I’ve been painting up Malifaux models for over a decade now, and honestly, I couldn’t quit this range of miniatures if I tried. The lore is hands-down the best out there (for my sensibilities), and the models are incredible, even if you lose years of sanity every time you build one. My latest project has been putting together a Leveticus crew. He’s a right bastard, so I’ll be saving him for last!
Leveticus uses the Amalgam keyword, so he has access to a pretty wild assortment of gribbly monsters and abominations. Necropunks are part of that list, and I’m really happy that they’ve had a refresh since the original sculpts… They weren’t terrible, by any means, just not what I was looking for in a Weird West mini!
Not 100% sure these are the originals, but they’re pretty damned close!
The new Necropunks came out for 2nd edition, and maintain the gross level pretty well. Here’s punk #1:
I went with a greenish pallor on the skin, he is a dead guy, after all. Love the gear on his back, too! Such a grotesque fella!
Punk 2 has some Go-Go Gadget arms action going down, which is probably good, he’s a little guy, after all. Those extendo-arms probably come in handy when he bellies up to the bar at the saloon!
Punk 3 reminds me of a cool old monk, but dead, and toting a trusty metal pole instead of a staff. Really cool legs on this dude, too!
I have a problem. It’s not quite all consuming, yet… but I am finding myself more and more drawn to a philosophical conundrum that I’m afraid will never resolve itself in my mind.
That conundrum? I want to find my “Goldilocks” scale in miniature wargames. I am primarily a painter, and will more likely than not drop a smoke bomb and disappear into the ether if confronted with an actual game. So, the age-old adage that smaller (than GW) scaled minis won’t work for me doesn’t quite apply. I really don’t mind if most of the people I hang out with in the hobby sphere only game in Heroic 28mm scale, since I hardly play games in the first place!
Lately, the thought of smaller scale miniatures has been really appealing to me. They take up a lot less space, and there are plenty of options out there to fill out just about any genre for a collection. Sure, I can’t really put together an Age of Sigmar list from most of the options out there, but I can do plenty of fantasy stuff!
Now, the biggest question ends up being which scale works for me? With that in mind, I worked on four dwarf minis in different scales:
From left to right we have a 10mm, 15mm, and 20mm Dwarf from Forest Dragon Miniatures. The stalwart chap on the right is a standard GW Beardie Boy, which I have a metric butt-load of at the moment.
The classic Heroic 28s look great, have tons of detail, and are a lot of fun to paint. But they DO take up a bit of space, and they take some time to paint up, especially if you’re putting together regiment sized collections of figs.
20mm minis had me pretty pumped up for about a week, since they translate to roughly 72nd scale in models there are a lot of cool scenery and terrain options, just not much for fantasy. They also paint up a bit faster than the 28mm figs, but not so much faster that they have a clear advantage. Also, while taking up less room than the GW figs, it’s not that much less room!
Now, I have to be really honest right now. I’m already a sucker for 15mm, which you can see above. They’re small enough that they don’t take up much space, terrain is also pretty small, but they’re still big enough that they have a good amount of detail! Plus, they paint up pretty quickly because of the size. Downsides are that they are small enough that I’m concerned about eye strain, but at least I’ll go blind doing something constuctive!
the less said about 10mm the better, this scale broke my brain. Cool as hell to see put together in a battalion, but at 55 my eyes and hands just aren’t up to that challenge. I might come back to it later, because it’s really tempting from a storage perspective, but I did not enjoy the experience one bit!
My personal favorite after all of this comes down to 15mm! There’s a ton of options available, and I just love how a group of troops looks massed together. This group of Dwarf hunters would work well for just about any skirmish game, and I’ll be back in a bit with some tips on how to put together a group for rank and flank games!
What’s your favorite scale to work with? Let me know in the comments!
Sadly, I knew I was pretty much doomed the second I laid eyes on my fist Moonstone miniature a few years back. There is a irreverent streak that runs about a mile wide in the sculpts, and everything about them just screams for me to paint them. Paint them ALL.
Creep isn’t the first Moonstone mini that I painted, but he’ll be the first I’m posting here. He’s part of the Human Dominion range, and exudes a really fun menace. I can’t wait to paint more, hahaha!
Moonstone minis are made of a fine cast resin, and hold detail pretty well. There is a fare amount of flash on some models, and others hardly any, which I find typical of resin models. It’s easy to lose track of the details when painting, especially when your eyes are starting to fail like mine are. I found keeping the Moonstone website open to the mini I’m painting helps make sure I’m not missing something!
I printed the mushrooms on my Saturn, and went with some bold fluorescents on them to bring out the bright colors on the mini. It’s a fantasy world, it’s okay to go big and bright!
Next up for my Moonstone collection will be Doug the Flatulent, who is a farting pug with a goblin on his back. Yes, it’s that amazing!
Still playing catch-up on the never-ending mass of miniatures from the Marvel Zombies Zombicide game from CMON! Today it’s all about Drax. Or Mr. Destroyer, if you’re feeling fancy.
I’m pretty consistently surprised with the quality of these figures from CMON, considering the first Zombicide minis I painted were not the best of experiences!
Also, I LOVE that these miniatures have base details already. That’s a really great addition that goes a long way towards selling the mood of the game!
I still haven’t played a game of Zombicide, but it could happen. Regardless, I’m happy to have these around for any super-hero action that might come along!
I’m an absolute dork for the stupid-ass villains that plague Spider-Man’s life. The dumber, the better. It’s a real testament to the design genius of the old Marvel art stable that these guys still resonate with me half a century after I discovered them as a kid!
Sandman will be kicking off my collection of Spider foes from the Marvel Zombies Zombicide game from CMON. I’m really digging the added sand work on the base, he was a lot of fun to paint!
Next up on the Spider-foes docket is the Scorpion!
When I was a kid, I thought Ben Grim was the coolest Marvel super hero in the world, and then I discovered the X-Men, and all that went out the window. Still, I devoured almost all of John Byrne’s run on Fantastic Four when I was a kid, so it was a lot of fun for me to get to work on this pretty spiffy miniature of the Thing from Zombicide: Marvel Zombies!
Right off the bat, the quality of these Zombicide sculpts is hands-down some of the best work CMON has done. The detail is pretty nice, and even the plastic quality appears to be a higher grade. That’s pretty good news for sure!
There’s quite a few Fantastic Four characters in this box to get to, so I had best get to work!
This project is short and sweet. A squad of Necromunda figures with an Ambot for backup.
I have only played a couple of games of Necromunda, and while I enjoyed it I found it overly complicated. And there were a couple of spoofs that players could pull that massively wreck the fun factor, so I won’t be playing again since I already know what any opponent will be fielding. Take out the glue guns, and maybe I’ll think it over again!
Still, the minis are incredible and full of character, and will work really well with Stargrave, Core Space, and Zone Raiders, so this probably won’t be the last Necromunda set that I pick up!
The squad was painted primarily with Citadel Contrast Paints over a zenithal primer coat. Highlights were then layered in to punch of the details, then a diluted wash of Agrax Earthshade was given to tie everything together.
My favorite little detail in the Cawdor kit is the candles a lot of these goofballs have just jutting out of their armor, with the dude with the giant crossbow dealing with dripping wax all over his visor! Great little details that tell their own story. Love it!
I’m still grappling with my near fanboyish love of Core Space. The miniatures are absolutely not the best on the market, but there is something about them that makes my little heart go pitter-patter. I’m also really intrigued by the mechanics of the game, and love the aesthetic.
I’m working my way through all of the minis, and figured after having a crew painted up it would probably be a good idea to get some of the NPCs together. So, here’s the first batch, most of which are from the Shootout at Zed’s expansion from Battle Sytems.
She’s an assassin! She’s in a gang! She has swords! She’s Evangeline, and she’s cool as hell!This is Chunk. He also works for Zed.Hobb is one of the low-life nutters who hangs out at Zeds, looking for work and a spot of trouble.Ooma is a pretty passive dude, just here for a mug of something cold!
I still need to finish the rest of Zed’s gang, as well as Zed himself. This part of the box has me pretty happy already, though!
I have literally too many miniatures, more than any rational human being should consider having about their home. And yet, I keep buying more.
It’s not a collection, since (in my mind) having a collection of something is kind of useless if you don’t display it or do something with it. I have miniatures just sitting in boxes in my garage. That’s not really fun, hobby wise.
So, I have launched a challenge to myself for 2021. I’m not buying any more minis until I have either painted or given away my backlog. And I am trying to make sure that I paint everything, even if I plan on giving it away.
I am exempting anything I was gifted, because I end up being the guy that gets all the stuff when someone bails on the hobby. If I bought it, I will need to paint it before I buy something else.
This is going to be really hard. I love buying miniatures more than just about anything, but I’m pretty sure I have close to 500 unpainted minis choking off the house!
Now, here’s the first mini out of the way as the Great Shame Project of 2021 kicks off!
One down… five BILLION to go!
We’ll see how this goes. As long as I don’t look at the internet or go to game sites, I should be okay! Hahahahhaahahah!!!
Believe it or not, I get a whole lot of questions about miniatures. It might be because I run a miniature blog, or because I spent several years of my life as a freelance miniature painter. It might be because I spend so much time nerding out about miniatures. I have no idea. But, being as how I absolutely love miniatures, I though a series of educational posts covering the full spectrum of the hobby might be handy.
First up, we’ll be covering SCALE.
Exactly what is scale? Really, it’s just a way to make sure that your toy soldiers don’t look too ridiculous when you have them going pew-pew at each other. By collecting miniatures in a similar scale, you can avoid the terrible shame showing up with Micro Machines when all anybody wants to play with is Matchbox cars.
That’s really the nuts and bolts of scale. Your six inch tall Star Wars: Black Series action figures are going to look a little funky if you’re facing off against normal three-and-three quarter inch figures. Scale is a just a handy way to make sure you’re in the right sandbox.
Most miniature games stick to a general range of scale between 28mm and 40mm. But even then, there is a massive amount of variation, even when the scales supposedly match!
Scale normally measures the height of an average (assumedly male from a production standpoint) miniature from the base of its foot to its eye level. Unfortunately, some companies measure from the base of the figure’s foot to the top of its scalp, which means two companies can say they produce 28mm miniatures that can still end up having a pretty sizable difference in height.
28mm Standard
Once one of the most common scales produced in miniatures, 28mm standard miniatures tended towards smaller details in their sculpts, with heads and hands that were more realistically proportioned to their bodies.
You can see this example illustrated with the miniatures below. Both are considered 28mm figures, yet the Core Space mini is definitively smaller than the miniature from Corvus Belli‘s Infinity on the right.
The Core Space miniature was measured from base to the top of her head, while the Infinity model was measured base to eyes. Both are still technically 28mm!
There are still plenty of miniatures being produced in this scale, with some fantastic multi-part kits being produced by Osprey Games for the Frostgrave family of wargames.
Games Workshop has largely disrupted that over the last few decades, with the advent (and proliferation) of what is commonly referred to as “heroic scale”.
28mm Heroic
My haaands are as big as my faaaaaaace!
Supposedly, heroic scale figures are the same scale as 28mm standard, but their larger heads, hands, and feet make them look more like comic book characters (hence heroic). There has also been very little attention paid to keeping the scale of most 28mm heroic figures consistent, which has led to a fair amount of “scale creep” over the last 20 years or so. Just compare a Warhammer 40k Space Marine from 1999 to one produced in the last few years, and you can see a huge difference in their size.
And yes, I know Primaris Marines are bigger. I’m talking about your standard marine. And I have Imperial Guard from 20 years back that are a bit smaller than newer figs.
On the plus side, though, larger minis make for more possibilities for detail, which leads us right to what is becoming the industry standard for miniature scale.
32mm
Malifaux, Zombicide, Kings of War, Runewars, and a fare amount of independent sculptors have settled on the 32mm scale range for their miniatures, which has some definite perks; the larger size allows for crisper details, which can lead to more dynamic or expressive characters.
It’s also close enough to 28mm, especially Heroic 28mm, that most people won’t care much about the size difference.
35mm
There’s really very few games producing minis in 35mm, notably Wild West Exodus and other figures from Warcradle Studios. Everything that we said about larger size is even more apparent at this larger scale, but they’re also much larger than 28mm figures when presented on the same table!
40mm
These Marvel: Crisis Protocol figures pretty much max out the size of scale miniatures, but their larger surface area is far more forgiving to paint!Should have used a pic of him moving, sorry for the empty space…
Atomic Mass Games produces Marvel Crisis Protocol at 40mm, and at this point they’re one of the few miniature lines at this scale. The miniatures are so large that they are much easier to paint, which is nice, but forget putting your Iron Man on the table against someone’s Frostgrave minis. He’ll look like he’s attacking students from that school model in Zoolander.
Other Common Scales for Wargame Miniatures
Quite a few wargames rely on much smaller scales, and this is purely due to economics of space. If you’re going to re-create Waterloo, you’re going to need a lot of miniatures to pull that off!
That’s where 15mm comes in, which is the standard scale for historical wargames. The average figure is pretty small, which means that a whole lot more of them can fit on a table!
Gaslands has been taking off lately, which uses customized 1/72 scale Matchbox and Hot-Wheels cars. This works out to 20mm scale for miniatures, which there is not a lot produced for, but some enterprising sculptors on Etsy and Patreon have been filling that niche beautifully.
Another semi-common scale is used primarily for giant robot games, but it varies wildly between 3mm and 6mm. At this point, human sized characters are about the size of a Nerds candy, and the real stars of the game are the monsters or robots that the game focuses on.
Of course, there are even smaller scales for starship battles, but even those tend to exaggerate scale to produce evenly sized ships. Star Wars: Armada, I’m looking at you…
Why does any of this matter? That’s a pretty good point, and one that some people won’t even care about. Some folks are just fine facing off with any scale miniature that strikes their fancy, and there is absolutely fine!
There are others, myself included, who get caught up in the scale trap because of the immersive quality of a good miniature game. I like to bring a nicely painted group of figures to play on a table with nicely built and painted terrain, and I tend to get lost in the story that plays out in a game. Differences in scale can be a little jarring, but it’s not a deal breaker for me.
Seen side by side, scale difference can be staggering!
Mostly, this comes from the types of games I like to play. Most of the game systems I like are setting agnostic, which means they don’t have an established universe set up for them. So, you can bring whatever miniatures you want to the party. I have a ton of 28 and 32mm minis, so I tend to collect miniatures in that scale to use in the games I like to play.
If Marvel Crisis Protocol was the only game I played, or I wasn’t really keen on throwing Wolverine at a Genestealer, this wouldn’t be a problem at all!
I also tend to display my painted miniatures, and I like seeing minis that are similar scale displayed together. It might be a little fussy, but that’s my preference!
If you have questions about scale, or miniatures in general, drop a comment below!
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