernalia could be worth the money.

In addition to the minis shown, the set comes with a magnifier, a storage capsule, a vehicle, a pair of plastic tweezers (shown above), and a capsule for the "Top Secret" figure included in the set.

The "Top Secret" figure, revealed. I'm not sure if this guy is in every pack, or if he is one of many chase figures.

All the Zinkies I bought. The bottom rows are the minis from the Robots set I purchased, which came with similar extras as the Aliens set. There is also a green Soldiers set available that is similarly outfitted.

Zinkies compared to Sven. As you can see, they would probably be more suitable for 6-10 mm gaming, if it weren't for their squat proportions. As it is, I imagine I can come up with some use for an army of squat little xenomorphs or mechanoids.

Zinkies are made from a very squishy, rubbery material, and they aren't terribly detailed. I have no idea how they'd look if painted, or if they'd even be able to hold paint without cracking. I wonder if there's a way to make them less squishy somehow. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them!

Painted lizards!

Man, did these guys ever take a long time to finish. These Warhammer figures have way more fiddly details than the 1/72 minis I'm used to, even though they're both about the same size in this case. Still, despite a few reservations, I'm pretty proud of how my 1/72 lizardmen turned out. Partly for that reason, and partly because I finally figured out how to activate micro-mode on our camera, you're getting a lot of photos today.

The whole saurian regiment.

The lizardman champion is part of the Stegadon Crew I got at a bitz store.

GOOD MORNING!!!

The bruisers are old Saurus warriors with newer weapon swaps.

The shaman guy is another Stegadon crewman with a kitbashed totem, the top part of which snapped off during the dipping process and is currently held together with superglue and prayers. The sorcerer to the right is actually a D&D kobold miniature from the Castle Ravenloft boardgame, but I think he makes a fine 1/72 lizardmen along with the Warhammer minis.

I got these older-model archers in the same eBay lot as the Sauruses (Sauri?).

The melee warriors are either Stegadon Crew or Skink bits I got for cheap on eBay.  The spears are 1/72 scale replacements, so they didn't look ridiculous.

The comparison shot with Sven the 1/72 comparison viking. They are a bit cartoony, but the Skinks and their friends hold up very well as 1/72 scale cold-blooded antagonists.

Things that went well: I'm quite pleased with the basic color scheme. Orange-and-purple was perhaps not the obvious choice, but it works and is quite distinctive. I'm also generally proud of my detail work, especially the faces. I haven't had minis that stare back at me quite like these do.

Things that worked less well: I'm developing a love-hate relationship with The Dip. I thinned it with some Naptha thinner, and it more or less behaved the way I wanted. But it was probably a bad idea to dunk these figures in the dip directly, with all their splayed limbs and crevasses. The sorcerer and archers are single-piece figures with more compact poses, so it was easier for me to wipe off the excess dip; it's not surprising that The Dip had the best effect on them. If I had applied The Dip with a brush on the others, they might have looked less splotchy. The Dip I use is also toxic, messy, difficult to clean, and apparently takes longer to dry than I thought (by the way, thanks to the TMP guys for your tips!). In the future I may try something else, like water-based floor polish mixed with paint or ink.

The lizardmen were a huge effort to assemble and paint, but I really do like the overall results. I'm still very glad my next project will be dudes in simple, monochromatic robes.

A quick scale comparison

My sale is going pretty well, but I still have lots of Reaper Bones, WoW boardgame minis, and other cheap minis for sale. Check out my sale page for more information.

I'm usually purely a 1/72 collector, as far as human-scale minis goes, but since I temporarily have something of a warehouse of all sorts of miniatures, I thought I'd take the opportunity to take a snapshot for the purposes of scale comparison.

These are a little shorter than shown, since they're a few millimeters away from the backdrop, but this should give a relative idea of different scales used in fantasy gaming. To the left is a Reaper Miniatures figure, one of the new Kickstarter Bones. Even though they're advertised as "heroic 25mm," you can see they are quite a bit taller. To the right is a D&D Miniature, from the Dragoneye series. D&D minis are a bit inconsistent scalewise, but this guy is fairly typical.

Continuing to the right is a game piece from the World of Warcraft miniatures game. He's actually about 25mm from foot to eye; I think this puts him in about the same scale as most Games Workshop minis (I could be wrong, though). Finally our old friend Sven the 1/72 comparison viking, who is about 25mm from foot to scalp, making him a bit shorter than the WoW figure. Not shown is an example of a 15mm figure, for the simple reason that I don't own any :). It would be about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of Sven, depending on the manufacturer.

Cultists, and other figure mods

Hey, don't forget I'm selling a ton of cheap plastic minis, including Kickstarter Reaper Bones and WoW boardgame figures. Check out the sale here.

Painting miniatures is great, but sometimes I need a distraction while still doing something hobby-related. Sometimes I need something a little more instantly gratifying than what painting can give me. I'm finding that modifying figures to create something new gives me exactly this: it's creative, I get results I like very quickly, and given that not everything I want is in 1/72 (the preferred scale of this blog), it's often necessary. I describe the basic technique I use here. Of course I still have to paint the little dudes eventually, but that comes later, usually after I finish the concurrent painting project.

Let's start with some evil cultists. I got the idea from Plasticgeneral's and El Senyor Verd's blogs. The bodies are Caesar Miniatures undead, while the heads are from Zvezda peasants or HAT/Airfix Robin Hood figures. I decided to completely carve away the scythes the bodies were holding, and though it looks a little rough, I think it will look okay once painted. I also tried some reposing with the arms, and I may do a little more so it doesn't look like the entire sinister congregation is holding invisible polearms. You can see the yellow blobs of Milliput I used to hide the seems in a few figures, but for the most part everything lined up surprisingly well.

Of course, everyone knows that if you join an evil cult, there's a fair chance you'll wind up turning into a degenerate snake monster (or evil fish beast, or host to an eldritch squid god). These guys got head swaps with Arcane Legions sta figures. The middle guy also got a hand swap because I thought he ought to be holding the nifty snake staff the necromancer-looking guy above has. The hooded fellow on the left (possibly a snakeman in cognito) has a head from a Micro Machines jawa miniature.

Here's a picture I took of some body swaps I did months ago. You can see the original figures and the resulting swaps. We have a Caesar Miniatures knight, an Arcane Legions lion-rider, a CM elf, and an AL jorogumo (spider-monster). The idea for the elf-jorogumo swap was to make a drider, a classic dark-elf/spider monster from D&D. You can see the glob of wood glue I used to crudely fill in the gap between the two halves.

As I was messing around with the more recent headswaps, I took the opportunity to fill in the seams a little better with some Milliput. I also did a few more headswaps using Caesar Miniatures goblins. The goblin wizard on the left has a jawa body (its head went to the hooded cultist above) (P.S., my wife mentioned that the goblin wizard looks like Yoda, who when you think about it basically is a goblin wizard). Next to him is a swap between two goblin figures to make a goblin chieftan. Since I didn't want to waste the leftover bodies, I added some Greek villager heads from Age of Mythology minis to make some halfing barbarians: They aren't quite as crude and radioactive-looking in person.

I'm also messing around with some conversions for a demon army, but that will probably be a later post.

I'm selling Reaper Bones and WoW boardgame figures (and other cheap minis)

So in a fit of eBay-induced enthusiasm, I now possess around 350 cheap plastic fantasy minis in heroic 28mm scale, and I plan on selling most of them. I'll eventually put these on eBay, but I thought I'd offer them up here. I'll sell most of the Bones miniatures for half off MSRP, or less if you buy them in presorted lots. I also have a few large Bones for sale, including Rauthuros the demon and Boerogg Blackrime the frost giant.

For the WoW figures (great cheap gaming minis which I discuss here), I'll sell the large figures and heroic minis for a dollar a piece, or two for a buck for the smaller monsters. I also have a few Arcane Legions and D&D Miniatures I'd like to sell, plus some leftover toy cavemen figures that can be used for ogres, giants and the like.

See what I have for sale here, along with instructions for how to buy. Enjoy!

Toy figures for cheap fantasy gaming

[2-20-2014] Welcome all! My stats show that a ton of visitors are coming to this post via Facebook, but I can't tell who sent you all. If it wouldn't be violating anyone's expectation of privacy, I'd like to know who it was; I'd like to shake his hand, as the song says. Anyway, there's more to this site than comparison shots of Tim Mee cavemen, so again, welcome, and please look around!

Part of finding cheap fantasy minis is keeping an eye out for things that were never meant for gaming but which are readily adaptable. I've found that many hobby-shop-style toys are perfect for my purposes. They aren't marketed for gamers and so aren't premium-priced, but can be as good or better than miniatures made specifically for gaming. Here are a few such toys I recently purchased.

These are new cavemen models from TimMee Toys. They make fantastic hill giants versus 1/72 minis. There are four sculpts and twelve models of each sculpt, which is probably more hill giants than I'll ever need. I may try to sell some of my extras.

Half the toys in the bag are in tan plastic. One thing I like about these minis is that on the tabletop they look like they're looking down at a 1/72 scale human-sized figure.

Up next are these skeleton figures from Toysmith. You used to be able to buy these without any other toys, but they now come in a set marketed as Battling Pirates, accompanied with several large swashbuckling figures and nautical accoutrements. Even with all the extra stuff, they're still pretty cheap and make excellent giant skeletons in 1/72.

By the way, shortly after buying these, I saw that Sgt. Slag has used both the cavemen and skeletons for the very purpose I intended. Obviously he stole the idea directly from my brain somehow. Actually, I'm glad for the proof-of-concept, as they look great!

For the last set of figures we go from large to small. These are Lucky Minis from Safari Ltd. You can get them from counter displays at some hobby shops and many museum and zoo gift shops for 59 cents a piece. They are made of some sort of rubbery material, so I'm not sure how they'll paint up, but they look terrific.

The bat makes a fine oversized fantasy critter, and I've already used the wings from another bat mini for a demonic conversion project. The jellyfish I got because I like the idea of making a 1/72 scale flumph, even if I'll never use it. The gorilla and bear may seem undersized, but they're actually just about right for 1/72 scale mountain gorillas and grizzly bears, if National Geographic is anything to go by:

source 1, source 2

                       

So what are some other toy products you've adopted for gaming miniatures?

Warhammer skinks as 1/72 lizardmen

Update: see painted lizardmen here!

I've been working on building and basing some Warhammer skinks and other lizardmen to use as 1/72 scale lizardmen. This isn't a new idea: Kris mentions it in his blog post on 1/72 scale gaming, as does Ron at his 1/72 fantasy blog (both are great inspirations for this project of mine, so thanks guys!). I've taken the idea a bit further and started making a whole squad of cold-blooded RPG antagonists.

These archers are from the 1996 edition of Warhammer. They can still be found for pretty cheap on eBay if you're patient. To their left is a Klak the kobold sorcerer figure from the Castle Ravenloft board game, here fitting right in with the 1/72 lizardmen crowd.

Some newer Warhammer minis; these are mostly Stegadon riders I got from Hoard o Bits. These are about the right size, but the hands and weapons are off, especially the shaman figure's totem. There's not much we can do about the hands, but we can fix the weapons.

I just used some leftover Italeri Barbarian spears. For the totem, I used some decapitated skulls from Caesar Miniatures undead set and some feathers taken from the original totem.

Here are the new spears. I just removed all or part of the original weapons, drilled holes with a pin vice, and inserted the new spear. The shafts of the original and replacement spears are about the same size, but the spearheads look like they are in the same scale as Sven, now that they are not the size of Sven's head.

These big guys are saurus warriors from the older Warhammer edition. They work well as large 1/72 bruisers, but I decided they ought to be wielding the same quasi-Aztec macuahuitl as the newer figures instead of their original scythe-like weapons.

Luckily I had a few large macuahuitl bits left over. I kept part of the bits' arms attached and carved them to a point, then drilled a hole in the saurus' hand, filled with glue, and pushed the new weapon into place.

I could do a whole tutorial on how I based these, but I'll spare you and keep it quick: I just glued some styrene disks to the washer, put pins in the miniatures feet, drilled holes in the base to match, and effectively pinned the base and miniature together, along with some superglue.

I'll paint these up in the next month, if I don't get distracted by something else.