Tiatansgrave - Ashes of Valkana keeps grabbing my attention. I got hold of a few GW plastic saurus (I mean they are lizardmen, GW and their love of changing things so they are slightly different) last year. I haven't got any lizardmen for bad guys in my fantasy games. The main focus of my fantasy figure painting has been dark age/Viking and lizardmen don't really play a part in that. Then neither do the gnolls I got last year either. With the saurians I wanted to do some more mainstream fantasy figures.
No one in my traditional gaming group has any significant number of figure and often the same dozen aging night goblin figures double for everything from skeletons in fantasy to corporate security guards in Shadowrun. I hate this. I guess this has been a driving factor in my figure painting which has taken me away from wargames miniatures.
Anyway, "I got hold of a few plastic saurus". Then I started watching Titansgrave on YouTube. I quickly decided to use the figures for this instead. This meant doing conversions, lots of conversions. Some figures are a bit more tradition but as the game has a strong fantasy/sci-fi crossover theme, the figures as they come out of the box, was never really going to be enough.
I like to have a lot of figures. Each race should have a few options for each class and ideally at least one female figure per race/class. I would like more female figures but they are harder to come by. Even for fantasy games, many of the figures are designed for wargames. For humans this is always easy. For elves and dwarves, well it's a bit more work to get everything to be about the right look and scale but it is doable. Hobbits (they are not halflings) are much harder. Fighters are easy to come by but specialist are more difficult and females are much harder still. I have some old GW halfling which I need to move on from. They are lovely minis and I spent a good long time (and a generous amount of money) finding them on them on eBay but they really are tiny when compared to modern miniatures. I have a plan for these but they are not a priority. Gnomes? Forget gnomes, I usually just trim them off the list. Nobody makes anything like enough gnomes in player character types and every manufacturer has a different idea what they look like.
Titansgrave really requires a sci-fi slant to them. So some conversions to the saurus were the obvious idea. As well as more sci-fi ones I wanted a few that were like barbarians
I was originally going to do some male and female figures. Then I got to thinking about lizardwomen. That is one miniature no one is going to make. Them I had the idea that you can't really tell the difference between genders in real lizards so no need to sculpt boobs on to the carapace or paint their lips red. It also means that I have about half the figures to paint. A win win. Aim for about a dozen. If I have any extra I need a couple of saurus players for blood bowl and I can always go back down the fantasy route.
Humans are easy enough. There are almost too many to chose from. I could probably get away with what I have already. I would like something about the right style though. Aim for about a dozen but expect to end up with more. I can see these getting some use in sci-fi/post-apocalypse games. aim for eighteen
Dwarven fighters are easy. I can even see a few female dwarves out that that would do and few more with some conversion. I already have some figures. I am sure that these can be used for Shadowrun to. The aim is eighteen player characters with as many female figures as I can get hold off which won't been many.
Orcs are a player race. The new GW plastics look much better in the role that the old ones, which is a shame as I have loads of these. Again I would like a few barbarian orcs and would probably get GW wild orcs to mix and match. To get the females I may have to resort to green stuff boobs and lipstick. In my minds eye I keep seeing Sarah Palin when I think of this. These can always be used for Shadowrun. Aim for about eighteen again. As these are plastic kits, they are easier to convert so I should be able to manage a fair mix of classes and gender.
Elves are my current bugbear, well not literally. No one does elves that I can really use. I have some older eldar figures which I see as bad guys. They could used but what I don't need is endless power armoured elven characters. Some fey humans would do me fine and I can find some heads from a few places. I would like about a eighteen of these but I don't see that happening so would probably settle for half that number.
The final player race is hobbits. I have some old ratling snipers which will do nicely. That said, I have five figures in similar poses and equipment. No females and nothing that is going to look right. I would do some conversions but I can't find much to convert either. Swapping swords for guns and adding in a few webbing pouches has worked in the past so lets see what I can find.
I would also like to use robots as a character race. I can find a few figures but would like a lot more. Robots figure quite in the game so it would nice to have some.
There are a couple of shows coming up. I will see what I can find.
The thing is, in order to runs most games you are going to need a fair few figures. Looking at what I want for PC's alone there is a couple of foam trays full of minis required. Then there are bad guys. The thing about playing games where it is more than just humans is that you need a huge number of figures. Even with player races, there is a different look for cultists, pirates, police and the like. Just doing a rough calculation, I need about a one hundred and fifty figures. I know they don't all need to be done all at once but is a lot of painting to get them all done.
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