Bones III for 1/72 scale

Since starting Cheap Fantasy Minis a few years ago, I've gone through 3 Kickstarters expanding Reaper Miniatures excellent Bones line of cheap plastic minis. While they are standard-sized gaming minis, I've found that many of them are readily adaptable to 1/72 scale, the preferred scale of this blog. For this most recent Kickstarter, I skipped the core set and went for the Stoneskull and the Graveyard expansion, plus a few extra add-ons. The expansions had a lot more small minis and terrain pieces, which I find are best for adapting to 1/72.

My sets arrived last week, so I've taken some comparison shots of the more interesting minis.

The Stoneskull expansion includes six new kobold sculpts, four of which are shown here. I was worried that they might be too large, like the kobold leaders from the second Bones Kickstarter, but they look great. If anything they are a tick smaller and more delicately featured than the original Bones kobolds, making them even better suited for 1/72 gaming. Shown for comparison are one of the original Bones kobolds, plus an unpainted kobold from the Wrath of Ashardalon game.

Other small critters from the Stoneskull set include the gremlins on the left and the "veggie-pygmies" on the right. A Caesar Miniatures goblin is shown for comparison. I'm not sure what a veggie-pygmy is, or what use I'd have for them, but they're just a little under human-sized even in 1/72 scale.

"Stitch golems" on the left; "grave minions" from the Graveyard set on the right. The stitch golems are a little chunky-looking but just about the size of Sven. Similarly, the graveyard minions have somewhat large heads and hands but are otherwise human-sized. As mockeries of human form, they look just fine!

Plant monsters: A "saproling," and a couple of "death star lillies." The saproling is just a bit bigger than Sven, which is what I'd expect from a modestly-sized tree monster. The lillies look big enough for Sven to fit inside, if he gets too close.

Getting a little bigger. Here we have a naga from the Stoneskull set and a "carrion worm" from the Graveyard set. These would be just a little bigger than Reaper-sized humans but look suitably monstrous next to Sven.

Even bigger: a flesh golem, minotaur, and larger stitch golem from Stoneskull, plus one of the ogres from the core set. I always like when large minis are looking down, like the minotaur is doing here. It makes it look like they're sizing up smaller adversaries like Sven.

Finally, the biggest: an absolutely titanic iron golem, and a clear plastic air elemental. The latter should make a fine companion to the fire and water elementals from the previous Kickstarters.

I expect that soon after Reaper finishes fulfilling the current Kickstarter, the Kickstarter for Bones IV: I Can't Believe We're Doing Another One will launch soon after. I'm not sure I have the scratch to back this one (depends on how well I do on my sales page!), but I'll definitely keep an eye on it and live-blog updates. In the meantime, check out this gallery for a preview.

Temple of Elemental Evil board game minis

Many of the minis featured in this post are for sale. Please check out my sales page!

I'm a fan of the D&D Adventure System board games as a source of cheap unpainted plastic minis. They are in heroic 28-32mm scale, much larger than the CFM-approved 1/72 scale, but are often readily adaptable. Temple of Elemental Evil is the first such game released since the new version of D&D was published. Today I'll show most of the minis in the box, even those that aren't particularly good for 1/72, as non-1/72 fantasy fans might be interested in these. Remember that Sven the 1/72 comparison viking is exactly 1-inch/25mm tall from foot to crown.

Heroes. Regular readers may recognize these as unpainted versions of the new DnD starter set minis. The female dwarf makes a decent if stocky 1/72 human, while the halfling looks a bit like a dwarf rogue in 1/72.

Monsters, ranging from the ridiculously huge gnoll to the nearly-human-sized troglodyte and doppelganger figures. The bugbear in the middle is just about right for my idea of a 1/72 scale bugbear. I like the blue salamander and the "flying" firebat on the right as well.

Cultist, who naturally inhabit the titular Temple of Elemental evil. Each sculpt represents a different element: from left to right, water, earth, air and fire. Clearly too big for 1/72.

Elemental monsters, also apt for the ToEE. Left to right, a hideous fire elemental (looks more like a mud elemental!), earth, air, and water. I'm a sucker for translucent plastic minis like these. This water elemental is a little larger than the one from the Legend of Drizz't game (source).

The ettin. A smaller Reaper Bones ettin is on the right for comparison. If the D&D ettin were scaled down to 1/72 size, it would be about the size of the Reaper ettin.

Not pictured is the flying black dragon mini, which like the firebats above has a cool clear plastic "flying" base. It's not super-large, no bigger than the blue ettin shown above.

Fire and water

I finally got around to painting the Reaper fire elemental I messed around with last year. And since I now have the similar clear blue plastic water elemental from the newest Reaper Kickstarter, I painted it up as well.

I don't know why I put off painting the fire elemental, because painting was actually pretty easy. I started with a wash of yellow paint mixed with Future shine, then some drybrushing with red and a bit of dark red, then another coat of undiluted Future shine to seal and keep everything at a fire-like gleam.

The water elemental was a similar combination of washes, drybrushing, and a final "wet" coat of Future shine. The texture on the mini made this light work, giving the crests a nice foamy look.

I discussed the light-up base I made for the fire elemental previously. Here it is in action. While I would have liked it if both halves of the figure lit up, it's still a nice effect.

I've had lots more time to paint lately than I have had all year, so there should be more posts coming very soon!

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.

"Real" Fire!

This big guy is a clear plastic Reaper Bones Large Fire Elemental. I haven't painted it yet; what you see is the result of "real" flickering fire action, effected by a cheap, disassembled tea light inserted into the mini. It's a cool trick, one that I've seen elsewhere many places. Frankly you could just as well skip this little tutorial and check out the much better one at Chris Palmer's excellent "All Bones About It" painting blog. One thing I tried to do was make the tealight accessible in case it ever needed replacing, so if you're interested in what I did differently, feel free to soldier on!

Here's the tea light, painstakingly torn apart with the aid of a hobby knife and razor saw. You can see where I slit down the middle of the base to begin getting inside the thing. Also shown is a regular 2" metal washer.

The guts of the device, glued to the washer. There was a lip at the bottom of the tealight that I had to slice off to make it flush with the washer. I also had to be sure that the switch at the bottom was accessible through the washer and had enough clearance to operate, and that I didn't get glue in the switch!

I built around the electronics with Milliput. At the time I had the figure glued to the base and had both in position over the electronics; this way I could sculpt around them and not get any putty in any sensitive bits. You can see that I've already primed the base in this shot.

I did a lot of cutting to make the base as short as possible while still containing all the gizmos inside. You can also sort of see where I drilled into the base of the figure so the lightbulb would go in. You can also see my new approach to attaching the figure to the base: I drilled three holes with a pin vice, inserted push pins from the bottom, and trimmed them so they were about a centimeter tall. I then drilled holes in the bottom of the figure to match.

Here you can see the bottom of the figure with the base attached. Note the three pinheads.

Here's the figure standing with the base attached, but disconnected from the full assembly.

And here it is fully assembled next to Sven the 1/72 comparison mini, who is feeling unaccountably warm all of a sudden. I did the best I could to minimize the height of the base, but it's still rather tall.

Totally worth it, though!

I still need to figure out how I want this critter painted. Chris has some excellent ideas. I'm pleased with how it's going so far though; I can take everything apart and reassemble with little effort, and it's already all glowy and cool. And glowy and cool is about everything I want out of a fire mini.

World of Warcraft board game minis

Update: The Miniature Market sale is over, but I have a few of these minis for sale on eBay.

Miniature Market is offering its annual Spring Cleaning sale through May 17th 2013, with an additional 20% off all clearance items. I noticed that one such item was the Burning Crusade expansion for the World of Warcraft board game from Fantasy Flight, which is a trove of dozens of great plastic fantasy minis. Unfortunately, they seem to have since sold out, but you can find the expansion elsewhere (Amazon affiliates, for example) for under $30, which is still a fantastic deal.

Anyway, the sale made me think of the WoW board game minis I already have. The figures are 28mm, but a lot of them work surprisingly well in 1/72 scale. There was a time where you could get a lot of figures for the original game on eBay, but that seems to be less commonplace now. Still, the Burning Crusade expansion has one of each of the minis from the original game in purple plastic, so they can still be had.

The first set of photos are figures from the original World of Warcraft game, but again, they can also be had in the expansion. First, a couple of gnolls, a ghoul, and a murloc. I wish I had got more murlocs when they were available, as they make great human-sized fish-monsters in 1/72. The gnolls are arguably a bit oversized (MageKnight gnolls are a better fit, apparently), but gnolls are supposed to be a bit on the tall side. I plan on doing weapon swaps with some Warhammer skaven bits, like I did with the blue gnoll.

An ogre, a large demon Wrath Guard, and a Wildkin. The latter will make a perfect owlbear once I trim the antlers.

An Infernal, which will make a fine earth elemental, and a Drake, which is WoW-speak for dragon, I suppose. I like the poses on these: the Infernal gives the sense of how a giant rock monster would stomp toward you, and the Drake looks like it's regarding a smaller foe in irritation.

Or perhaps like it has just spilled mustard on its favorite shirt. "Dang, I just had this dry-cleaned!"

This next set of photos are of minis that are only in the Burning Crusade set. Here's a Yeti and a Fungal Giant, which is suitable for many sorts of giant monstrous creatures, fungal or otherwise.

Last, a Ravager, a giant undead Abomination, and an Ooze. The Ravager makes a nice generically Lovecraftian or demonic monster. I may want to modify the ooze so it doesn't have a face or arrows coming out of it, but as most ooze minis are pretty expensive, considering they're just amorphous lumps, I was glad to find it.

These are just some of my favorite minis from the World of Warcraft Burning Crusade expansion. It literally has several pounds of plastic minis, and if you can find it at the right price, it's well worth obtaining, even if you never play the game.

Using D&D Minis in 1/72 scale

Like my recent post on Reaper Bones minis, this post is about adapting common gaming minis in a larger scale to 1/72 scale, the preferred scale of this blog. As with the Bones, D&D minis are a little bit more expensive than what you'd pay for true 1/72 scale plastic minis, but they are useful for adding character and monster types that are otherwise unavailable in the smaller scale. Even so, most of these figures cost me less than a buck a piece (I've marked the figures that cost more than a dollar with a $ symbol).

The tricks here are the same as with other large minis: use smaller humanoids as human-sized minis in the smaller scale, and use large monsters in the same way you'd use them in a larger scale. The painted minis are collectible minis from the D&D Miniatures game, while most of the unpainted ones are from the various D&D board games that Wizards of the Coast recently produced.

Here are Klak the kobold sorcerer, playing the part of a 1/72 lizardman; an Air Mephit$, a Female Halfling Cleric$, a Halfling Sneak, Tomble Burrowell$ from the Descent boardgame by Fantasy Flight games,  and a Mephling Pyromancer. This last was a bit of a disappointment: I bought four, hoping for a squad of 1/72 devil legionnaires, but they're a bit too small and slight for that purpose. I may adapt them as halflings, or see if I can do a head swap to give a devilish head to a larger miniature. The cleric and the Descent figure are also a bit small, but believably human in the smaller scale.

A Grell, a Giant Snake, a Cave Bear, a Gibbering Mouther, and a Grick. The Grell looks a bit oversized, but the rest of these monsters look great next to Sven the comparison viking.

Finally, some swarms: a spider swarm and a rat swarm, with a Reaper Bones scarab swarm to Sven's left.

Update: a few more D&D miniatures: a female Halfling Paladin$, a Halfling Enchanter$, and a Halfling Wizard$. This last one surprised me in that it looks like a halfling even in 1/72 scale. Between it and the Mephling Pyromancer discussed above, I'm wondering if there are other D&D minis that would make suitable 1/72 scale halflings.