Figurines (halp)

[PerishableCrow]

I was wondering if there were any sort of cheap figurines you could buy or what you guys use.
I ask because the price of D&D figurines are ridiculous and are limited strictly to the fantasy genre.
I've been buying quarter machine vending machine toys and gluing them to pennies. I have a mixed armada of various cartoonesque pirates. While they get the job done I'd like to try and make some more prevelant to my campaign. Which is a Post apocalyptic Ice age Campaign. What do you guys use for miniatures? and do you know of anyways to make your own?

[Michael Cule]

Cardboard Heroes or their equivalent from companies other than SJG. Lighter and cheaper.

[PerishableCrow]

Haha! Awesome! Thats a good idea.

I think I might be able to make my own as well.

[mehrkat]

I've been plotting this as an idea

printable shrinky dinks plus plastic stands because the hard shrinky dink plastic is harder and more durable but still has most of the advantages of paper.

Shrinky Dinks for Ink Jet Printers $10 6 8x10 sheets
http://www.goestores.com/catalog.asp...90137&detail=1

Shrinky Dink stands 24 $1.00
http://www.goestores.com/catalog.asp...90137&detail=1

I think I could probably get 4 (maybe 8) figurines to a page so I could do between 24 and 48 figurines for $11 + the cost of the printable figurine packs.

[Nymdok]

Have a printer?

Go get some card stock.

Find an Image you want to use.

Open the GIMP or other image manipulation program.

If your using 1" = 3 feet= 1hex then scale the image to 1" by 2 ". (Man Sized)

set your image up like this
[-1" Base-][-1/2" Blank-][- Feet - Your 2" pic - Head-][- Head - Your 2" Pic - Feet -][-1/2" Blank-]

Print it and cut it out.

It folds like this
[-Base-]:[1/2" blank]|[-Pic-]:[-Pic-]|[1/2" Blank]

: => Fold plain white sides together
| => Fold printed sides together

When your done folding it it should look like this

        P P
        I I
        C C
[-blank-][-blank-]
[------Base-------]

When you tape it together, put a penny inside to give it some weight. (Honestly, your not using the pennies for anything else anyway).

If you used the same image on the front and the back, then mark one of the 1/2" blank areas with an arrow for facing.

For mooks, color in the 1/2" blank areas differnt colors so you can keep track of which mook is which.

If you want some worked examples, Email me and Ill send some to you that I made for the Thune Dervishes in Dessert of Desolation.

VIOLA! You now have all the paper figs you want!

They look nicer if you Trim around the images with an exacto knife but that can be AWFUL time consuming.
You can also take the time to rim the base to a more circular shape.

Nymdok

[MagiMaster]

I've been considering using Lego MiniFigs. They aren't all that expensive when ordered by themselves and are fairly customizable. Haven't actually tried it yet though.

[mlangsdorf]

MageKnight and HeroClix figures are as cheap as $0.25 on the secondary market, and give you some fantasy and modern day options.

Also, lead/pewter miniatures from other companies aren't always that expensive, and come in various genres. I've purchased Victorian, 1920s/1930 gangsters, Modern, and Sci-Fi figures from a variety of manufacturers.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by PerishableCrow

What do you guys use for miniatures? and do you know of anyways to make your own?

I use maptool, so all I need is little jpegs to make my minis. Really changes your world when "minis" basically become free.

Only cardboard minis come close for the tabletop. If were to tabletop with minis, I'd probably go with Reaper minis, but I like to paint, and they have some pretty ones.

[David Johansen]

Well, I've got a pretty large collection of 1/32 scale vehicles that have been available at hobby, toy, and farm supply stores for a number of years.

Including:
motorcycles
jet skis
snow mobiles
a Model-T pickup
various small cars and trucks.

2 semi trucks
1 pickup with horse trailer
1 diesel engine with 3 cars

matilda tank
sherman tank
lee tank
panzer IV
german half track
american half track
apache gunship

All for much less than gaming models would cost.

Unfortunately the support in terms of figurines is less wonderful.

There's WWII and Modern troops, painted and unpainted available. The painted ones aren't very good.

The model railroad company Prieser makes painted and unpainted civilians that are appropriate for maybe 1945 - 1960. Separate hands for suitcases are easily replaced with guns and hands from Airfix WWII soldiers. Well and there's about 20 figures from the Mutant Chronicles CMG and around 12 from Inquisitor. The latter having nothing to do with cheaper.

Yes, all this would have cost way more if it was gaming specific pieces. I've got tonnes of those too. GURPS is an idea venue for big figures due to the large ground scale and short time frame.

[baakyocalder]

For post-apocalyptic ice age, it's hard to suggest figures without a technology level. I'm sure the GURPS crowd could suggest a lot more if we knew the millieu.

For my games, I use the official HackMaster RPG miniatures (for the HackMaster RPG so they have a few odd critters but work well as PC miniatures for fantasy games and the pack ape is just an awesome miniature), Reaper petwer miniatures and plastic miniatures (some of the best fantasy minis on the market and reasonably priced) random D&D plastic minis, Heroclix, Haloclix (the latter should be cheap) and some pirate miniatures from the Wargames Foundry (they make historical miniatures). I picked up some EM Western minis from Crystal Caste that came with dice for a western game that were ok.

By far my greatest miniature use has been HackMaster miniatures, as playing that game I didn't need miniatures often or used something simple like parts from board games.

Paper miniatures offer the most options these days as you can literally take images and use computer programs to get them to the desired size and print them. There's also a lot of paper miniature PDF products on e23 and other sites. Cardstock works with most printers and is fairly cheap. It also looks good if assembled well. Kenzer & Company made a whole western town out of Whitewash City buildings for demos of their western RPG at Origins 2004 and the cardstock town looked better than some of those resin buildings. It was also light and fairly portable. With image files, if a cardstock mini is damaged, you can also replace it more easily than a traditional miniature.