Fantasy in Fifty Four

[Lost Egg]

Another grim looking chap, great stuff.

I know what you mean about mixing ranges...if I ever won the lottery I think I'd get my own fantasy range sculpted to make sure the style and scale was consistent.

[Gibby]

Excellent work on that latest orc! I especially love the shield!

[RSDean]

Yes, that’s some great freehand on that shield.  I started painting some fantasy 54s this week; plastics, from a bucket they sold at Toys R Us just before they went out of business.  It has seven different poses (good sorceress, witch, rogue, barbarian, elf, dwarf, and orc), and mixes reasonably well with Marx Robin Hood figures and the old Airfix 1/32 medievals.  If I get through a few of those, perhaps you will have made another sale for Irregular …

[Hobgoblin]

Fantastic shield on that last orc!

[tikitang]

Thanks, all!

My newest wave of Irregular Miniatures arrived at the end of last week. As I said before, these latest miniatures are to pad out the human(oid) warband, having now removed the Thunderbolt Mountain miniatures from their ranks (due to aesthetic differences).

The Thunderbolt Mountain miniatures will now be separated into their own exclusive project where they can revel in their unique sculpting style free from common riff-raff. As such, the IM warband needs more members if they're going to match the orcs for manpower and arms!

One of the new IM models I ordered is a man-at-arms wielding a bill (I guess that makes him a billman). He also came equipped with an arming sword and a dagger, both strapped to his belt on either hip, but frankly I hated the way these looked on him. Irregular are a little hit-and-miss with their sculpting style, and I have not been impressed with the state of the swords and daggers hanging from the belts of their medieval range; they're so small and spindly, and in my view really detract from the model's general appearance. So I removed them with a combination of clippers, knife, file and green-stuff. It's not very historically realistic to only go into battle with a bill, but this is fantasy and I guess that means historical realism is optional.

Once again he sports the mi-parti look on his padded gambeson, which adds some visual spice to an otherwise fairly bland paint job!

[tikitang]

Managed to squeeze two miniatures in this week! That's good going for me.

Today we have a mysterious cloaked adventurer.








For the cloak design I borrowed some inspiration from Hobgoblin's First Oddventurer, though strangely I'm pretty sure I had this exact colour scheme in mind already when I first saw Hobgoblin's model some weeks ago, only he'd beat me to actually realising it.

[Lost Egg]

Looking good, some cracking free-hand on the hood particularly.

[Spinal Tap]

That cloaked adventurer is wonderful.

Great paint job.

[Hobgoblin]

He looks terrific!

[tikitang]

Thanks, all!

I'm kicking off this week with a pint-sized update:

Yesterday I received a delivery of 54mm loose weapons made by Langley Models — part of their 54mm medieval range.

Included in the nine-weapon kit is a war hammer, a morning star, a couple of axes, a dagger and a few swords (most of which are in their scabbards). The reason I purchased this pack is to supplement my latest purchase of Medievals from Irregular Miniatures, many of whom (as I mentioned in a previous post) have swords strapped to their belts of a highly questionable sculpting quality. I've cut and filed away the worst offenders and have replaced them with the new Langley weapons, which are a significant improvement.

One of the things that has been bothering me for a little while about this project is my halfling, who I painted some months ago; his puny dagger meant his capacity for combat effectiveness was somewhat limited, depending on the ruleset used. Thanks to the Langley weapons re-supply, he's now much more dangerous — brandishing the morning star!

[manic _miner]

 Great work on these figures.

 Not sure if you know about this range but it is an old one which used to get advertised in the Military Modelling magazine back in the 80's.Phoenix Models Atlantis range.

 https://www.sanddmodels.co.uk/products_32_fantasy.htm

[tikitang]

Thanks!

Yes, I did stumble upon that range recently, but I'd say its general theme is outside the realm of what I'm doing!

[First Legion]

Really like this project as I'm a 54mm (well....60mm) guy myself and pretty much do all of my gaming in 60mm (historical mostly).    Just wanted to point out that we make 11 different Orcs in 1/30th scale (i.e. modern day 54mm).  Now, our orcs are purposely oversized, so keep that in mind (in 28mm, they're about 38mm and bulky).  We like them that way.   We were going to convert a large part of our fantasy series to this scale, the goblins would particularly interesting, but alas got busy with other priorities.   Projects like yours give me hope that gaming in this scale could catch on.   I'm too old to see small scale figures.   

Orc Unpainted Figure Kits

Look forward to reading more on this project.

Matt



 

[tikitang]

Hello Matt! Nice to meet you. Your First Legion 60mm historical models are great, though pricey! I have, however, long been an admirer of your 40mm Crusaders and was thinking of buying them some time back, before I went down 'Route 54'.

One of the reasons I never did was because of shipping costs; I don't suppose you have a UK distributor?

[First Legion]

Nice to e-meet you as well.   Our 60mm painted historicals are on the expensive side when you compare them with our makers.   But you get what you pay for as they  say.     Yes, our 60mm Orcs in resin are also not "cheap".   This is primarily due to the scaling.  A human at 60mm is 60mm tall.   As our orcs are purposely designed to be much larger than humans and extremely bulky, they have more resin than all of our 75mm figures do (about 50% more!).     Anyway as you were seemingly struggling to find sources of fantasy figures in that scale, just thought i'd present an option to you.     

Our 40mm series is unfortunately a dead series.   We haven't added to it in at least 12 years.   As we have now fully shifted to 3d modeling about 3-4 years ago, we may revisit other scales as our catalog of 60mm sculpts grows and grows.   

We do have a UK reseller, Maison Militaire.   You can get in touch with Tina from their website.

https://maisonmilitaire.com/?v=7516fd43adaa 

This will obviously save on shipping costs.  Speaking of shipping costs, during the Pandemic we stopped using USPS entirely due to the ridiculously high number of lost and non-delivered parcels and only ship with FedEx.   We may revisit that at some point.   

Best,

Matt