One of the biggest disappointments about my use of miniatures in the Dwimmermount campaign is my reliance on those pre-painted plastic ones WotC put out a few years ago. Most of them don't quite look the way I'd like them too, but they have the advantage of being cheap and convenient, so I use them while I assemble a better collection of Otherworld and similar old school miniatures.
Another disappointment is that, so far, none of the PCs has a unique miniature. That is, none of the players has a special mini that's been chosen and painted to represent their character. We're trying to change that, but, as with everything else, the difficulty is in finding appropriate miniatures for the task. While I trust my other players to be able to find their own minis, my 10 year-old daughter isn't quite as adept at this sort of thing. Moreover, her character, Iriadessa the Magic-User, is a 14 year-old girl. Finding a mini to represent her is tough.
So, here's my question: can anyone point me to a mini -- or, better yet, a selection of minis -- that be up to the task of representing a teenaged magic-user? I'm pretty open to a wide variety of options, although the minis need to be in the 25-28mm range rather than anything smaller or large.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Depending on how "medieval" vs "fantasy" you want the figures to look you could use some of the Heroclix minis, possibly with a bit of repainting and rebasing.
ReplyDeleteI think Shimmer or Raven would work well as a young female spellcasters.
Reaper miniatures has a great online store complete with an online "figure finder" application; Reaper Miniatures.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely need to check out these guys:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.megaminis.com/
They have a whole ton of old minis that they are producing.
Here's a teen witch, and here's a teenage zombie that you might be able to do something with if you painted it right. Also, here's a set of kids and a couple chickens, one of which is a girl which might fit the bill.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rattleheadgames.com/catalog/HFMHFA041.html
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rattleheadgames.com/catalog/HFMHFH030.html
http://www.rattleheadgames.com/catalog/WYR3008.html
How about this one from Hasslefree:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hasslefreeminiatures.co.uk/catalog/hfa030%20copy.jpg
... the version at the bottom left. Maybe a bit modern for your needs?
How about this Reaper mini?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/female%20mage/sku-down/03093#detail/03093_G
Might be a little too tall and too old, though.
Thanks Dan! I've been looking for some good mini's for my Cave man game, megaminis has just what I need.
ReplyDeleteThis might be a good resource:
ReplyDeletehttp://theminiaturespage.com/
Good work Dan, I'm finding a ton of nice classic minis!
ReplyDeleteThis Reaper figure has a teenage look about her: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/Sorceress%20Female/sku-down/02810#detail/02810_G
(its an elven figure, but her ears are easy to file-down, if you what something more Human)
You could check here too:
ReplyDeletehttp://ironwindmetals.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=5072
These are old Ral Partha recasts. I had a friend who had a young wizard mini from Partha back in the day (the day being the early nineties) and I seem to recall it having a female counterpart.
I think I found a winner! http://red-box-games.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15&products_id=37
ReplyDeleteMega Miniatures has a ton of the old Grenadier Stuff.
ReplyDeleteEr... I got nuthin'. We've started using some of PIG's paper minis though, and that has some advantages, namely that they're cheap and easy to drag around.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how well paper minis conform to Old School rules, though... ;)
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ReplyDeleteActually you touch upon perhaps a weak spot in the OSR movement and that is some up to date ... yet authentic feeling minis. Now truely authentic minis would be lead Ral Partha, Grenadier, Citadel, etc. minis from the late 70s and 80s. However you have the potential difficulty of lead (for those of us with children) and then the painting of minis. Collecting rare minis can be very expensive ... perhaps much more expensive than finding the old rules and modules to play the games. Also painting minis can be time consuming, etc. so it would be cool if someone would produce a range of plastic or at least pre-painted minis that had more of a classic feel to them. Yes you can indeed use paper and that has its pros and cons ... but for those of us who like the heft and tactile sensation of a real mini other options would be nice. I agree with the previous post that at least one company out there comes sort of close and that is www.megaminis.com ... I'm in the US as well so European companies while cool to look at ... are less viable to actually purchase from. Anyone know of others?
ReplyDeleteThis is a very long comment. My apologies, James.
ReplyDeleteHere's my grand plan, which I haven't yet put into full operation (only partial so far).
I've purchased Fiery Dragon's "digital counter" version of their counter collections: basically a collection of JPG files that they use to produce their own hard-copy counter products. I have already been prototyping gaming using them by printing them out with my b&w laser printer, mounting them onto thin card-stock with glue-stick, cut and play.
All the players have their own 3d minis, but for all the opposition, my plan is to build "counter" tokens and use those instead of minis.
So far, this has worked very, very well. I have noticed these immediate improvements:
• Producing the "army of mooks" that's required for 4e gaming has become much, much cheaper
• I can get much, much closer to "exactly the minis I need" for each encounter
• There's a stark visual difference between minis owned by the players' team, and minis owned by the GM's team, with the players' team characters looking more striking and prominent on the battlemat; I really like this distinction: it's functional, and useful, mechanically and semiotically (i.e. it really helps to drive home which figures are the "important ones" in the game)
• Just talk to my wife about the vast improvement in storage space required for my now much more complete minis collection.... 8)
Stage two was to purchase a host of precision cut wooden miniature bases from Litko systems, in a variety of appropriate sizes (1", 2", 3", 4" square, some 1x2") for the sizes appropriate for D&D creatures. I will then colour laser print sheets of counter images, and use crafty techniques to permanently create tokens with these bases (podging the printed out images onto the bases).
Since I have been purchasing and running the Pathfinder AP installments and running those, and also have the Pathfinder rulebooks in PDF, I have also been using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop to grab "counter-ready" images of Pathfinder-specific monsters (Fiery Dragon doesn't have PFRPG counter art). This lets me have Pathfinder specific monster tokens for use in my gaming as well (like Sinspawn, for example, which are rather cool creatures, ahem, ahem).
I anticipate that all in all, the cost will be a bit lower than purchasing "just the minis I need". The crafting is just at the level I can support short of actual-mini painting and probably all in all takes less time: the photoshopping to convert PFRPG monsters is somewhat time-consuming, but I have to believe that it takes less time to do that than to paint a mini.
The bases are not entirely cheap, but again, the cost is offset by the "getting just exactly what you need" factor.
My grand plan is to pre-prepare the "just what I need" array of minis for my Pathfinder games well in advance, and slightly less well in advance, the minis I need for my Friday night 4e game, and to store the collections in plastic tubs altogether, such that if I ever need to run "Rise of the Runelords" ever again with another group, I can grab the plastic tub and boom have all the minis I need for the campaign in one, handy to store, location.
To truly make this efficient, I'll need some software program to help me catalogue and track all the minis I'm making over the months and years, so that I don't create extras when I don't need to. Physical storage and cataloguing systems will also probably be very useful: I'm going to start with plastic ziplock freezer bags and small plastic rubber-maid type storage tubs. I may graduate to Plano boxing if I want to go truly crazy.
tough, elegant, young--just file off the mace...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/female%20cleric/sku-down/65062
Have you looked at Fenryll? Their "3-stage line" is cool for advancing characters. Check out: http://bit.ly/b2cm9O or http://bit.ly/duuWfg
ReplyDeleteReaper, Pazio mins, if you can find them, Confrontation metal minis-Rakham- were awesome, Hellderdo minis, Ironwind metals(old ral partha folks that took over).
ReplyDeleteIts a time consuming matter. I ended up picking minis for 4 out of 7 of my fellow players and got them painted up. PLus a tone of other ones for the DM that the prepainted minis dont or cant cover.
Its a time consuming affair, tracking down minis. If you expecting players to get their own minis.....you'll probably be disappointed. Not ever person wants to deal with minis.
Your better off tracking them down, linking them to your player by email and say hey how's this for your character.
Without much to go on for description, how's this for a teenage wizard?
http://www.miniature-giant.com/sarah-the-seeress-oop-Reaper-Dark-Heaven-Legends-DHL-sku-3073-c-361-p-17-pr-1093.html
This is relevant to my interests. A lot of the characters I play are very young.
ReplyDeleteFreebooter has Young Wizard, and Wizard's Apprentice,
ReplyDelete