Miniatures

Sometimes. It would limit the things I can throw at my players if I did it all the time. If my party is suddenly jumped by a dozen koala-men I don't want to grind the game to a halt just because I don't have the figures for it. That said you can use most fantasy miniatures in RPGs. I use a lot of Mantic and Malifaux stuff.

>>51238864
Reaper Bones are the way to go, that's what I use. Especially Goblins (pathfinder goblins are my preference) and Kobolds as they come in fairly large "bundles". They are cheap but good quality for the money.

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I use paper mini's because I am poor. I'm putting together a fallout game for my friends so I pulled the characters out of that mobile game fallout shelter. I think they turned out pretty good.

Historical miniatures are the way to go. Plastics usually come in fairly large sets of 30 or so, but those sets are cheap enough that not using all of them doesn't really matter. Metals cost more, but they still tend to be cheaper than most non-historicals.

Look into Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures, Victrix, and Gripping Beast.

We use minis and a grid in pretty much every single game we play. We are heavy on optimization, though. An Otyugh miniatures doesn't have go be an Otyugh, it serves as pretty much any big and possibly misshapen creature there is.

>>51238864
I found two lots of old metal GW/Ral partha Miniatures for next to nothing in the local used and sold adds.

Necer use ebay though, way too many vultures.

Is anyone familiar with Dark Alliance? Looks like a cheap source of orcs, barbarians and the like.

>>51238864
I'm a warhammer (fantasy and 40k) player so I'm very used to miniatures. Plus there's nothing like "a huge dragon drops in front of you" like having a huge dragon figurine drop in front of the party's models.

>>51238864

I always prefered theatre of the mind, althought sometimes my players will use a warhammer figure or some random hero-click mini as their character.

>>51242085
I prefer theater of the mind from a story telling perspective but if you don't at least have some poker chips or bottle caps to show relative spacing you'll find that all range, speed and order of march goes out the window.

Then again maybe my players are just untrustworthy, I literally had to give them a pile of post-it notes with "arrow" written on each one because they couldn't be trusted to keep track of their ammo.

I bought a bag of plastic cowboys and injuns for a couple bucks at Goodwill for a Pathfinder game. It's not ideal, but it works and was cheap.

>>51242674
I've noticed they don't make injun figures anymore, it's just green men and brown army men. Sometimes with different uniforms if you spend an extra pound.

>>51242701
I don't think you've looked particularly hard.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004P41QVE/

>>51242745

>$6
Fuck that

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>>51238864
>I just want to be able to buy sets with some swordsmen, some archers, some magic users, and so on. A collection of different goblins or orcs, maybe a bag of commoners and barnyard animals...

Legos. Only slightly less expensive than dedicated minis, but can be rebuilt to suit whatever you need. There's a huge variety of medieval gear too.

Anyone know of good dungeon crawler board games, with a good value of minis?

I was lucky enough to scoop up Hero Quest before it was nostalgic, back when it was just a shitty old board game.

>>51242701
They just don't sell them as much in retail stores, I think.

>>51243408
The D&D Adventure System games offer a lot of minis for a decent price.

>>51238864
Miniature Heroes in the UK is pretty good. I'm from the Netherlands but I ordered there a couple of times.

>>51242940

My group uses Lego as well, we've had great success with it so far. It's gotten to the point where I built figures for a party I'm not even in.

>>51242940
>>51243509
I was thinking of using Lego. My group may be hesitant because it looks a little childish, even though we're playing fucking pretend.

LotR and GoT minifigs sound perfect for fantasy games, and there's a shitton of cheap chinese knockoffs. Buy a set of weapon bits you may or may not paint and bam, you're golden.

At least, I think so.

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>>51243810
>My group may be hesitant because it looks a little childish, even though we're playing fucking pretend.

Maybe old school smiley legos, but modern sets got bling.

>>51244233
Wasn't there a knights versus trolls theme a while ago? With fairly big troll figures?

>>51244635
Lego has an extensive catalog going back years. It would honestly surprise me if they didn't.

>>51243408

Descent has been great and I've had a lot of use out of the tiles as well.

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>>51243408
I wanna recommend Super Dungeon Explore, but I'm not sure my opinion is to be trusted, I only bought it because of the cutesy Chinese little girl cartoon artwork and the whole video game vibe it was trying to capture.

If you do, buy it on a discount, I got my copy of Forgotten King for ~60 bucks off the official website round Christmas. I hear they're re-releasing the original expansion at a cheaper price but with fewer figurines in it.

>>51238864
>I just want to be able to buy sets with some swordsmen, some archers, some magic users, and so on. A collection of different goblins or orcs, maybe a bag of commoners and barnyard animals...
>Iron age to medieval-themed wargames have some nice models to offer, but they lack a bit of variety.
>What would you recommend? Tips from European anons would be especially appreciated (UK/Benelux/Germany).
Otherworld in particular for D&D stuff. It's pretty great in terms of quality, though not the cheapest.
Northstar also has a good amount of minis fairly generic minis.
Hasslefree is worth a look for characters.
Foundry and Perry, Gripping Beast, warlord and Fireforge are all good choices for historicals, which are basically 'generic swordsmen'.
Foundry sells packs with characters that might come in handy for role playing.

>>51240250
Pretty clever anon, would do this too if I ran a Fallout game

I use Reaper minis. They're relatively cheap and I do a lot of tabletop gaming (Warmachine, Guild Ball, Malifaux) so I've got shit loads of paint lying around. I'll usually pick up a mini or two that catches my eye at the store but my friends will bring me stuff they specifically would like done as well. I like it for the practice

I've gotten good results at the Spiel fair in Essen, Germany, but it's not until October or November or something.

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>>51238864
Currently learning to sculpt them.
It's a long process, lost a girlfriend over pic related.
It turned out decently for the second thing I've ever sculpted, but that sword is awful.
Actually, all of it is fairly awful.

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>>51253801
>It's a long process, lost a girlfriend over pic related.
Was that just a coincidence within the timeframe, or is there a storytime linking it to the actual sculpting?

>It turned out decently for the second thing I've ever sculpted, but that sword is awful. Actually, all of it is fairly awful.
It's not the detailed, high-quality sculpting you'd expect from commercially available models, but it certainly won't look out of place if all of the models on the table have this level of detail.


Does anyone just use pawns? They're ridiculously cheap.

>>51253801
Story time?

>>51254137
>pawns
I like the idea, but is there enough variety and can you keep track of who is who?

And where'd you get them, Amazon?

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>>51254254
They're not mine. I found them on a boardgame-specific web shop.

100 assorted pawns for a hair shy of 9 EUR.

Browsing different web shops' selections shows there's a fair bit of variety. There's different colours, obviously, but there's also quite a bit of variation in the shapes. There are straight cones with a bulb on top, ones with more curved bases like that first image, ones with bigger or smaller bulbs, differences in overall size, and so on.

And then there's the difference between plastic and wood, but I'm not sure how visible that is.

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>>51253801
>lost a girlfriend over pic related.
Fucking how?

>>51238864
>I just want to be able to buy sets with some swordsmen, some archers, some magic users, and so on. A collection of different goblins or orcs, maybe a bag of commoners and barnyard animals...
Maybe the boxes of plastic minis for frostgrave and their casters ?

>>51255053
She was probably a Tyranids fan, and he was afraid of getting 'Squatted' IRL...

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>>51254137
>>51254151
>>51255053
There's not much of a story.
...I probably shouldn't post half asleep.

I've been trying to better myself, then one of the tools to that end became an obsession, now I'm a wannabe artist.
She wanted to spend all her freetime together, had zero hobbies or interests, and... we would just hang out, watch movies, have tons of sex, and sit around talking.
We had figured eachother out to the point that talking wasn't as fun... I knew her life story in a couple months, and she didn't do anything, so there wasn't ever anything to talk about.
I got really into my dwarf, spent around eight hours painting it... I realize it doesn't look like it... and it took a week.
She told me that I could art while she was at work, but I'm not that good yet, I don't always have control of when my creativity is... functional... or whatever, I'm a Skitz, it might have to do with that, I really hope not, but maybe I won't ever be a professional.
But I need to get better, or at least I desperately want to.
She told me that we didn't spend enough time together, and I felt like I didn't have enough time to work.
So it fell apart... again.

The twenty hours spent on my dwarf was kind of the final straw... I guess I didn't really reduce my drawing or study time that week to accomidate for it.
She didn't like that, basically asked me to slow down, to choose.
And I chose my shitty hobby over tons of sex all the time.
Because...
Um...
I may have made a terrible mistake.

>>51256293
Is that red thing in front some sort of object, or does it just indicate facing?

>>51256293
On one hand, you should always consider having a partner a time investment; and you've gotta take time out of your hobbies for that, more often than not. On the other hand, she needs to learn to spend time on her own shit too. Sucks having a GF that does not know how to spend her time without you around. Mine paints and does charcoal drawings and shit but occasionally she gets in these ruts and will not get off my nuts, leaving me with little free time. I feel you anon.

>>51256293
don't date, what you create is more important

>>51256438
I also know this feel. Woman, it's 8:30, we've spent all day doing shit you want to do, let me paint my little army men.

>>51257210
Hah, that sounds about right. Like okay motherfucker we spent two days together, I'll be damned if I'm not going to sit here in my underwear and play Total War

>>51238864
This is my stock answer in these threads, but if you have a gaming store nearby, check to see if they have HeroClix or Mage Knight singles. I don't know how common they still are, but if you can find them in bulk you can usually get them for 25 cents each.

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>>51238864
I'll recommend www.northstarfigures.com for some generic town guards, thugs and cultists. Looks good, cheap as dirt and you can switch the parts from different sprues around as you please.

>>51246568
Super Dungeon Explore has reached a point where they have enough different minis to actually populate your world/dungeon. Especially once the current KS finally hits the shelves.
Whether you can accept chibi miniatures is a matter of personal taste.

>>51253801
>>51256293
from what I see here it looks like you are trying to do too much at once.
You need a good amature first.
Then you block in the volume, then add muscles over that, then add clothing and armor and then you add the weapons.
After each step you let it cure so it doesn't move.
The important thing it so work in layers.


Stuff like a sword and shield are easier to do separately.
Use a putty that cures rockhard, like milliput, and put that around a wire and flatten it till you have roughly the shape you want. Then when it is cured use some files and sand paper to shape the blade.

>>51256293
She sounds super pathetic desu, had no life whatsoever

We used jelly babies in a game once. The bonus was that you got to eat what you killed.

>>51254315
I would rather use army men, spray painted if necessary for some differentiation. I feel like actual war games with 3D terrain and the like are best with the visual cue miniatures provide (even if it's just to tell infantry from cavalry).

Incidentally, I lucked into a copy of the old board game Feudal. Really nice miniatures for an old game, probably about 15mm scale horsemen and infantry.

But I think the gameplay is difficult to grok at first. The pieces are not abstract, but they move like chess pieces (so you can have situations where your archer can't shoot a guy right next to him, because his shots have to follow grid lines)

Still a fun game, but the realism of the figures makes you think they'd move more naturally, rather than being tied to the grid like abstract chessmen.