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Author Topic: Ideas for cheap giants? (first converted hill giant finished)  (Read 10141 times)

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants?
« Reply #15 on: November 24, 2020, 09:43:27 PM »
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:

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants?
« Reply #16 on: November 24, 2020, 09:46:48 PM »
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:



But 29 Reaper ogres would cost me well over £100 - as against £11 for 32 1/32 Zulus.

Offline BZ

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants?
« Reply #17 on: November 24, 2020, 09:50:32 PM »
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"...

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants?
« Reply #18 on: November 25, 2020, 12:22:06 AM »
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!

Offline manic _miner

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #19 on: November 25, 2020, 08:18:28 AM »
 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

Offline Sunjester

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #20 on: November 25, 2020, 08:35:18 AM »
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

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #21 on: November 25, 2020, 10:44:06 AM »
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.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #22 on: November 25, 2020, 11:27:13 AM »
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:



And these fellows too:



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?
« Last Edit: November 25, 2020, 11:29:56 AM by Hobgoblin »

Offline manic _miner

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #23 on: November 25, 2020, 01:46:02 PM »
 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.

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #24 on: November 25, 2020, 02:02:47 PM »
I got them here.

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.

Offline area23

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #25 on: November 25, 2020, 03:53:02 PM »
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.
If you don't believe in lead, you're already dead.
+++AREA23 BLOG+++

Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #26 on: November 25, 2020, 04:30:21 PM »
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.

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.

Offline Gallahad

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #27 on: November 25, 2020, 04:44:30 PM »
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

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.


Offline Hobgoblin

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #28 on: November 25, 2020, 05:27:52 PM »
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!

Offline Elk101

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Re: Ideas for cheap giants? (now with an 1/32 experiment)
« Reply #29 on: November 25, 2020, 05:57:03 PM »
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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