Bones II minis for 1/72 scale

I'm still selling several Bones II minis. Pics are now available on my sales page. Also, in case you missed it, I updated my post on WarQuest with some new information.

I received my Bones II order a few months ago and was pleased to discover how many work with 1/72 scale. As I discovered with the first Bones Kickstarter, smaller minis look human-sized in 1/72, while large minis seem just a bit larger, in a more fantastic way. Let's take a look.

These small humanoids are about the size of 1/72 humans. On the left are Balazar the gnome summoner, Lini the gnome druid, and Woody the halfling ranger. Their heads look rather large, but they should be fine for 1/72 otherwise. On the right are a kobold champion and sorcerer, with a kobold spearman in between. These new minis are quite a bit larger than the old kobold Bones, despite having the same sculptor, but they should work for 1/72 lizardmen or dragonmen.

These are also close to human-sized in 1/72 scale. Two mushroom men (or "myconids" in D&D), a lesser demon, a kelpie, a demilich, and two "hordlings."

Animals: a wolf, bear, wildcat, wolverine, and hawk. These are all bigger than actual 1/72 versions of the same critters, but they are good for "dire" or monstrous beasts. Besides, that hawk is about as small as it can be and still be useful at the table.

Medium-sized beasts: a basilisk, barrow rat, chthon, mind eater, prairie tick queen, and spider from the first Kickstarter.

These monsters are close in size to Reaper humans, but I think they are nice as larger monsters in 1/72. A "Ti'ilk" fishman, lesser demon, two Egyptian avatars, Thoth and Sekhmet; and a crystal golem. The "lesser demons" are all about the same size, though the vulture demon is a lot bigger. Dig the blue plastic on that golem!

Some huge monsters: a chimera, water elemental, and "burrowing horror" (or "bullette" in D&D). Again, I love the clear blue plastic. The water elemental is about the same size as the clear red fire elemental Reaper made for their first Kickstarter.

Finally, some giants: a "swamp things" troll, stone giant, mountain troll, and ice troll. These are all much bigger than the ubiquitous cave trolls I painted last year. I still like how these big guys look compared to Sven.

Splintered Light and Rebel Miniatures sales

I've often mentioned that a number of 15mm metal fantasy mini companies have potential as 1/72 figures. Splintered Light Miniatures and Rebel Miniatures are two such manufacturers. They are both having sales until the end of the year; it's not too late to take advantage of them! For Rebel Miniatures, just enter coupon code Rebel2014 when you checkout for 20% off your order. Likewise, for Splintered Light, just enter code xmas2014 for 20% off. Splintered Light is also offering 30% certain items in their store.

I'll feature some of these figures in better detail in future posts, but I thought I'd show off what I bought to show the potential of some of these figures.

A Large Wolfhound, Dire Hyena and Dire Wolf from Splintered Light. They all look just fine next to Sven. The hyena will make a fine hellhound or direwolf.

Heroes of Shadow, also from Splintered Light. They're about the size of some of my halfing minis, such as Lidda from the One Inch Guild.

A Splintered Light hyenaman/gnoll and kobold are on the left. The rest are from Rebel Minis: a Deep One, two Wolven, and two Monkey Boys. The kobold is sold as 20mm, but is a little small for my taste. Most of these I think are a bit on the small side, but the Deep One works as a small fishman, and the Wolven are actually perfect as 1/72 werewolves (the "15mm Werewolves" that Rebel sells are probably too small for 1/72, so don't mix them up!).

Many of these figures I got as free samples on request. Both Rebel and Splintered Light are great companies that will happily provide such samples; just leave a note with your order. I'll definitely be making future orders thanks to seeing some of these figures in person.

Metal minis are a bit more expensive than plastic, and though I understand that these are delicate figures, I wish there were cheaper shipping options at both companies. Still, they often have figures that can't be found or made in plastic, so when they offer sales like these, it's a great time to stock up.

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!

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.

New and old stuff from Twilight Creations

A thread with reader Kevin Morton led me to a bunch of news items from Twilight Creations, everyone's favorite producer of gonzo horror games and horror 1/72-ish scale minis. Kevin mentioned that Twilight Creations were selling the zombie zoo animals I've discussed before in bagged sets at Gencon, and I found out that they're apparently going to start selling them to the general public soon. So now you can get 90 of these figures without paying for the full game, like I did, which is great!

TC is also coming out with a new version of their flagship Zombies!!! game, which among other things includes four unique zombie minis. The "Deluxe Bag o' Zombies", now available, likewise gets you 100 of these minis without paying for the full game. TC's webstore offers this photo:

I like that there are now multiple cheap zombie sculpts, which makes the "Bag o' " line an even better value. These sculpts aren't quite generic enough to be too useful for fantasy, unfortunately, plus it's odd that the zombie plague seems to have affected the construction, law enforcement, and, um, chanteuse industries so discriminately. For more modern scenarios, though, the set should prove quite useful.

That's the new stuff: the old stuff is that as TC makes room for all their new games, they are clearancing out some of their older products. Check out the deals here. Highlights include Dante's Inferno ($5 for the whole game!), Little Dead Riding Hood (still too expensive for just the minis, but the only source of plausible 1/72 plastic werewolf minis I've found), and Easter Island (with plenty unusual Maori statue minis). They also had Bump in the Night, which has some great minis, for $15, but they seem to have sold their stock. You can now get it for $15 at Noble Knight, though.

I'm assuming that all the games I mentioned here are in the same almost-1/72 scale as Twilight Creations' other products I've seen. I can only really vouch for the Zombie Zoo and Dante's Inferno minis (Mike the Bunkermeister has these comparison shots with the Easter Island minis). If anyone can tell me anything more about these other sets, I'd appreciate it!

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.

Zombie Animals (and other not-so undead wild beasts)

Like these figures, but don't need 90 of them? Check out my sale page, where I'm selling sets I don't need.

Okay, zombie animals weren't exactly something that was on my bucket list, but when I found out that Twilight Creations had a new expansion to their popular Zombies!!! game, and that it had a ton of animal minis in six different poses, I had to check them out. Twilight Creations usually only has one pose per set, but when they have multiple poses and sell them cheap, they're worth a look. They look like this:

A hyena, tiger, lion, bear, gorilla, and chimpanzee. Spilling entrails and rotting flesh included!

Let's ignore the zombie-ness of these figures for a moment and consider them just as animals. Here are some real-life comparisons between these animals and humans, courtesy of National Geographic:

Hyena, tiger, lion (no mane)

Grizzly bear, gorilla, chimp

Apart from the large hyena—which could be adapted as a bear—, you can see that these figures are actually a pretty close match for 1/72 scale. That's actually great, because 1/72 scale wild animals are pretty hard to find. I figure a little bit of Milliput or even wood glue in the, um, exposed areas will suffice to make these look like normally vital megafauna. And if you happen to need a 1/72 scale zombie chimpanzee, you'll have plenty.

Comparisons with other animal figures:

Comparisons with a lion, wildcat, and monkey figure from Hat's Jungle Adventure set (formerly Airfix's Tarzan set). Not bad figures, but that lion looks absolutely tiny. The middle figure is actually pretty accurate as a lioness, though.

Comparisons with a polar bear and gorilla Safari Ltd. Good Luck minis. Yep, that hyena will definitely work as a bear.

The figures themselves are actually of a harder plastic than the usual rubbery Twilight Creations material, and are quite durable. I paid under $18 for the game, and with 90 minis included, that comes to under 20 cents a mini. Not bad if you need a ton of zombie animals or don't mind converting them into un-undead beasties.

On Halloween toys and dollar stores

Welcome readers of Sean's Wargames Corner, and thanks to Sean for his kind endorsement! If you haven't noticed, there are some subscription widgets at the bottom of this page; take advantage of them if that's your thing, or just keep coming back for more on cheap fantasy miniature gaming.

It's Halloween season, at least as far as our retail stores are concerned, and for the cheap fantasy miniaturist, that means bags and bags of outstandingly cheap toy critters for use as fantasy miniatures. Lots of plastic bugs and other creepy beasties can be had for very little at all kinds of stores. The color figures are from a bag of bugs I bought at a Spirit Halloween store last year, while the black plastic ones I just bought at a Dollar Tree.

Beetles, and a grasshopper and mantis.

A huge bat.

A somewhat smaller but still pretty large rat.

A lizard, snake, and centipede.

A housefly, bee, dragonfly, and wasp.

Scorpions. The smaller white figure is a Reaper Bones figures. All the Reaper bugs are about this size.

Spiders and an ant. The green spider is from the World of Warcraft board game.

While at the Dollar Tree, I also picked up these cheap Marvel action figures that I had my eye on. indigo777's clever giant conversions at the DM's Craft forum pushed me into making the purchase.

Speaking of dollar store finds, in addition to indigo777's great work, I also dug these cool beastman conversions featured at Irrational Number Line Games, using cheap dollar store animal toys and some Warhammer bits. INL has lots of other nifty cheap mini projects in their Idea Archive.