Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: MysteryMachine on 20 September 2022, 01:07:08 PM
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I'm pointing the finger at Hobgoblin for getting me started on this project with his very persuasive post on the merits of 1/72 as a scale: http://hobgoblinry.blogspot.com/2019/10/enter-172-and-protocol-for-miniature.html
There's been lots of further encouragement on here from the likes of Jack Hooligan, blacksmith and others, who have shown how good these miniatures can look when well painted.
Anyway, I thought I would have a crack at photographing some of my own efforts to date, in case it might encourage someone else to have a go at this excellent scale.
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The range of miniatures you can now get in this scale is amazing...
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Nicely done, they look great.
The "true proportions" found in most 1/72 figures really show up the awful dumpy "heroic" style that dominates in 28mm wargames sculpts.
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Great stuff! Lovely shields and a nice conversion of the standard bearer!
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Great painting, especially the shields, love them. :-*
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They look amazing, I especially like the barbarians and freehands on the orcish shields :).
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Daaanng!
Mysterymachine, You’re right up there with Hobgoblin and Blacksmith.. the trinity of 1/72 fantasy painters. True masters of the scale.
These minis are incredible, but those freehand shields are :-* o_o
Is there a game system you have in mind for them or just enjoying the hobby? And can you share your basing technique? Those bases look great too.
Also… the photography is perfect. Great job all around.
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MysteryMachine
That’s a mighty fine gang you have there. And I think this is the first time I see Orc-ish types painted correctly, with the right skin color (a la Tolkien).
Fantastic!
Dan
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Very nice indeed, your brush skills are superb!
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Thank you very much for all the kind words! I've taken some more shots of the currently completed collection so far.
Jack, you were asking about basing. I use 1p coins (about 20mm across) as these seem to be the cheapest and most convenient source of metal discs, and the weight gives a nicer feel to the plastic minis. I superglue them on, blend in the bases using filler (polyfilla), then trim it back with a craft knife to produce a smooth surface before undercoating (generally black). It takes a bit of time, but is robust. I think Hobgoblin mentioned a less laborious method of doing it using some sort of pumice-stone gel.
To finish, I use GW Stirland Mud (there's a cheaper Vallejo equivalent that I plan to use for scenery), then dry-brush it with various browns. I have thought about using tufts, but these are intended for gaming, and I think the tufts might shed (based on my experiences with flock in the distant past).
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Awesome painted figures! Are those Emhar Vikigins? BTW, I¡ll say it again, I love your old school Orc shields :-*
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Thanks, blacksmith. The pictures today seem to have come out a bit darker than yesterday's. I think it'll be a while before I get the hang of the photography thing. I love seeing other people's work though. Your shots always seem to come out brilliantly!
The vikings are indeed Emharr. I wanted to get some fighters in chainmail, to add some options between the Conan-esque boys, and the fully plated knights. There will be more. Their shields provide a bit more colour, so I might try and take some additional pictures (on a day when the light's better). I also have a box of the Zvezda vikings, for adding some more angry bearded raiders.
Thanks again for your compliments re the orc shields. Old-school indeed: I give full credit to Mr John Blanche for the best of the designs (the angry red circular face, as I'm sure you must know!)
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Good God! Those shields! Did you sell your soul to be able to paint them??
I’m really in love with your collection!
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They really are very well done! I have been enjoying seeing the 1/72 fantasy projects lately, including this one.
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Great work on those - and especially the Emhar vikings!
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Fantastic :), I especially like your rangers :-*.
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Wonderful work on all of those figures - my eyes just got wider in appreciation the more I scrolled down the thread. 1/72nd seems to be a decent scale now - plenty of eye-candy on this forum shows what can be done with these versatile, and now numerous sets of, figures.
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incredible painting!
Are you playing DnD with those little chaps?
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Hi MysteryMachine!
Thanks to the link you left on my blog, I could have a look at your 1/72 figures, and I love them! Great painting, great bases (a skill I should really improve myself), nice pictures (though a bit too dark sometimes, as already spotted) and excellent result! I particularly like your Dark Alliance barbarians
PS: I'm now a member of this forum thanks to you :) Some of the people here look familiar...
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Very nice work!
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It's threads like this that make me wish I was just starting to collect fantasy figures now, because 1/72 plastics would make it a lot cheaper and still have some fantastic minis. Unfortunatly my 25/28mm collection dates back over 40 years so I would never catch up with the painting to start again now!
Mind you some 1/72 fit in quite nicely as monsters for the larger scale, Troll and Cyclops (Cyclopi?) still look OK to me, goblins as imps, orcs as small goblins and I recently picked up a box of anubis headed warriors that I will do something with at some point.
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Thanks for all the kind words, everyone. Philotep, it is an honour to see you on these boards!
102-year-old-man, you were asking whether I had plans to play D&D with the collection. It was certainly an inspiration, and I'm trying to work up a set of miniatures to cover all the basic classes. Clerics have proven a bit of a challenge, but I have some ideas for conversions. Who knows? Maybe, eventually, I will even have enough of a selection to be able to run WFRP with minis for the encounters.
Otherwise, the plan is to try Song of Blades and Heroes, Rangers of Shadow Deep, Nightwatch and Sellswords and Spellslingers. Sunjester, I have a copy of your "Last Stand at Mistham" and it is driving my current interest in goblinoids, although they should also make a good first selection of baddies/mooks for Nightwatch.
In the meantime, I thought it is important for adventurers to start at the bottom, so clearly they will need to have some rats to stomp. These rodents are a selection of Alternative Armies (slightly miscast, and needed quite a lot of cleaning up/fixing whilst still remaining a bit wonky), Northstar (came with a boar) and Ral Partha (from RPE).
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Those rats look pretty cool!
Over the last weeks, painting 15mm, I have been more than tempted to try a couple of 1/72 as humans. They would work pretty good with most of my monsters, orcs &c.
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Those rats are lovely. I'd love to see them next to a 1/72 figure ;)
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Those rats are lovely. I'd love to see them next to a 1/72 figure ;)
Your wish is my command, blacksmith!
Actually, this is a good idea in relation to 1/72 - I will try to remember to do this going forward.
From left to right, the first rat is one of the Alternative Armies models, the next is the larges of the Ral Partha rodents, then one of the Northstar models (which are larger than the others) and finally the two smallest Ral Partha rats on the same 1p coin base. Of the three sets, I think the Ral Partha rats are probably the most versatile.
http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/dsa-the-dark-eye-28mm-fantasy-c-30/creatures-17000-c-30_34/17025-pack-of-giant-rats-8-p-1021.html
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Indeed, the Ral Partha are the most appropriate. Thank you very much for the picture, the rats look really good next to 1/72 men as giant rats.
That viking shield is very sexy ;D
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That is a pretty cool scale shot. Those 1/72 humans do look pretty good. And they come through all periods and styles for relatively few bucks…
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Those be great giant rats!
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It's been a while since I've been able to post any new figures - an unfortunate arm injury earlier in the year resulted in a bit of a pause on the painting front. Still, the fracture is all healed up, and I've been able to finish a batch of twelve Battle Valor Orcians.
These guys are massive for the 15mm scale that they were created for, but fit in really well with 20mm / 1:72. I have included a comparison picture with a Dark Alliance Cimmerian and a Dark Alliance orc that should illustrate this.
Hopefully there will be much less of a gap before the posting of the next set of figures!
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It's so good to see more works from you again. Your hand painted shields are excellent and those Battle Valor Orcs fit quite well with 1/72.
BTW, this new post reminds me that I need those Ral Partha rats ;)
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Many thanks, blacksmith!
I've got some magic users almost finished, then it's time to start prepping and undercoating some more figures.
I also managed to find a great seller on Etsy who was prepared to produce 1/72 versions of some 3D prints (most vendors won't handle this scale). so I'm looking forward to sharing some of these when they're painted. I was very happy to find 1/72 scale undead (including ghouls, alternative skeletons and zombies), as well as some excellent character models.
Re the Ral Partha rats - they also have some really good wolves for this scale if you need any more. I'm going to be painting these at some point, but these ones fit particularly well:
http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/demonworld-15mm-c-76/demonworld-classic-c-76_151/orcs-c-76_151_77/4021a-wolves-5-p-2280.html
The "young wolves" are also good (I think they're old Tom Meier sculpts) but they'd be better as dire wolves at 1/72, because they're a bit big for the regular sort:
http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/fantasy-warband-rpg-minis-28mm-c-181/animals-c-181_185/02093w-pair-of-young-wolves-2-p-4037.html
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Those are brilliant! Superb work on the shields!
I'm also using them in 1/72: for me, they're perfect as the Uruk-hai in that scale. So far, I've only painted a solitary wolfrider, though! The large Magister Militum Blood Dawn orcs are similar in size and build, so I'm mixing those in.
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Thanks very much for the comments, guys.
I'd be very interested to see a comparison such with the Magister Militum orcs if you get a chance to take one at some stage, Hobgoblin.
I have some of the Blood Dawn dwarves, as I'd seen comparisons showing that they were on the big side for 15mm. They're very nice figures.
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Some more PC-types for the fantasy collection - magic users in this case.
These can be harder to find than the more martial sorts of character, such as fighters or rangers, as appropriate figures for the latter are readily available from historical 1:72 sets.
In this case, the figures include an Elhiem adventurer, three Caesar adventurers, and two slightly larger figures - a Tom Meier 25mm enchantress, and a Saruman figure from the War of the Rings boardgame.
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Fantastic painting on those Casters, I love it!
Saruman pass without problems as he can be that tall but the enchantress, although very nice, is a bit too big IMO.
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I instantly fell in love with your shields :-*
Also thanks for the size comparisons and introducing a new orc series!
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Superb series of figures, I really love your painting style. I didn't know the Elhiem range, thank you for this discovery!
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Thanks for the kind words, everyone.
Blacksmith, I think I'm prepared to overlook the slight scale discrepancy (in the enchantress in this case) in favour of the quality of sculpting, of which I am a big fan, as with lots of the older 'true 25mm' scale miniatures (I have picked up a few others on ebay). Hopefully it will be easy to overlook on the field of play!
I know other scales (such as 15mm) have similar challenges with regard to size compatibility.
Philotep, I'm glad the Elhiem miniatures were of interest. The quality of sculpting is a bit crude on some of them (e.g. the chainmail), but they have charm, and most importantly fill the gap for available 1:72 adventurers (given the difficulties of getting hold of the Caesar equivalents). I have painted three of the Elhiem adventurers so far (photo attached).
I have some of the Elhiem mercenaries as well, which will do very nicely for urban thugs and rogues (e.g. for Sellswords and Spellslinger's Close Quarter Battles), but again, the sculpting is a bit rough and they will require a bit of 'interpretation' and painting on details. The true 25mm miniatures, on the other hand, are much easier to paint in terms of 'reading' the miniatures.
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My 1/72 fantasy includes a few plastic figures of other origins in my magic user collection: Caesar undead vampiress, Strelets
crusader transport monk, Hat Celtic command druid, and Linear A Roman transport civilian…
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some of my 1/72 magic users (ignore the viking, lol)
(https://abload.de/img/magiebegabte1tqjdc.jpg)
- Some are 28mm Gnomes and Halflings that fit into 1/72 scale as humans.
- Also those figures are 1/72: https://www.ebay.com/itm/353467981718
- Some are from the Age of Mythology Boardgame.
- Another one is out of this set: https://kamar-zinnfiguren.de/de/KAMAR-Figuren-1-584/Figuren-1-72-Mittelalter-588/Wanderer--Pilger.html
If you want to know the manufacturer of one specific miniature feel free to ask!
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I’ve got the necromancer with what I interpret as the skull mask from the Caesar undead set, and there’s a shaman from the Dark Alliance Cimmerians in there, but that’s mostly a mass of figures new to me. :)
I’m not sure how many is “enough” for a collection; I counted my 1/72 fantasy-ish individually based figures last weekend, and have just under 200. That’s probably enough for reasonable RPG support …
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Hi everyone. Many thanks for sharing these great ideas for other potential magic users!
Mr Dean, I've enjoyed seeing your Portable Fantasy Campaign very much, and aspire to create something similar (if not quite so portable!):
https://www.harfordhawks.com/2020/12/19/the-portable-fantasy-game-campaign-box/
I am trying to paint slightly larger 'encounter groups' of baddies, as games like Sellswords & Spellslingers and Nightwatch seem to potentially require quite a lot of enemies.
102-year-old-man, that's a very interesting range of miniatures from a variety of sources. One of the figures I recognise is Vlad Tlepes from the following set, which has an interesting selection of models (in a similar style to Caesar miniatures) with an East European feel: http://plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=1514
Thank you also for providing the link to the KAMAR pilgrims, which look like they'd make great low fantasy hedge wizard types.
I've enjoyed seeing both your takes on the Caesar undead vampiress, too.
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These figures are fantastic! I too have become very keen on 1/72 fantasy this year. I 3d print alot but also just love the minis both historical and fantasy that have been coming out. 4 new dark alliance fantasy sets are on their way and I cannot wait
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Mr Dean, I've enjoyed seeing your Portable Fantasy Campaign very much, and aspire to create something similar (if not quite so portable!):
https://www.harfordhawks.com/2020/12/19/the-portable-fantasy-game-campaign-box/
I am trying to paint slightly larger 'encounter groups' of baddies, as games like Sellswords & Spellslingers and Nightwatch seem to potentially require quite a lot of enemies.
Thank you for the kind words regarding my project. I look forward to seeing anything you do with the inspiration. :D
I’ve been playing 5 Leagues from the Borderlands with the set most recently; groups in that run up to 10 or so.
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Some more PC-types for the fantasy collection - magic users in this case.
These can be harder to find than the more martial sorts of character, such as fighters or rangers, as appropriate figures for the latter are readily available from historical 1:72 sets.
In this case, the figures include an Elhiem adventurer, three Caesar adventurers, and two slightly larger figures - a Tom Meier 25mm enchantress, and a Saruman figure from the War of the Rings boardgame.
These look fantastic! I think you can get away with the enchantress - those early Ral Partha figures do have bigger heads, but that can help identify important PCs/NPCs/heroes in a game.