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Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: Hobgoblin on November 24, 2020, 03:10:35 PM
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I'm thinking of running the Against the Giants AD&D modules for our ongoing lockdown D&D campaign (now around 200 sessions in). The characters are mostly about sixth level now and are armed to the teeth with magic items, so I think they'll be ready for the module within the next month or so. We've been using miniatures a lot, because they show up well enough over a phone camera through Zoom and they keep things simple for me (also, two of the party are in the room with me).
Now, those modules contain lots of giants. In the first one, there's a single room that contains 29 giants plus 8 ogres. So, to run it with miniatures, I need lots and lots of giants.
The first thing I thought of was 54mm soft-plastic cavemen. Some companies seem to have produced these in the past, but they don't seem to be available now. I'm also looking at Tehnolog orcs (I have the armoured ones, but there are some goofier ones too that would make decent giants). But are there any better (cheaper!) options?
Hill giants are only 10.5' tall in D&D, so I don't need huge figures. I'll be using old Citadel ogres for the ogres - the ones that fit comfortably on a 25mm base - so the giants need only be a little bigger than that. I'm not too bothered about accurate scale or detials - anything that allows me to 30 giants on the table at once would be great.
So, if anyone has any ideas for cheap, rough-looking giants, I'd be very grateful!
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why not change the scale for these action scenes?
go full 6mm (or something smaller), then the giants can be made from 20mm or 28mm miniatures
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I know DnD minis has tons of ~10' tall giants, so maybe checking ebay for the odd cheapish one. The older ones aren't the best quality, so they'll probably be reasonably priced. Reaper Bones is also a relatively inexpensive way to go, and those giants are nicer (plus, you get to paint 'em yourself!). I know this isn't likely these days, but back when flea markets existed... I would often see old DnD minis at rock bottom prices - but that doesn't help you now, does it? :(
Good luck, post a picture of the room with all the giants if you get a chance! :)
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The board game Assault of the Giants has 12 giant models, you can sometimes pick it up at fairly reasonable prices if you shop about.
Or the old Heroquest/Battlemasters ogres maybe?
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why not change the scale for these action scenes?
go full 6mm (or something smaller), then the giants can be made from 20mm or 28mm miniatures
That's a great idea, and I have been thinking about doing it in 15mm, as I'd then only need to paint up the party; I have umpteen 28mm orcs, ogres and vikings that would work well as giants, and I have plenty of 15mm and 1/72 orcs for the giants' smaller servants. My only reservation is that it might not work so well over Zoom. With 28mm, everyone can see who's who remotely. But I will test it out and see what the image quality is like - and I could always switch between .
I know DnD minis has tons of ~10' tall giants, so maybe checking ebay for the odd cheapish one. The older ones aren't the best quality, so they'll probably be reasonably priced. Reaper Bones is also a relatively inexpensive way to go, and those giants are nicer (plus, you get to paint 'em yourself!). I know this isn't likely these days, but back when flea markets existed... I would often see old DnD minis at rock bottom prices - but that doesn't help you now, does it? :(
Good luck, post a picture of the room with all the giants if you get a chance! :)
Thanks - and I certainly shall!
I'm almost certainly going to buy a few Reaper ogres for 'character' hill giants - including the chief and his wife. And I have a female frost giant to paint up already. The Reaper ogres look nicely scaled as large hill giants, especially against my old Citadel and Chronicle ogres - and there's a 'nice' ogre matriarch that will work really well.
I'm not sure if there's been size inflation since the original Monster Manual, but the official D&D giant miniatures now look a bit too big. But my son does have a big prepainted giant that someone gave him; I can perhaps accelerate its painting and use it as a chief.
The board game Assault of the Giants has 12 giant models, you can sometimes pick it up at fairly reasonable prices if you shop about.
Or the old Heroquest/Battlemasters ogres maybe?
Thanks! That looks like it might be handy for covering some of the niches: various leaders and the occasional stone giants that turn up in the modules. I'll keep an eye on eBay.
I've been looking at 1/32 ancients and medievals, and I think I may have struck gold with the Emhar 1/32 vikings. I've ordered a box of 12, so just a quid a figure including postage. I reckon they'll cover either fire giants or frost giants - or perhaps both, if I get another lot.
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41PNqsBeMSL._AC_.jpg)
In order to get this project done, I think I'll have to avoid getting too hung up on the respective sizes of the various giant races and just assume that they're all 54-60mm, barring exceptionally large leaders. That will allow me to concentrate on 'converting by paint' (TM: Jagannath) - so that frost giants are ivory-skinned and blue-haired, and fire giants black-skinned and red-haired. At 54-60mm, they'll be a little small for frost giants (15'), but fine for fire-giants (12'). But if the party are surrounded by giant albino vikings with blue hair, I doubt they'll notice a few feet!
Any other ideas welcome, though. I'm looking at various ancients for hill giants; HaT seem to do some topless Gauls and the like, which might do for hill giants - though something more primitive would be preferable.
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On meninobesta's point: a scale drop to 1:72 might allow me to enhance the size of the frost giants in that module while using the same 1:32 figures. 1:72 will probably show up OK over Zoom, and I can easily do the whole party in that scale.
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I woukd also suggest scale change. 29 giants cant be cheap in 28mm...
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I woukd also suggest scale change. 29 giants cant be cheap in 28mm...
I'm on 12 for £12 so far, though; I'm happy to pay that sort of price!
The HaT Gallic warband is - so far - the best bet for hill giants, although the Gauls are really a bit too civilised. But given that the hill giants live in a large, multi-room longhouse, recasting them as rowdy barbarians rather than larger ogres might work. They are 16 for £8, which is pretty reasonable. But cavemen in that scale would be the real deal ...
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The toy company Papo do a range of cavemen but they might be too big
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Maybe get as many as you can reasonably field and then have markers for the rest - replacing the markers with miniatures as they're killed off? 29 giants seems..a bit insane (unless that's spread out over an entire adventure). I've got zero idea how you'd reasonably field that :D
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The toy company Papo do a range of cavemen but they might be too big
Thanks! Those look perfect as hill giants, although I suspect they won't be much cheaper than miniatures. I'll keep an eye out, though.Maybe get as many as you can reasonably field and then have markers for the rest - replacing the markers with miniatures as they're killed off? 29 giants seems..a bit insane (unless that's spread out over an entire adventure). I've got zero idea how you'd reasonably field that :D
Oh, yes, it's totally insane - and those 29 giants are in one room of the scenario, along with eight ogres and a cave bear. But I suspect it would make for an unforgettable tabletop experience. And the PCs are now at the stage where some of them have fireball and lightning-bolt spells, so they can deal out giant-killing amounts of damage in short order.
My default option at the moment is to get a couple of boxes of these guys (https://www.drumandflag.co.uk/products/hat-9089-gallic-warband-1-32-scale-plastic-figures-54mm-ancient-celts-britons)(32) and paint them up very quickly. I think the HaT plastic is quite easily glued and reposed, so I'll probably undertake some rudimentary conversions to make them a bit more brutish. If I keep them on their integral bases, they should be easy enough to pack into the room. But I'll have a scour around and see what else is available at this scale.
There is, after all, nothing more authentically D&D than using models in different scales for non-humans! It was the recommended option back in 1974.
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This may be a very off-topic suggestion, but why not switch to a virtual tabletop environment? A lot of the Judges I know have been using FoundryVTT.
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A few action figure types might work well.
I think it is harder to do in 28mm scale with the price of the Giants.
Putting coloured rings or some such marker on players characters would help with knowing who is where.
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This may be a very off-topic suggestion, but why not switch to a virtual tabletop environment? A lot of the Judges I know have been using FoundryVTT.
Well, the main reason is because it wouldn't involve painting miniatures - and where's the fun in that? ;)
Another thing, though, is it isn't just me in the room at our end; two of the players are too. So having a real tabletop set up works better, even if it's just to show me the party's marching order. I'm always off screen while GMIng, and I don't touch the computer at all during the session. To run a virtual tabletop, I think we'd need to have two or three computers in the room, which would feel a lot less like a 'real' game.
Most of our sessions are 'theatre of the mind'. But we connect a phone camera on a tripod when things get messy.
A few action figure types might work well.
I think it is harder to do in 28mm scale with the price of the Giants.
Putting coloured rings or some such marker on players characters would help with knowing who is where.
That's a good suggestion - but I think that 1/32 might solve the price problem entirely. I see that Drum & Flag carries 1/32 Beja and Zulus, which might work as hill giants if painted appropriately. They're extremely cheap - 16 or 20 for a fiver or so - and the Zulus' shields are separate, so they could be replaced or just left off. I'll see how I get on with the vikings, but I might gamble on a box of Zulus or Beja and a box of Gauls, then paint them all up in the same scheme (ruddy skin, woad and warpaint, etc.) and see how they look.
The sole 1/32 figure in my possession - an Airfix man-at-arms about to hurl a rock - looks pretty good as a giant next to 28mm figures. I might paint him up as a cloud giant and see how he looks.
I also found this blog (https://slag-productions.blogspot.com/p/comparing-gaming-miniatures-with-toy.html), which describes someone else's efforts in precisely the same direction. Alas, the cavemen he used don't seem to be available any more.
If I can crack some way of speed-painting the 'giants', the three-module campaign should provide plenty of use for them, as different types of giants crop up in all of the scenarios.
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They're extremely cheap - 16 or 20 for a fiver or so
Plastic Reaper ogres are for 3,5 euros.
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This is the guy. My thinking is that if you have 29 giants in a room, you don't want them to be much bigger than this. He towers above my Chronicle and Citadel ogres.
So I think 1/32 is the answer. Vikings cover frost giants, and various bearded and armoured ancient types might do for fire giants. The only remaining question, then, is whether there's anything better than Gauls/Beja/Zulus for the hill giants.
I also see that there are few sources of 1/32 female civilians, though generally from much later periods (Wild West, etc.). But that's OK, I think, given the folkloric trope in which giant women are much more civilised and intelligent than the males. The illustration in G1 conveys the same (these are female hill giants) - and the scale with the orcs is about the same as my 1/32 soldier and the Victrix WIP:
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Plastic Reaper ogres are for 3,5 euros.
Yup - and I'll definitely pick up some for 'personalities'. This one in particular is a must:
(https://images.reapermini.com/4/77568_w_1.jpg)
But 29 Reaper ogres would cost me well over £100 - as against £11 for 32 1/32 Zulus.
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But 29 Reaper ogres would cost me well over £100 - as against £11 for 32 1/32 Zulus.
My fault. I read "16 or 20 for five or so" instead of "16 or 20 for a fiver or so"...
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My fault. I read "16 or 20 for five or so" instead of "16 or 20 for a fiver or so"...
No worries! One feature of using the Reaper ones for 'specials' will be that the 'specials' are much more monstrous than their ordinary kin - as it should be, perhaps. Think of all those fairy tales where the biggest giant has three heads or whatever.
Here's a very rough attempt at 'converting by paint' with the Airfix soldier. When he's appropriately based, I think he'll look OK - over Zoom at least!
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I loved the set of figures the Man-at-arms throwing rock was from as a kid.Nice work on him.
The Great Orcs on here might also work well.
https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=221_222_44&sort=20a&page=3
The Barbarian Warpers would also work well.
https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=221_222_44&sort=20a&page=2
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As well as orcs from Russia, I picked up some "Barbarians" on ebay to use as giants, they look OK to me and for less than a quid apiece, a bargain.
There's one about halfway down this post http://grahamsgaming.blogspot.com/2020/03/keeping-myself-busy.html
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I loved the set of figures the Man-at-arms throwing rock was from as a kid.Nice work on him.
Cheers! He's the sole survivor from my childhood set - and, quite fortuitously, the best suited to giant-hood. I reckon a key consideration for using different scales is whether the figures are looking up or down!
The Great Orcs on here might also work well.
https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=221_222_44&sort=20a&page=3
The Barbarian Warpers would also work well.
https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=221_222_44&sort=20a&page=2
Those are great calls - many thanks! The Great Orcs would be excellent hill giants (maybe a bit short, but broad and ugly enough to make up for it). I'll add them to the shortlist for 'icing on the cake'.
As well as orcs from Russia, I picked up some "Barbarians" on ebay to use as giants, they look OK to me and for less than a quid apiece, a bargain.
There's one about halfway down this post http://grahamsgaming.blogspot.com/2020/03/keeping-myself-busy.html
Yes, he looks the part. I think they do Amazons too, which might provide a cheap source of giantesses (I'll need quite a few of those). The Tehnolog pseudo-historicals have the advantage (in this case!) of very odd proportions.
Looking at the G1-3 modules again, I noticed this picture of fire giants. Relative to the adventurers, they look very much like 1/32 ancients! I note, too, that the Chainmail rules recommend 1/32 for giants.
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I seem to have hit the motherlode with Tehnolog - thanks again, Sunjester, for the pointers. All of these guys are absolutely spot on for giants:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91FDlXwnjKL.jpg)
And these fellows too:
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/pBoAAOSw0w1cm5ux/s-l640.jpg)
I've ordered both - not quite sure what sort of giant they'll be, but they're pretty much perfect.
I particularly like the bowmen in both cases. The scenarios have giants wielding ballistas, so giant bowmen will do the trick nicely. And they'll make great random encounters - giant hunters with accompanying dire wolves or hellhounds, perhaps?
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Those are quite nice figures from Technolog.Need links to them now ;).
The Great Orcs are quite large.Will try to dig mine out and measure them.
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I got them here (https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/artofwars/Plastic-Soldiers/_i.html?_storecat=14697692015).
I reckon the 'Russian knights' will be fire giants (maybe as leaders of HaT Carthaginians or some such) and the 'vikings' (purple) will serve as frost-giant personalities/specials - alongside the Emhar vikings.
A scale shot or measurement for the great orcs would be great. For the hill giants, I'm still thinking HaT Gauls with Reaper ogres and maybe the Grendel great orcs as 'specials'. As all have quite a bit of bare flesh, I can probably unify them through crude tartanish clothing and warpaint/tattoos.
I'm also thinking that a scale 'dip' for the frost-giant adventure is probably the way to go - not least because using 1/72 for that would save me from having to amass huge numbers of trolls! Then we can revert to 28mm for the fire giants.
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I'm not surprised these 1/32 ancients look perfect. Many D&D monsters were based on cheap plastic toys. The rustmonster and owlbear were chinese plastic prehistoric animals.
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I'm not surprised these 1/32 ancients look perfect. Many D&D monsters were based on cheap plastic toys. The rustmonster and owlbear were chinese plastic prehistoric animals.
Yup - and Chainmail, D&D's precursor, offers a whole set of guidelines for using different scales for dwarfs, orcs, giants, etc., with a given scale of human. There's a great article about the 'Chinasaurs' here (https://diterlizzi.com/essay/owlbears-rust-monsters-and-bulettes-oh-my/).
I wonder if the Monster Manual's colour-coded giants reflect the practice of 'converting' out-of-scale figures through unusual paintjobs. It's certainly a possibility.
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It looks like you've got everything sorted, but if you were looking for higher quality giants (or anyone perusing this in the future) I'd recommend picking up a copy of CMON'S KS game HATE.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/hate/description (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/hate/description)
It comes with 14 giants (plus some other large mutant types) along with a host of post apocalyptic or chaos type humans.
While it was KS exclusive, I see a lot of copies pop up on eBay. You can also buy just the giants on eBay if you are looking for some more personalities.
Again, this isn't economical, but the sculpts are fantastic and I've really enjoyed painting them, so I figured I'd share.
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Many thanks - that's a good call for the 'specials'! I'll keep an eye on those, as there are some nice candidates for hill-giant leaders.
With any luck, as the project gathers momentum and the rank-and-file giants get painted, I'll be able to splash out a bit more on the specials to put the icing on the cake.
Given where the PCs are at the moment - loaded with magic items and Eyes from their sojourn in Tekumel - I think encounters with large numbers of giants might rebalance the campaign nicely!
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I've picked up some of the Hate monsters and they're nice sculpts but can seem a little flat sometimes. Obviously the LAF does not condone the selling of unauthorised copies of miniatures so please do not post ebay links to such items. Thank you.
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I've picked up some of the Hate monsters and they're nice sculpts but can seem a little flat sometimes. Obviously the LAF does not condone the selling of unauthorised copies of miniatures so please do not post ebay links to such items. Thank you.
I'm pretty sure Gallahad meant "copies of the game" (as in "my copy has a misprint in the rulebook") rather than "counterfeited miniatures" - at least that's how I read it!
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Have you seen these?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/satanicpanic/satanic-panic-miniatures-28mm-old-school-multi-part-giants?ref=recommendation-projectpage-footer-2
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Another thing I just thought of - have you looked into big toy miniatures from Russia? I picked up some Ogre/Troll/Orc miniatures that were pretty substantial for really dirt cheap...standby, I'll see if I can find them.
Here is a picture - the "Orc" or whatever is on the far right of your screen.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oOLu7jZHujA/UVrzp8eK-0I/AAAAAAAAnbg/3yt4CExtpxY/s1600/Scale_01.jpg)
Basically eBay search "Technolog 54mm"
Sample thing:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mountain-Orcs-Fantasy-big-toy-soldiers-Technolog-for-54-mm/273791074507?hash=item3fbf3840cb:g:F~kAAOSwQUdfGXki
Assuming you find combined shipping, they're big and relatively cheap. They seem to have a heap of types of fantasy miniatures in 54mm scale.
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Have you seen these?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/satanicpanic/satanic-panic-miniatures-28mm-old-school-multi-part-giants?ref=recommendation-projectpage-footer-2
Yes - and they do look amazing! But they're £20 a pop, so 29 of them would be a bit on the expensive side. And they won't be delivered until next year, I think; I'm planning to run the G1 module during the Christmas holidays at the very latest.
I've been musing a bit more on the hill-giant conundrum. For the rank and file - and I count 71 giants occupying the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief - I want figures that are giant (of course!), easily identifiable as hill giants and not ogres (because the place is crawling with ogres too), and cohesive in some way. Now, hill giants are tribal and fairly primitive, so 'tribal' historicals - whether that's Gauls, Ancient Germans or Zulus with their guns removed - are a good start. But besides the tribal peoples of history, there's another touchstone: the American gothic of 70s horror films. I looked at these Pegasus gladiators and immediately thought "Leatherface!":
(https://www.hobbybunker.com/userfiles/products/lightbox/3201_c.jpg)
They have the advantage of mostly looking downwards, and I reckon they could easily be painted up with woad or tattoos and verdigrised bronze armour to look like a sort of primitive, giant version of slasher-movie villains. Masked, grunting giants should make for fairly terrifying opponents. And the contrast with their slightly more civilised kin, who can actually speak (albeit slowly) would add some variety and interest to the encounters. The local model shop appears to have them in stock, online at least, so I'll see if I can pick them up tomorrow.
Elbows" yes, thanks - see the discussion on the previous page (there are some brilliant Tehnolog 'giants' there - now ordered!). And this guy might well end up as one of the beefier hill giants - he's already featured as a wizard's giant bodyguard earlier in the campaign:
(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fLhCuTSt4OA/W76IcHiEYPI/AAAAAAAAAfM/aROOLLX6UQUXCitW-Ao5DSWMtWpsUk6LgCLcBGAs/s1600/Giant%2Borc%2Band%2Bfriends.jpg)
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Doh, I didn't see the other page after my first response...well...there ya go. :D
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I'm pretty sure Gallahad meant "copies of the game" (as in "my copy has a misprint in the rulebook") rather than "counterfeited miniatures" - at least that's how I read it!
Yeah, you're probably right looking at it again. I was surprised at how many 'rip off' copies of gaming figures there are on Ebay though.
Those Russian figures look good. I have the orcs and really like them. The barbarians and vikings do look the part for mid height giants
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Yeah, you're probably right looking at it again. I was surprised at how many 'rip off' copies of gaming figures there are on Ebay though.
Those Russian figures look good. I have the orcs and really like them. The barbarians and vikings do look the part for mid height giants
Yes, there is a whole load of useful miniatures for bigger monsters in the Russian 1/32 toy "soldiers".
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Now that I'm heading down the gladiator/Leatherface route for hill giants, the Tehnolog gladiators look a natural complement to the historicals - as the bigger, meaner sort of giant:
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/K40AAOSwH1BdjiGV/s-l400.jpg)
Gallingly, the excellent Italieri gladiators (which I have in 1/72) used to be available in 1/32. That kit even included a bear, which would have been perfect for the cave bear in The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief.
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Just found this great thread (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=59149.0) by Papa Midnight. That seals the deal on the Pegasus gladiators. And those might enable me to do the prep in plain view of some of the players. "Why these? These gladiators? I thought a bigger scale might work well for Melee - and for testing out the new Runequest rules ...".
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I think that i might have the Italieri 1/32 Gladiators some place.
Papa Midnight does some great stuff.His Inferno figure collection is amazing.
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I think that i might have the Italieri 1/32 Gladiators some place.
If you could be tempted to sell one or both of the sprues (there are two identical ones, I think), just let me know!
Papa Midnight does some great stuff.His Inferno figure collection is amazing.
I must check that out. His gladiators are brilliant - and the conversions of the more ostensibly useless ones are inspiring.
The fact that the Pegasus set offers gladiatrices (giantesses!) and dwarfs (immature giants!) makes it especially handy.
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We had someone at the local club used to field a giant army that he mainly picked up from Poundland, they had cheap copies of Papo/Schleich fantasy figures also some slightly larger ones, so his giants varied in size from 3 - 8 inches tall.
Made an impressive army, but usually got shot to bits
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We had someone at the local club used to field a giant army that he mainly picked up from Poundland, they had cheap copies of Papo/Schleich fantasy figures also some slightly larger ones, so his giants varied in size from 3 - 8 inches tall.
That's one thing about giants - there's no need for any particular consistency in their sizes (as long as the leaders are the biggest around).
The repurposing of toys is a great gaming tradition - going back at least as far as Chainmail and probably much further. The kids and I are gradually basing and painting up some of their old dinosaurs and the like. Some of the Papo and Schleich animals are at least as well designed as most miniatures.
By the way, in buying up some 1/32 stuff online today, I noticed that Hannants had this hard-plastic 1/24 troll (https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/MAS24014?result-token=lMeCY) going cheap. I'm guessing it's about 10cm high (in another set, a human is about chest high against it). Not a bad price for a sizeable giant, I thought; I've got one ordered. I reckon he might make a decent giant for Oathmark and the like.
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A good spot...just ordered one myself :D
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Looks like you might have got the last! They seem to have gone now.
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Looks like you might have got the last! They seem to have gone now.
Right now Hannants are probably scratching their heads about a sudden rush lol
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He-Man action figures ?
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He-Man action figures ?
They might work - but not a cheap option, I fear!
A batch of 1/32 figures arrived today: Emhar vikings and Pegasus gladiators. I'm pleased with both: the 'hill giants as inbred masked serial killers' plan looks on track; and the Emhar vikings look the part for frost giants. The latter are also in some sort of 'poseable' plastic that seems to take paint and polystyrene cement very well.
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Just for interest, I dug out a couple of the Russian 1/32 Barbarians and snapped them with a Gripping Beast 28mm mini.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50660351583_73fa9dc0be_z.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2kbFxxD) (https://flic.kr/p/2kbFxxD)
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Just for interest, I dug out a couple of the Russian 1/32 Barbarians and snapped them with a Gripping Beast 28mm mini.
They look good - and they're a great size for giants.
I got the first Emhar 'frost giant' painted up - nice and quick (and he only cost a pound). The Emhar plastic is great; it seems to take paint and polystyrene as well as GW's hard plastic. I've gone for Monster Manual colours - ivory skin and blue hair. I'll give some others blond hair (as per the MM) or red hair (in line with The Frost Giant's Daughter, which I reckon is also the source for the MM's ivory skin). Just another 49 or so to go and we'll be ready for the whole three modules!
I might add some pupils to the eyes, but will see how the next few turn out. They'll also work as draugr in 1/32.
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One other thing I've notice about these 1/32 chaps: their weapons, while scaled appropriately, aren't beyond the realms of feasibility for a strong PC. For example, that axe could have its haft cut down to be a poleaxe for a big fighter, and the sword might work a two-hander for a hefty human.
And that's all to the good, both because it's suggested as a possibility in the Against the Giants modules, and because it's in line with Beowulf and Grettir's Saga, where heroes cheerfully wield giant weapons on occasion.
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They look good - and they're a great size for giants.
Thanks, at less than £2 each I'm really happy with them.
That Viking makes a really nice Frost Giant.
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This whole thread is inspirational. The solutions you've found to having a huge number of giants in a single encounter have me glancing at those old modules sitting on a shelf. I am definitely going to pick up one of the solutions you've posted, leaning toward the Emhar. Lovely paint job.
If you do ever get Nosnra'a (seemingly a cheap shot at Dave Arneson) feast hall set up for an encounter, we need to see the pictures!
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I'm pretty sure Gallahad meant "copies of the game" (as in "my copy has a misprint in the rulebook") rather than "counterfeited miniatures" - at least that's how I read it!
Yes, I just meant picking up the game second hand from eBay!
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HATE is a fantastic source of really nice looking giants (albeit a few are a bit weird!). I reckon you can't find it for cheap... But now I kinda want to run that module just to get use of my HATE Giants! :)
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I really like the way the chain byrnie on the Frost giant looks. The first thing that came into my mind when I saw it, was "Hands off that shiny shirt! That's Mine! It's going to the Great Eye!". Great job on making it look so realistic.
Scale-wise, 1/32nd seems to be perfect for giants when compared to 28mm miniatures. I am really looking forward to seeing some action shots of your run through the G series modules. Will you move onto the D and Q scenarios once your players have run the gauntlet against the giants?
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Will you move onto the D and Q scenarios once your players have run the gauntlet against the giants?
Start stocking up on plastic spiders now!
I really like the realistic weapons that you get with these giant-proxies. I have a penchant for Reaper Bone's inhumanly stocky Fire Giants, but their even-gianter weapons do annoy me - I'd much rather see things like the Danish Axe on that splendid Frost Giant. That thing whistling down on you from 20 feet up and you'd know all about it...
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Thanks, all! Glad the thread is proving of interest.
If you do ever get Nosnra'a (seemingly a cheap shot at Dave Arneson) feast hall set up for an encounter, we need to see the pictures!
Definitely! I think the Masterbox giant (assembled below) might be a candidate for Nosnra in 28mm - especially if I then drop down to 1/72 for the frost giants.
I'm using a new Hue camera on a stalk for our games; it works really well, so I should be able to take a few screenshots of the set-up.
I really like the way the chain byrnie on the Frost giant looks. The first thing that came into my mind when I saw it, was "Hands off that shiny shirt! That's Mine! It's going to the Great Eye!". Great job on making it look so realistic.
Ha! Thanks - the 1/32 and 1/72 designers seem to be much keener on realistic mail than 28mm, who seem obsessed with visible links.
Will you move onto the D and Q scenarios once your players have run the gauntlet against the giants?
That's the plan. I have been gathering quite a few old Citadel dark elves - and might even drop cold ones into the mix to spice things up.
I really like the realistic weapons that you get with these giant-proxies. I have a penchant for Reaper Bone's inhumanly stocky Fire Giants, but their even-gianter weapons do annoy me - I'd much rather see things like the Danish Axe on that splendid Frost Giant. That thing whistling down on you from 20 feet up and you'd know all about it...
Yes, indeed! There's a kind of naiveté in the notion that deadly weapons have to be big. The idea of a small, sharp piece of metal being propelled with great strength and speed is much scarier than someone swinging an anvil on a stick. For example, I reckon the Perry medieval poleaxes always look much more murderous than fantasy battleaxes with absurd blades. And, as I noted above, it's nice to have giant weapons that the PCs could conceivably adapt to their own use - as in so many sagas, folktales and myths.
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By the way, the Masterbox giant cost all of £8.99!
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I like that. £8.99 is a bargain.
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Sometimes you can find a cheap toy and with a bit of work you can get nice results
http://bandit86.blogspot.com/2017/06/mountain-giant.html
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This is a great thread! Missed this earlier. Some great ideas and lovely to see a pic of that Emhar Viking as a frost giant.
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Sometimes you can find a cheap toy and with a bit of work you can get nice results
http://bandit86.blogspot.com/2017/06/mountain-giant.html
I came across your blog during my initial searches - nice work on that one!
Meanwhile, I knocked up this fellow from Fimo and tinfoil while watching the rugby yesterday. A dusting of Milliput and greenstuff last night, and a quick and clandestine paintjob this morning, and he's ready for the climax of the current adventure (The Lost City).
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And here's the first of the hill giants - re-imagined as giant, inbred slasher-movie villains.
The HaT Gauls are on the way and will form the bulk of the giants, with the gladiators as the 'specials'. I may add tattoos.
As some of the gladiator classes were essentially fantasy versions of Gallic warriors, I think the two sorts should go together well enough.
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Great putty work...Zargon looks the biz.
8)
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Thanks! I think the party will finally get to him tomorrow.
I'm now two frost giants down. I've sourced 1/72 options for most of the party, so should I want the frost giants to be a bit bigger, I can scale the PCs down. I might even do that for the hill-giant adventure; the giants' lair contains a lot of bugbears, and that would give me an excuse to get the CP Models 20mm bugbears painted up ...
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Here are a couple more hill giants. These are 1/32 HaT Gauls, and they're pretty rough. But against that, they were very cheap. It's a shame that they're not nearly so nice as the Emhar figures, but they're my quickest route to the 30-strong horde in Nosnra's hall.
I used the same source for the tattoos as Blasphemia Blackwood did with her marvellous Picts: the fanciful 1588 depictions of Picts in A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia.
For the next few, I might meddle with some greenstuffing.
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They look great :)
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Some really nice giants there!
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Step one: Buy an army of Micrworld's new and very beautiful 3mm fantasy figures for, say 40 dollars.
Step two: Buy a 15mm fantasy figure of your choice.
Profit!
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You can tell those Gauls are a bit cruder than the Emhar figures, but you really made them look good!
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Thanks, chaps! For the hill giants, it's three down, twenty-six to go ...
Step one: Buy an army of Micrworld's new and very beautiful 3mm fantasy figures for, say 40 dollars.
Step two: Buy a 15mm fantasy figure of your choice.
It's an idea! Not quite sure that the 3mm figures would show up that well over Zoom, mind you!
I've started applying the knife and some green stuff to a few of the HaT Gauls. Here's the first WIP:
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That’s looking good, the greenstuff definitely gives the figure a hill giant vibe! I’m looking forward to seeing him painted!
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Thanks! I'm aiming to create a sort of 'monstrous spectrum' with these, so that some of the hill giants are just oversized humans while others are full-blown monsters. These two, like the one above, are just a bit on the trollish side, but I'm going to experiment with some orc heads next ...
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This is the next step. The ork helmet has round panels at each side, so I'll attach some horns, antlers or tree branches to those to add some 'fantasy Celt' flavour. I might give him a nose too.
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Those conversions all look very promising.
It’s funny how changing the nose makes a big difference. I did something similar with some GW orcs a friend donated to me but which didn’t fit at all with the style of my collection. I rounded off their ears and most of the teeth, then sculpted a bulbous nose on each and they transformed into fairly convincing ogres...
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Those conversions all look very promising.
Thanks! It's a bit 'hit and hope' to start with, but any that don't work out can be 'extras' when the big battles come around ...
It’s funny how changing the nose makes a big difference. I did something similar with some GW orcs a friend donated to me but which didn’t fit at all with the style of my collection. I rounded off their ears and most of the teeth, then sculpted a bulbous nose on each and they transformed into fairly convincing ogres...
Yes - the GW orcs are so distinctive (and odd), but a lot of that has to do with their noselessness. Their heads, hands and weapons are already 1/32 scale or thereabouts, which helps!
Here's the first converted giant painted up. It's a very quick paintjob, but there's no point spending too much time on these chaps if I'm to get 30-odd done!
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Quick paint job or not, that giant looks great! He certainly has the right primitive and brutal vibe to be a hill giant.
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Really nice work on the one with the Obelisk style trousers. The green stuff work to do a new face and a belly really make him a giant. And for a quick paint job he looks super.
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Thanks, guys!
Here's the orkish conversion in progress.