A question of scale

[Connectamabob]

So I'm gonna take a whack at sculpting a Cthulhu mini. Before I start armature work though I need to know:

How big should a "tabletop" Cthulhu be, in your opinion? How big is too big? How small is too small? what sort of play/movement would such a mini actually see? I.e would it get moved around a lot, or would it just pop up to dominate as a centerpiece, sort of like a terrain piece?

I know what the original story would suggest, but that's obviously not how things would actually work for a tabletop game. The scenarios won't be the same, and scale is going to be contracted /foreshortened translating to a smaller mini than would technically be accurate anyway. Plus such a mini is more likely to be used to represent a star spawn than the big C itself (using a gendered pronoun for Cthulhu doesn't feel right). But being more of a painter/sculpter than an actual gamer, I don't have a clear handle on the actual dynamics for myself.

What's your opinion?

[tnjrp]

Not getting into what the size should really be and if it even makes sense to bring a Star Spawn, much less the Great One on the board in the 1st place, I would ballpark it to about 10 x the basic height of the human figure minimum so it's at least a bit contradictory of mind and matter... So about a foot or so high for ca. 28mm scale if that's what you are looking at. It's going to make it quite an expensive miniature of course but prolly not quite as dear as the Mythos Foundry one which is supposed to be about 40 cm high when done.

[Michi]

You´d hardly make the great C play any role in a game other than just being THERE. Size doesn´t matter rule wise due to that. We all learned that he is actually sleeping (that is not dead what lies eternally...), therefore a huge centrepiece is most perfectly alright as a representative. The bigger the better, I´d say, but no less than 25cm in height even when it is sitting. I mean, people were familiar with the height of the Sphinx and it is built by humans. They´ve already discovered dinosaur skeletons by that time. An unusual size must be really huge to horrify only by itself rather than the actual visual appearance. SIZE MATTERS!

[achab]

Huge (and insanely expensive) Warhammer 40000 titans are about 16" tall, still a bit smaller than Mythos Forge big Cthulhu. I don't think they show up very often on a gaming table, but Cthulhu wouldn't either...

 

[Myrlyn]

For what it is worth, you could probably use one of the other gaming Cthulhu models as a baseline.  For example, HorrorClix produced a really nice Cthulhu figure for a short time.  He stands about 16.5" in height.  Here are some nice shots of that sculpt with various other HorrorClix/HeroClix figures for size comparison:

[thebinmann]

I seem to remember the picture in the CoC Rulebook with a human about the size of his toenail....

[achab]

Illustrations often show Cthulhu being literally mountain sized ( as seen here ), but obviously, a 10 foot/ 3 meter high figure would not be very practical. In Lovecraft's original tale, when Great C. is pursuing the Alert ship wading in the sea, "The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht", so, a 15/20" figure should be correct. That being said, an extra-dimensional monster can probably alter its scale.

[Pulpthulhu]

check this cthulhu kickstarter out - talks about scale - "mini" stands 16-21 inches tall!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mythosfoundry/cthulhu-mythos-foundry-style

[Chilledenuff]

Do like that heroclix Cthulhu.