Friday, November 21, 2014

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!

3 comments:

  1. I'm glad that they're going back to the traditional pudgy halfling design. I think they will make good 1/72 dwarves. The gold dwarf looks good as a 1/72 human as well.

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  2. I know you touched on this at one point, but how feasible would it be to use 15-18mm vikings for 1/72 dwarves? It seems like the height would be right, and the chunkier nature of the smaller scales would look good for dwarves and halflings. Its extremely difficult to find any good comparison photos, unfortunately.

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    Replies
    1. My guess is that it's a good idea for the reasons you said, but I've never been able to make a comparison myself. Some manufacturers may be happy to send you comparison shots or even sample figures; Splintered Light seems to be good about sending samples on request.

      There are a few sites and blogs dedicated to comparison shots of 15/18mm figures. I've made quite a bit of use of this page, for example.

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