Reaper plastic update

TheRPGsite member Stuart provides some pricing data for the new Reaper brand prepainted plastic minis.

Prices for Reaper's new minis:

20001_____ Skeleton Swordsmen (3) $ 5.79
20002_____ Skeleton Archers (3) $ 5.79
20003_____ Skeleton Spearmen (3) $ 5.79
20004_____ Skeleton Swordsman $ 1.99
20005_____ Skeleton Archer $ 1.99
20006_____ Skeleton Spearman $ 1.99
20007_____ Orc Warriors with Scimitars (3) $ 6.99
20008_____ Orc Archers (3) $ 6.99
20009_____ Orc Spearmen (3) $ 6.99
20010_____ Orc Warrior with Scimitar $ 2.49
20011_____ Orc Archer $ 2.49
20012_____ Orc Spearman $ 2.49
20013_____ Cave Troll $ 3.99
20014_____ Ogre Chieftain $ 4.99
20015_____ Minotaur of the Maze $ 5.99

That looks like a great price point to me. Everything's low enough that if my FLGS were to stock them I'd buy in a pack or two anytime I was in the shop. Randomly packed D&D boosters were never low enough in price for me to do that.

My own personal clay golem

Remember all those old figures I showed earlier in the week? I got 'em all primed and started painting last night. So far I've only finished the clay golem.


I know he's not much to look at, but he's all mine. (In the background you can see my Demogorgon figure. I didn't paint him. He came that way. That dude is awesome.)

Painting up that golem reminded me of a great encounter with a clay golem from back in the mid 90's. It was in my old Bandit Kingdoms campaign, a 1st edition/2nd edition hybrid game featuring my friend Pat as the bard/mage Doctor (later Baron) Phostarius and guest-starring whoever else showed up that week. One of the other regulars for a long time was Ray St. John. That guy was wacky fun at the table. Ray played Sir Cleave, Doc Phostarius' half-drow half-brother. Cleave was a cavalier and we used the 1st edition Unearthed Arcana version of that class. Man, was that class over the top. Way more powerful than a standard fighter.

If I remember correctly I think they fought the clay golem in the invisible step pyramid composed of solidified elemental air. It was an upside down dungeon full of lawful good critters. Most of the PCs in this campaign leanded chaotic and/or evil, so a dungeon with halflings on level one and dwarves on level two was right up their alley.

So anyway, they end up throwing down with a clay golem. This was back before the adoption of Damage Reduction. Many more creatures were totally immune to various attacks in pre-3E D&D. In those days the only physical attacks that could hurt a clay golem were magical blunt weapons. They were completely immune to anything with an edge or point. Good ol' Sir Cleave doesn't realize this fact. I'm sure Ray had fought a clay golem before, he had been playing D&D since almost the beginning of the hobby. But he apparently didn't recall this special immunity.

Poor sucker goes after the golem with his ubermagical longsword. I don't recall exactly what kind of enchantment was on the blade, but it was something hardcore like +5 or vorpal. I've used some sort of critical system in pretty much every D&D game I've ran going back at least until 1989, and Sir Cleave scores a crit against the monster with this magic sword that it is totally immune to.

I think the record will show that I'm pretty pro-player when I'm behind the screen. I don't usually bend the rules except in the favor of the people at the table who don't wield absolute power. But something about this particular situation really spoke to me. And what it was saying was "hose over Cleave". Without really thinking about it I declared his wondersword to be completely shattered against the golem's clayey hide. You should have seen the look on Ray's face.

Was that dickerly of me? Probably so. But the DM sometimes has to be prepared to go above and beyond the mere rules in the search for an awesome gaming experience. And sometimes that awesome can only be found by messing with the players.

No more DDM boosters for me.

This item comes courtesy Ogre Cave, press release below.

Reaper Prepainted Plastic Miniatures

Reaper Miniatures is proud to announce the release of its first series of prepainted plastic miniatures.

This new product line will be released under the brand name Legendary Encounters™.

Offered in an open, non-blind, non-random format, Legendary Encounters™ prepainted plastic miniatures will be packaged using Reaper's standard blister card. Both single and multiple piece packs will be offered.

Unlike the several existing blind-sale prepainted plastic miniature lines currently available, Legendary Encounters™ will not be produced on a limited edition basis and will be available at any time.

Drawing on Reaper's vast experience in miniatures and a catalog of 1000's of metal models to design Legendary Encounters™, Legendary Encounters™will quickly become the most popular prepainted plastic miniatures line on the market.

Reaper has always focused on the creation of evergreen product lines and Legendary Encounters™ is the first product line of Reaper's new "Ready to Fight™"(RTF) series of games and gaming products.

Available this June Legendary Encounters™ initial release will include: Undead and Orc warriors of various types, an Ogre, Troll and Minotaur. Like our Dark Heaven Legends miniature line, future releases into Legendary Encounters™ will include every type of creature imaginable.

Maybe if Reaper's line takes off Wizards will offer D&D figures in a DM-friendly format. And a starter kit with the most common race/class PC combos.

metal mini mania

Right before their last move my sister-in-law and her hubby gave me some old metal miniatures. They played D&D and a few other games back in the day, but these days their gaming is largely of the German and MMORPG variety. Rob played in three campaigns of mine, but that was before the big move up north. Most of the figures are painted, but I'm going to attempt to paint the rest. In fact, I've decided that I'm going to paint these babies up before I buy any new metal figures. The idea is to get some practice before I go and ruin some nice Reaper figures with half-assed paint jobs.

This skeleton band from Ral Partha was sold as "The Grateful Undead", if I recall correctly. I didn't paint this, I just thought it would be cool to share a pic. It's from a small line of comedic fantasy figures. As a kid think I owned two pieces from the line, the John Belushi Samurai and the three-headed 3 Stooges troll.

These golems are early nineties Ral. They were primed and the clay golem partially painted when I got 'em. The flesh golem has some stitchwork that's going to be a challenge to paint. It's so fine you can't see it in this shot. Part of me is tempted to try and modify these figures a little. I'd like to put weapons in the flesh golem's hands and maybe get him a backpack. That way he could be a Frankenstein adventurer for Encounter Critical. I kinda want to repaint the clay golem's diaper to be a bright purple. Then I could use some putty or something to give him some hair and paint the skin green. But those sorts of mods are a bit ambitious right now. I think instead I'll just paint up some golem dudes.

I'm pretty sure these little lizardish orcs were originally released by R-Kiiv a.k.a. Archive. What's the proper procedure for broken off weapons?

A close-up of one of the orcs. That polearm blade is substantial.

A different polearm wielding orc by another company. I think this wide-face tusk-mouthed fellow is an early Ral Partha. A lot of stuff needs to be trimmed from the mold lines before he can be painted.

The lumpish thing on the left appears to be someone's idea of an Intellect Devourer. The body of the beast is brain-like, but someone either misunderstood the critter description or thought it could be improved, because a lizard head has been added by the sculptor. The other guy is a Games Workshop wizard's familiar. He's a furry little goblinoid carrying a sack. Very cool.

It's a shame this picture turned out so fuzzy. These guys are cool. They're Blemmyes or Blemmyae, a legendary race of beings with no heads and faces on their chest. I think they worship Arnim Zola. Skull & Bones, the d20 pirate book Gareth-Michael Skarka worked on, has stats for these dudes, but they don't quite fit these figures. These creatures are clearly Large size, but the Blemmyae from S&B are only medium. Still, that's a good place to start.

Holy crap! 28mm B.A. Baracus!

From the Foundry Street Violence line, available for purchase here.

The Original Warforged

Since I'm officially back on my miniatures kick, I've been checking out places like Stuff of Legends and Iron Wind Metals. I'm trying to find out if I can put together a critical mass of goofy old figures that would allow me to run Encounter Critical as a miniatures game. I've also been looking at old Dragon issues. Here's a great figure that Ral Partha was advertising circa '82:


I actually had this figure as a kid. I colored him with Dragonscale, the Ral Partha product that did metallic colors with the same powdery consistency of cosmetics like eye shadow and rouge. I think this dude would make a great Robodroid Warrior, especially if you painted a peace sign on his shield. Fight, Mechanical Knight! Fight for everlasting peace!

DiscountHobby.com is the devil

Check out these great R-Kiiv brand minis from the 70's.

Space Cowboy!

Alien Ninja!

Evil Wizard!

Attacking Robot!

Space Lizard with light sword!!!

So why would I declare DiscountHobby.com, purveyors of these fine wares, to be Satan Incarnate? Because of their insane policy regarding selling these old figures. They list ten R-Kiiv figures for sale each month. After that month is over, they discontinue sales and sell the molds. I hate artificially created windows of opportunity like that. I feel like I'm being pushed into buying something.

Still, cool figures. They've got some other great lines as well, that do not have this crappy deadline built into them. They've got a Gloranthan line that includes the dreaded Walktapus as well as this awesome female fighter. No ducks though. Here's a great Cthulhu I hadn't seen before. And the leftmost of these three succubi would make an awesome female balrog. Also: cheap zombies and wicked cool zombies.

Demogorgon is awesome

Orcus gets a lot a play these days but my favorite canonical demon prince is definitely Demogorgon. Just look at this guy! A two-headed baboon with tentacles!

As part of their licensed AD&D line Minifigs, now long gone, did a figure very closely based upon this picture from the original Monster Manual.

Grenadier later produced this Demogorgon look-alike but called him Orcus for some unfathomable reason. The head is reptilian instead of baboonish, but it's still pretty neat-o. I have one of these I bought off the eBay, thinking I was getting the Minifig version. Here's a link to a nicely painted version of this figure.

The Aspect of Demogorgon from Wizard's plastic figure line. I like the concept of buying a prepainted Prince of Demons, but the sculpt is too thin and spindly, lacking the look of raw power in the earlier versions.

Reaper's Dark Heaven Legends line has a lot of great figures designed for D&D play. This fantastic fella is called the Demonic Lasher in their catalog. They like to file the serial numbers off, don't you know. On this page you can find a great painted version of this figure.

Look out! Lava Monsters!

Howdy, folks! I'm back from my absence. My daughter has recovered from the chicken pox and returned to school this morning.

I use a lot of prepainted plastic figures in my D&D games, thanks to the D&D collectible miniatures game, Heroscape, and MageKnight. But sometimes I like to make my own flat counters. Google image search and even a novice level understanding of a simple paint program can produce some really fun results. Behold:

At full size those are Huge lava monsters. The counters were made by swiping someone else's screencap of the Challenge of the Superfriends episode "Monolith of Evil" and adding my own text with MS Paint. "Monolith of Evil" is one of my favorite Superfriends episodes. It's one of the shows where the Legion of Doom go on an adventure of their own, which I always love. And this time they journey to the molten center of the earth to steal the ultimate source of evil energy. Also, there's a sequence where Braniac shrinks the UN building and steals it. Awesome. By the way, the text on the first counter is pretty much a direct quote from Cheetah when the lava creature pops up.

The stats for the creature were kludged together by taking the Lead Golem from Tome of Horrors and adding the Fire Elemental template from Mike Mearls' Monster's Handbook. I've mentioned it before but it's worth repeating: I highly recommend Monster's Handbook to newbie DMs who need to get a handle on creating their own creatures. My confidence in running 3.x went up a big ol' notch after using Monster's Handbook a couple of times. And Tome of Horrors has a great mixture of new baddies and old critters updated to the new D&D. I chose the Lead Golem as the basis for this particularly baddie pretty much solely on the grounds that their leaden fists use multiple d12s for damage. I love d12s. The Fire Elemental template I used isn't really supposed to stack with constructs but here's a DMing trade secret: sometimes the DM can and should cheat on stuff like that.

I was pleased with the resulting Lava Monsters. The players had a chuckle at the throwaway text, the monsters bothered them for a few rounds, I got to roll some d12s. The one downer was that they were totally upstaged by the two Lavawights also in that encounter. Who decided that epic monsters should permanently and irrevocably drain stats? My players found that idea to be the polar opposite of fun.

My new toy

I don't have any interest in Wizards' new minis game Dreamblade, but dang are some of the figures cool. This particular figure had to be mine:


In Dreamblade this dude is the Knight of the Autumn Gate. That's a pretty cool title but to me he's the Bugbear King. I know he doesn't look anything like a bugbear, but at one time bugbears looked like him! The first illustration of a bugbear appeared in OD&D Supplement I: Greyhawk. Dig it:


Pretty much every subsequent appearance of the bugbear since then has depicted the giant goblinoids we all know and loathe. Turns out the creepy jack-o-lantern dude above was the result of a miscommunication. Gary Gygax once explained over at Dragonsfoot. "The pumpkin-headed bugbear was an artist taking literally my description of the monster as having a head like a pumpkin, i.e large, round flat oval."

The pumpkin-head version of the bugbear survived in Runequest under the name Jack-o-bear, so you can actually find a few lead minis of this throwback design. But a prepainted plastic figure was just too cool to pass up. Especially with that flaming sword, awesome armor, and wicked grin.