Miniatures 1

One of the things I love about the post-100 issues of White Dwarf are their extensive photos of miniatures. I love painting minis but I suck at it. Bad eyes and nerve damage to my fingers don't help but I was never a very good mini painter.

GW painters are artists and their detailed minis and the incrdible qwork they do with terrain and buildings is phenominal. I find their work to be inspiring even the abandoned inn shown in the top photo gets me thinking about a scenario with a wayside inn suddenly attacked by orcs and goblins with the player characters forced to defend the structure with whatever odds and sods are in residence or patronizing the place.

White Dwarf #16 Molten Magic

These are mainly sci-fi miniatures though there are a few fantasy (I believe the 3 from Archive Miniatures are all fantasy as well as 3 from Asgard and 1 from Citadel). A fairy poor selection but I would have liked to have had the Battlestar Galatica bootlegs from Q.T. Models. That Cylon raider looks to be a pretty good copy.

White Dwarf #14 Molten Magic

Another half-page offering. I'm surprised that they didn't devote more page space to this column. I know I find it far more interesting than the greater majority of other articles in White Dwarf.

I found the offerings from Greenwood & Ball, Asgard Miniatures and Fantasy Figures Unlimited to be unattractive and poorly sculpted. Miniature Figurines released some useful and uncommon sculpts of Skeletons bearing a basket, a barrel and a lantern. All useful occupations for a skeleton outside of the normal combat oriented sculpts.

Model E1 Grenadier Models Carrion Creeper (w58) reminds me of something from Doctor Who (I mean the real 60's and 70's Doctor Who when special effects were, thankfully, silver duct-tape and cardboard with a lick of paint).

I own a few of Ral Partha's Air Elemental (ES64) and it is a swirly blob of lead.

Citadel Miniatures Giant Scorpion (FF50) doesn't look bad but they rest of their offerings have that 70's look of poor sculpts or bad casting process that is ubiquitous of the era.

White Dwarf #13 Fiend Factory

This retro look at White Dwarf was quite handy as I've acquired a small gaggle of Dwarven Forge Imps to inflict on some adventurers and the Fiend Factory write-up offers an interesting quartet of the little devils. They are fairly powerful for kobold-sized creatures and I have a nice dozen of the miniatures in the set so the summoning capabilities work out nicely. The present a rather geometric progression if the summoned Imps summon more Imps and so on, a bit of an Imp plague, an idea that I quite like.

White Dwarf #12 Molten Magic

This column seems to be a cut to fit addition to the magazine.

A decent enough Griffon figure from Asgard Miniatures and a rather thin and badly sculpted one from Ral Partha. A trio of decent adventurers from Greenwood & Ball. I like it that the dwarf is the regular squat  like the one from Asgard. Some rather awful giants from Ral Partha. Actually most of the Ral Partha sculpts look pretty bad in this issue. Citadel breaking into the miniatures world with some interesting, provocative and otherwise generally poor sculpts as well. I do like it that they are producing Monster Manual monsters and ones that are both useful and not seemingly produced at this point.

White Dwarf #10 - Molten Magic

I found this issues assemblage of lead to be in the uninspired slag category but I know that some people have a fondness for Archive Miniatures attempt to capitalize on Star Wars without paying any annoying licensing fee. I think Moondog Maud's Cantina Band is my favorite for shameless rip-off-re but their Bounty Hunter mini is a pretty good version of Greedo for the time. The fact that they seem to have done R2-D2 with his head upside down and with princess Leia buns attached has not gone unnoticed.

White Dwarf #10 - Phoenix Model Developments or Khaan! and the Naked Slave Girls!

The Lost World of Atlantis (Question mark?) seems to have gone back toward their better sculpted and provocative figures with their African Emissary (Where are his shoes?) Khaan! or could that be Khaanan! on Throne with reclining Naked Woman, and Naked Woman in Cuffs. I don't think I owned any of these issues back in the '70s. The earliest issue if the Dwarf I remember are somewhere in the 20's and they'd probably been a couple of years old when I'd found them. I can just see the Brew-Ha-Ha about naked slave-girl models back in the '70s to go along with the steam tunnels, gazebo's and satan's cheerleaders in the form of fantasy roleplaying.

White Dwarf #9 Molten Metal

Just half a page this issue and not much to show. Sculpts seem generally poor across the board and even the naked cavorting witches from Miniature Figurines fail to rouse the spirit of this offering. It is hard to judge scale but the Frost Giant examples seem a bit small and even the Balrog with sword and whip appears a bit thin and awkward.

White Dwarf - Phoenix Model Development - The Bolg

I was really impressed with Phoenix Games Lost World of Bare-Nekked Lassies from a previous White Dwarf. I can't say the same for the Bolg. It looks like some kind of oompa-lumpa from a version of Willy Wonka with John Saxon playing the lead. The diorama looks like something out of the special effects from an episode of Star Trek (Is that Spock with a battle-axe in the lower corner?) I can hear the waa-waa-was music of dying alien space witches from another dimension just looking at this picture. Maybe they grow on you.

White Dwarf #8 - Molten Magic

Molten Magic covers a wide range of miniatures from a truly horrendous 'Stubborn Krot' produced by Heritage Models to some decent looking and truly iconic miniatures produced by Ral Partha such as (ES2) Super Hero, with Axe, on Super Heavy Horse (which seems to be Frazetta's DeathDealer)

There are some nice other sculpts from Ral Partha as well, The two centaurs depicted, saytr and witch would have been nice to have. From Miniature Figurines (which I'm guessing is the company name) the unbalanced troll (trl 1 Troll advancing) isn't bad or (VFWM 4) Coffin with Skeleton. McEwan Miniatures produced 3 decent looking pieces of dungeon decor - (AS 25) Throne of Xicon (AS 1) and Treasure Chest (AS 2).

White Dwarf #8 Phoenix Model Developments or Naked Women from Atlantis

Why didn't I see these in the 70's? Those lucky British Bas... These sculpts are light-years ahead of the blobs of lead being produced in the 70's across the pond (or available in New Jersey to be specific). Not only are they recognizable as human figures, they are attractive in a pre-scrawny way that has been lost to the current emaciated generation. Lost World of Atlantis my ass, these are naked women minis that are still sadly lacking from the G rated fare currently produced. Where are they now I wonder? I certainly haven't seen them on feedbay.

Pathfinder Owlbear 'Beaky' Miniature

Picked up a couple of these recently and they are an impressive figure. I have a great and abiding love for owlbears ever since I had them eat a number of player characters back when I first DM'd B2 keep on the borderlands. I enjoyed the Reaper Bones owlbears from their first kickstarter though they are a bit on the wing as it were...

Not my paintjob as I suck at painting. These were truly fun to paint though. I found them a little unbalanced without adding some support in the way of pennies glued to the bottom. But getting back to 'Beaky' this a huge miniature. Here is a comparison photo to show some scale with a diminutive Drow mini from WotC and a much larger Orc mini from the late lamentable Combat Hex Middle-Earth game.

This is a proper big-ass owlbear and I can use it with both my pipsqueak WotC series of minis and the much more visible to my bad-eyesight Reaper Bones and larger scale.

I can only echo the following sentiment, but these have scratched my owlbear niche nicely for the moment.

White Dwarf #6 - When Bugbears had Pumpkinheads and Donkeys had Packs

A nice review of Archive Miniatures. The sculpts were incredibly crude but I loved that Pumpkinheaded bugbear. Mine are long gone, dumpstered along with all my early RPG material and my first Cohabitation, my books, records and any clothes I wasn't wearing at the time.

White Dwarf #5 Der Kriegspielers Fantastiques

Ah the days when miniatures were badly sculpted lumps of lead. I had a great time with these (and their equally lumpy lead twins from other companies) when I first started with D&D. Now, I just pass these along to collectors who can appreciate them.