Let´s stay a bit more longer with the wizards for Frostgrave theme. The official plastic wizard boxes are a cheap and very versatile possibility to get miniatures for the game, but however much I like this set, it has a limitation: they´re only humans… What if you will have a non-human warband (official there are no special rules for other races, so you can play with anything)? There are two main options to consider:
1. If you love the esthetics of the official figure range from Northstar, you can kitbash Frostgrave wizard box with the different Oathmark army boxes:
- You want elves? Just put an bare elf head on a wizard torso with some fancy looking accessories, and you´re done.
- Dwarves are your favorite? You will have more work to do, but its also not a big deal. The torso must be shorter, but because all of them have long ropes where their feet are not visible, you only have to saw (cutting with a knife here won’t work, because the material is too thick there, and it´s nearly impossible to make a clean cut, but a saw with small teeth will do it) away the lower part of it, round the edges up a bit, glue it to a base, and done. You can shorten the arms by cutting at the wrist, cut away from the remaining arm and then glue back the hands. At last, take a bare dwarf head, and there you have a dwarf wizard.
- Goblins? Well, that’s not so easy, because this guys are not only shorter, but they are also thinner, have a significantly different pose (bent upper back, with the head sitting more in front of the shoulders then upon them) and the design is also pretty distinct (ripped clothes, chipped weapons, a lot of fell). If you are satisfied with a more civilized looking goblin wizard, you can change the head, shorten the body, change the hands (human hands just wont fit for me) and choose proper accessories. If you want a more shamanic look, then you either dig much deeper into individualizing figures (example: goblin body with cloak from some green-stuff like material), or you change to option number two.
(Note: I didn’t do any of these modifications, but I’m pretty sure, that its not too much work with good looking results)
2. You buy other miniatures. There are hundreds of other manufacturers, it’s not possible to go trough all of them, I just want to mention 2, which I chosen:
- The Oathmark range from Northstar has some metal wizards. They absolutely fit in design to their other products (like Frostgrave), but there is a tiny little problem… They don’t have pairs of wizards, so there is no easy option for making an apprentice. Elves have two boxes of the king-wizard-musician trio, if you can swallow the difference in their appearance, take the two wizards, and done. Goblins have only one pack, but look at the drummer, I want to lightly convert him (with skulls, what else) into a shamanic apprentice, who is making the music, while the boss is doing the magic (I already bought the blister for my son, but their time hasn’t come yet). But dwarfs have a problem, there is only one wizard, and the others doesn’t fit in this role…
- Reaper miniatures. The budget manufacturer, with an incredible wide selection. You can get here almost anything! It can be, of course, that you are searching for some specific thing, and you don’t like anything here, but its guaranteed, that you find at least something! Prices are very reasonable, quality is a bit variable… What do I mean? I will maybe write a post about Reaper, but just for short info, they use different materials, and the quality is depending on it:
- Reaper Bones have an almost white, soft PVC material, which is hard to deburr, and the details are pretty unsharp, but its very cheap. I have some figures out of it, and for big monsters it´s mostly (details later) good enough, but for small figures… I have some of them, and honestly, I wouldn’t buy them again. It’s of course budget depending, but spending more, and buy the metal version is maybe the better option.
- Bones Black is a light grey, slightly harder PVC. It’s a bit more expensive, but it holds details much better! The small miniatures are all beautiful, so if you are short with money, but want decent quality, get Bones Black!
- Reaper metal miniatures: Maybe the older sculpts are a bit outdated, but they are generally very good. The prices are another category, approximately the double of the Reaper Bones prices (in the small range, because large miniatures are much more expensive), but still not too much in comparison with other manufacturers.
I have miniatures from every material, I will show them all, later.
As said, there are tons of other manufacturers, but if you want to mix them, there are three main things to consider:
- Obviously general style: For example some goblins are more human-like, some others are garden dwarfs with giant ears. Some dwarfs are like small humans with beards, some other are very dense, nugget like creatures with kneeless feet. Some humans have early medieval style armor (chains and scales), others late medieval (full plate mail) again others more renaissance (full breast plate with baggy pants and shirts).
- Body proportions: Some have natural proportions (pretty much what you would except to see in the mirror), others "heroic" (big hands and head with thick limbs). Best example for that is GW-s Age of Sigmar, and Lord of the Rings ranges, try to figure out which is which.
- Scale: There are mainly two scale measures: magnification scale (for example 1/56) and human figure eyes height (for example 28mm, which is more or less equal to 1/56). For tabletop, 28mm is the most common scale, however that doesn’t mean, that all the figures are the same size.
So if you want to mix figures in your games, take a good look at them, try to imagine them next to each other, and search the internet for size comparisons!
It got a bit too long, let´s end this here, and I show my non-human wizards in the next post.
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