More Monsters and Wizards!

It's been a few years since I added to my 1/72 scale miniatures collection, despite getting many of them painted up. I actually need to re-paint quite a few of them, as the summer heat, and possibly the clear top coat I used, caused a lot of the paint to melt/blend, and the figures don't look anywhere near as good as they did when I finished painting them. Looking back through old blog posts, I don't think I posted pictures of the finished products, just a work in progress post and this one from two years ago when I finally painted the lizard men. 

Well, I had a set of Caesar Adventurers which covered a lot of LotR types, plus a few Conan style barbarian types. I had Caesar Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins as well. 

And I had Red Hat Dark Alliance Cimmerians, Amazons, Half-Orcs, regular Orcs...

One problem, and a reason why I still hesitate to switch to 1/72 scale minis instead of standard 28mm minis (not that I'm using minis at all for D&D these days...) is that there just aren't enough spell-caster types. 

I have a few from the Caesar Adventurers and Elves. I had a set of historical Vikings and one of Robin Hood characters (forget who made both of them) that had a few poses that could be a spell-caster. There's one Dark Alliance Cimmerian shaman. Definitely not enough cleric/druid/magic-user types. 

Well, I ordered some more Red Hat/Dark Alliance figures for my birthday. They arrived today. And I'm pleased to say that the Red Hat historical Russian War Monk Artillery make for good spell-caster types! They're all male, but at least I've now got a bunch of robed, bearded little dudes that could be PC or NPC spellcaster types. The tamping rods and fuse-sticks look like magic staves.

I also ordered the Dark Alliance Minotaur and Cyclops sets. I wanted to get their Southern Kingdoms Rangers set (based on Faramir's company in the LotR movies), which obviously are ranger/thief types, but my supplier was out (Michigan Toy Soldier Company -- I always get great customer service from these guys on my international orders!).

Here they are, with a few of the not so nice looking anymore Caesar Adventurers. The cyclopes are nice and big, and the minotaurs look fairly hefty next to them. 

Red Hat figures tend to come with a lot of flash that needs cleaning off, but the cyclops figures are really clean. The minotaurs and war monks not so much.

I compared these guys to a TSR (Dragonstrike board game) figure and a Reaper metal figure. The minotaurs look pretty wimpy next to them, but the cyclops set is still decently big by comparison.

With either scale, I think these will make good additions to the Gauntlet-inspired tactical board game rules I'm working on. 

Time to get these guys off their sprues!