Troll Lord Games

Hey guys. I have never been that much into miniatures until this year. Now I unloaded some cash on materials to make terrain and it's shaping up nicely. In my newfound obsessive-compulsive hobby, I have looked at affordable miniatures, and discovered how cheap 1/72 scale (20-23MM) plastic miniatures are. I never realized the selection either. Or the affordable castle kits, seige accessories, forts, etc. It's all badass.

Then I stumbled across Caesar Miniatures foray into fantasy at 1/72. A box of 35 orcs of various poses (nice sculpts too) on sale for 6.99 at scalehobbyist.com. They have goblins, elves, and dwarves too, 35 to a box for the same price. Plus now they have a box of adventurers, with all the class archtypes presented, 15 miniatures plus 4 randoms, for that same 6.99. The historical line provides a variety of human elements, from crusading knights to jungle natives. At that price, I may have to switch scales fellas. I am just tired of not being able to afford to lay out the table the way I want because WOTC wants to bend me over. Monster sizes are realative, so a lot of 28mm stuff I have will still work. With Fields of Battle about out, I thought how cool it would be to have some adventures culminate in some crazy epic mass battles.

Does anyone else use this scale of minis? I think I am going to buy a box or three and check them out.
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When in doubt as to who is in charge on the battlefield, listen to the man with the bloodiest sword.

I do not. Some of my older figures are true 25mm, but that is as small as I haved used.

~O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Yeah 1/72 is a good scale. It varies from manufacture as far as from like 20mm to 25mm. I've not gotten any personally yet, but a buddy of mine is a huge Historical Wargaming. He's always looking and would recommend Ceasers minis. I intend to fget some for the Field of Glory ruleset myself. Most of what I have is 28mm from Games Workshop for Warhammer 40,000 and Lord of the Rings Fantasy Battle Games. I do have some 15mm stuff for Flames of War as well (not to mention Hero Clicks, Heroscape and Star Wars minis).

I say go for it and get a few boxed sets, you can't go wrong for the price.
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R is among the most menacing of sounds. Thats why they call it murder, not muckduck. DWIGHT SHRUTE, The Office

My company produces true scale 25mm, though I am calling them Tactical Scale, as that is my justification for the size.

I have a bunch of various true scale 25mm miniatures from pretty much everywhere and they all more or less fit together.

25mm and 28mm scale vary from company to company. Some say it is from the ground to the eyes, others to the tops of the heads, it all makes very little sense.

I base it from the typical battle mats used for play, 1 inch = 5 feet. So I am making my 25mm Tactical Scale Miniatures 5mm = 1 foot of height. So a five-foot tall miniatures would be 25mm by scale.
www.megaminis.com has a line of true scale 25mm PC types in their Julie Guthrie Grenadier Classics range. All the miniatures are 25mm and in my opinion they are the greatest PC miniatures ever produced by man.

You should check them out, the owner is a cool cat.

Not a bad place to start - pretty decent prices and the swords won't break off unless you really try!!
I've gotten a few sets from Megaminis - nice minis at a very nice price!
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Eulaliaaa!!! Give those rapscallions blood and vinegar, wot?!

Be sure to check out Jim's artwork for sale:
http://jimhollowayart.com/id5.html

I don't really have many game miniatures except for Warhammer Quest and Zombies!!! and I don't think they're any specific size ratio... but, I also am not the kind to care. If I find an ogre mini that looks like a cool troll, I'll use it and say it's a troll. I even use hill giants for half-orcs at times. Just needs to look good and the rest is superficial... after all, its not simulation (for me,) but visualization. And then, only rarely.
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If it matters, leave a message at the beep.
Serl's Corner

The first miniatures I used were 1/72 Airfix , Robin Hood and the Sherriff of Nottingham. I used those with a few 25mm lead minis in the late 70's. I painted them horribly. I'm not sure what happen to those figures
Over the years my miniature collection has grown larger both in quanity and miniature size. Those 1/72 minis are too small in most cases to use with modern 28-32mm miniatures, at least for myself. I prefer the newer large sizes in every except price. At least I had purchased enough Minis to fill three plastic storage totes (likely to last my lifetime at my current rate of painting) when I had a real paying job over the last 7 years.

But if I was starting out today, with my current finances, 1/72 would be the way to go. Especially with the better selection available and quality.

Mix in those awful WoTC monsters or an occasional special figure from a better manufacturer and have fun.
Those megaminis suggested by Secret Skeleton are not bad option either.

The MegaMinis Grenadier Classics are amazing sculpts. They are very well done. when you then take in the price, there is little reason not to go for them.

BTW, work got started on my big-ass multi-part bulette today.

With the new Fields of Battle rule set coming out, I am definitely investing in a smaller scale of minis. I have started looking at 15mm also, though I will probably go with the 1/72. Again, price is a huge issue. Add up 35 orc minis...even if you manage to find them for a dollar each on ebay....you can buy the Caesar Fantasy Orcs, 35 of them, for $6.99. You can buy five boxes and have a horde seiging the castle walls. I will probably still use 28/30mm for dungeon crawl stuff and use the 1/72 guys for mass battles only, but I guess only time will tell.

The other reason I like this smaller size is I can get a lot more of them on the dining room table! That, and there are a lot of castle and fortification models that are availabe for that scale, including a vast array of seige equipment.
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When in doubt as to who is in charge on the battlefield, listen to the man with the bloodiest sword.

There are more fantasy miniatures out there closer to the true scale 25mm than any other, they are however largely eclipsed by the far more obtainable Reaper selection. I do like Reaper Miniatures, I just made a decision to pick a scale and focus on it. To most people it may not be important, but a lack of continuity messes with me sometimes.

I do not think the Caesar stuff is necessarily bad, but it still came down to me having wasted money on them. If you want them for tabletop wargaming, they would work great...especially if you do not care for what your miniatures look like. Literally everything they sell can be bought from someone else but better in quality. I bought a box of orcs and a box of goblins from they awhile ago and they were so poorly molded that I never did take the time to fully clean the flash off of all of them.

If I were to not care what my minis looked like, I would write "orc" on a square of cardstock.

The best way to build up a large mass of miniatures is to be patient and take your time. You buy a few at a time, clean them, base them, paint them. It also makes their finishing work seem less daunting.

The Caesar stuff on their site looks much better than the product you receive. The only miniatures I have seen that I would consider poorer in make would be the Battletech plastics that came with some boxed set for it. A friend brought them over for me to "fix."

Though I also saw this on many of the Caesar miniatures, they had really think mold creases that could not be trimmed off without just taking off major details. After trimming and filing you end up with a miniature that looks just downright ugly.

To be fair they are not much worse than the GW LotR 24 box of orcs, but at least the GW orcs have straight weapons.

I hear ya Skelly. I am just too impatient about getting my mass battle game on. In all seriousness, it would really take me a few years to aquire enough to do what I want to do if I go the traditional route. I still plan on collecting my 28/30mm stuff, but have decided to grab the 1/72's as well. I am far from a mini connoisseur, though. lol. I am one of those guys that can (and has) played with many an unpainted miniature, miniatures still primed black, mixed in with odds and ends representing various things in the game, and so on. The Caesar miniatures, or the other companies like Hat, Italeri, and Imex may produce subpar stuff, but I would rather have a my armies in one fell swoop, with little cash involved. Of course, the cardstock idea is a good idea too......hmmmm.
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When in doubt as to who is in charge on the battlefield, listen to the man with the bloodiest sword.

I do like those Caesar miniatures you posted above above. They look like they might be pretty snazzy.

~O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

I respect anyone's decision to go cheap. Sometimes I catch myself dreaming of wanting more than I can acquire and its annoying. I usually have to convince myself that I can settle for less.

If anyone is interested, I finally got a product list down. Everything I list here is already being sculpted, though more stuff will be added. This is more or less for the first half of 2010. The multiplier means how many different single-figure pack variants there will be.

Frog Men (Bullywugs) x3, Sea Devils (Sahuagin) x3, Dark Elves (Drow) x3, Skeletons x1, Land Shark x1, Demon Witch (inspired from Iggwilv from Greyhawk) x1, and Warhound (inspired by Mabari Warhound from Dragon Age) x1, Space Fleet Officers (inspired by Star Trek) x1.

I also have a sort of joke figure coming. It's just a round outdoor base with two footprints in it. I call it the Invisible Stalker. I will be giving it away at Troll Con, with any luck.

Most of those will be $3.99 a pack, of that I am nearly 100% sure. The bulette, and space-fleet officers will be $34.99 and $9.99 respectively.

I will also eventually be releasing three-packs of the frog men, sea devils, dark elves, and skeletons which will be $9.99.

It is very likely we will get some lizard men soon, too.

I advocate the 25mm tactical scale so that all my guys will look scaled with each other. It is also for people who use 1 inch square battle maps.

Piperdog wrote:
Of course, the cardstock idea is a good idea too......hmmmm.

Yep cheaper yet. But even the subpar Caesar, Imex etc. figures will look better than cardboard. It will good pratice painting those 1/72 figs. When you move up to better quality 25/28mm it will seem easier.

Lookin' forward to Secret Skeleton's stuff in my local FLGS!
~O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Omote wrote:
Lookin' forward to Secret Skeleton's stuff in my local FLGS!
~O

What is the name of the store, and where is it located? I am not going through Alliance or any other distributor, so the only way to get my stuff in stock would be to have them call me, or me call them.

I am primarily going to be direct from website sales, but I have no problem with working out a deal with a store.

The Warzone-Matrix, in Cleveland Ohio. They do a lot of miniatures at that store.
www.warzonematrix.com

Warzone Matrix

4704 Rocky River Dr

Cleveland, OH 44135

(216) 433-1316

ATTN: Chris Wilson

~O
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> Omote's Advanced C&C stuff <
Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Oh yeah, I totally like 1/72.

here's a slideshow from last year...

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Aces and Eights

Michigan Toy Soldier Company is one of my favorite mail order outfits.
Michigan Toy Soldier Co.

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