Figure Scales

[The Gray Ghost]

some figures from my fantasy games
disappointed with the scale difference
this is an Alkemy man at arms for a somewhat whimsical Frostgrave I've been doing.

Reaper, Alkemy, Northumbrian


and this dwarf was supposed to go with this Reaper on in a more apocalyptic Gotterdammerung game.

Reaper, Red Box, RB and Celtos

[3 fingers]

  bloody hell what is the middle one supposed to be.

[The Gray Ghost]

He is an Alkemy man at arms, they had a few figures in odd poses, he came with another one that is on the portly side I intended to use him alongside Redbox Games, Reaper and Northumbrian miniatures.

[horridperson]

I'd seen Alkemy models online before and never, "got it".  Looking at them I was quite impressed by the expression and personality the sculptor managed to bring to them.  I never bought any because they were always on sale and that made me skeptical.  I wasn't sure if something had gone horribly wrong during production or the game was a complete stinker (which I would have been fine with and bought them up).  This is one of the least scaling friendly models I've seen in a while and I'm grateful to you for taking the hit and enlightening me Ghost.  The dwarf would make a fine gnome but the man at arms is rubbish unless you invested in the entire range.

[3 fingers]

Wow I can understand your frustration, I found some similar petite figures I had bought or were freebies  an I  had forgotten about in the loft.. And I just binned them. As the only other use I could think of was targets for a pellet gun an I don't  own one any more.

[manic _miner]

 You could use the Alkemy miniature as a young lad.He does look to be on a finer scale to the one next to him.What size is he?

 I did not think that the Redbox games Dwarves were that small.Might be that others are just getting bigger.

 It can be a bit of a minefield with different makes.Even then it comes down to who sculpted what for the range too i have found.

 I dont think Alkemy took off as i think the rules might have only been in French.A nice range of miniatures with some good and different races in the game too.I always liked the Slann types who had a native American vibe to them.

[Connectamabob]

I absolutely feel your pain. I've been trying to assemble a vampire themed wizard band for Frostgrave, and I've been having a run of bad luck with my chosen figures turning out to be wildly out of scale upon arrival. First I got a bunch of Zombicide BP zombies off eBay to use as thralls... which turned out to be around a head and a half taller than "normal" 28/30mm figures, and today my vampire wizard and his apprentice arrived from Reaper... which are both a whopping 40mm tall in person!

On the plus side, I suppose the Reaper ones are sort of in-scale with the Zombicide ones (they are bigger, but I suppose it makes sense for master vampires to be more imposing than their human thralls), buuuuuutttttt they all still look completely out of scale next to the stock frostgrave minis, or other standard 28-30mm minis.

My vampire captain is still on it's way (from another company), but he was chosen specifically because he could look like he had aesthetic continuity with the apprentice figure, so at this point if he turns out to be properly cast/scaled, he'll just end up in the lead pile for some unknown future project.

[horridperson]

@Connectamabob

I feel your on the zombicide figs .  I picked up a copy of the boxed set just to get my paws on modern zombie models in bulk.  Such a shame because for the price/unit they are nice looking figs. 

My internal scaling for my Frostgrave project is largely Fire Forge, Gripping Beast, LoTR, and the Frostgrave range for humans.  I have had a bit more latitude with monstrous models; GW for skeletons but most else (Beasts and fantastic creatures) has been, "Rule of Cool" because I don't have to be so picky about "accurate" size representation. 

[kaiser]

Red Box dwarfs are more in scale with lotr figures than warhammer figures. The same goes for the humans. They scale well with Perry Miniatures Plastics, I Find.

[Alxbates]

I LOVE Red Box games minis, but they are a little small to match with most of the rest of my collection.

[Gabbi]

I do love Alkemy miniatures, albeit they're a bit on the small side. Also, while almost never played it (just tried a couple turns), the game looked more than fine, with some great ideas (for example, in combat, you secretly "bid" a stance that give small bonuses and maluses, both sides then reveal their stances and resolve combat applying the chosen stances, or... magic has a nice twist that force wizards to walk to special points on the table to gather power). Definitely the game deserved a better luck, imo.

More on topic, while scale creep also bother me, too, I'm not so concerned as much as others seem to be. So I mix and match minis with some degree of freedom in my games.
Fun thing: look at people lined waiting a bus/train next time you'll have a chance, and pay attention to how much difference there is among them in height and physique, even in adults only, leaving out the age factor, and think if they were miniatures if you wouldn't think the scale is way too off. I mean, there are people, adult people, without clinical conditions (so, not afflicted by dwarfism, for example) that are more than "one head" of difference in height. A difference everyone here (me included) would consider unacceptable in two models used side to side.

[Connectamabob]

I feel like it can make a difference within your own units, as it's not so much a matter of height as proportion. If you look at those same people at the bus stop, you'll notice that some body parts vary wider in size than others. For example, there is a much broader variation in long bone length than there is in cranium size. It's usually pretty obvious when a difference in figure size is a matter of individual variation vs actual scale.

That said, it's not IMO a serious issue in the overview. You're going to be facing off against someone else's minis anyway, the style or scale of which you obviously can't control or make demands of. The difference in painting styles alone will probably be WAY more front and center than scale. As long as your own minis on the table right now look consistent enough, that's the most that it can matter.

And of course it only matters if you're trying to assemble a deliberately themed force. If you're just out for a quick game of Frostgrave where you're just pulling whatever random minis you have to get things going, mixing gnolls with saxons with kriegaffes or whatever, scale mismatches are going to be as irrelevant as anything else.

[horridperson]

I like hopping ranges to introduce dimorphism to miniature projects.  For this to be credible the bell curve has to be composed of "average" miniatures.  The minority of tall, small, fat models accent "reality".  My sadness concerning zombicide walkers illustrates the problem;  The zombies preferred the taste of ballerinas who moonlighted as basketball players.  The greater the deviation the smaller the swathe of the total population works best for me.

Stealing from connectamabob again the head and hands are critical elements in terms of correct scaling.  The human head relative to the rest of the body changes dramatically from infancy to adulthood.  A classically proportioned adult (like the great looking alkemy example) still makes a terrible looking "boy".
 

[The Gray Ghost]

Confrontation giant, Red Box, Mierce, Reaper, Red Box

Warhansa, RB, Frostgrave, Warhansa


Warhansa, West Wind Nordvolk, Reaper, RB, Warhansa.

[The Gray Ghost]

I'm happy with the scales for the barbarians as I want some of them to be half giants.
The Frostgrave wizard is mounted on a penny.
I really like those Warhansa and will be buying more, she is called the witch and he is listed as the jarl.
The Nordvolk figures are nice but I don't think I will buy any other set except the villagers as there are nicer Viking figures out there but these are I kind of militia.