Do you use miniatures?

[Pental]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

This thread sent me looking through my miniatures collection. I just saw on Ebay that someone wants 200 bucks for their Watchmen box of figures. If I'd have known they might go for that, I'd have never made Nite Owl into Dr. Destroyer 15 years ago!

[teh bunneh]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I use miniatures for everything. Ask anyone!

 

Superfigs which is through Old Glory. I actually have a miniature in their fan section named Inferno.

 

Living Legends through Lance and Laser

 

There are also old Silver Age Sentinels miniatures (only about 7 of them) out there somewhere.

 

Reaper made these, but they're out of print now. You can probably still find them; I suspect there's still a few circulating around the distributors. They were good looking, but they were specifically for SAS.

 

For futuristic or power armor types, try Infinity through Corvus Belli

 

For more modern style characters, try HassleFree or Heresy. Heresy also has a lot of goofy stuff and demons.

 

In addition to the excellent suggestions so far, I also like Urban Mammoth for sci-fi and modern type characters. Copplestone Casting makes some good modern/near-future figures (and a lot of nice pulp figs, too). I bought a ton of old Vampire/Mage/Werewolf figures for use as civilians. They were cheap and they work great (obviously you have to use the Homid type werewolves).

 

I wrote several articles for Digital Hero (alas! lament!) that talk about how to find superhero figs, how to modify them for your needs, and how to paint them.

 

DH12 -- Finding the Perfect Figure

DH14 -- Modifying and Painting

And a few others that I'm way too lazy to look up right now.

[proditor]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

Someone poke Bill. He had an awesome article on Super minis and proxies in DH.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

What kind of software/method do you use to make them?

 

Some we just copy images off the web or screenshot games like freedom force or from it's model viewer. Others we Draw ourselves and then shrink down ( my wife and I both minored in art) We used to draw pictures from our adventures for years so we have lots of images. I don't really produce images out of nothing. I'm pretty good at traditional use your hands art but suck at digital beyond a little mix and match.

[Spence]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

Some we just copy images off the web or screenshot games like freedom force or from it's model viewer. Others we Draw ourselves and then shrink down ( my wife and I both minored in art) We used to draw pictures from our adventures for years so we have lots of images. I don't really produce images out of nothing. I'm pretty good at traditional use your hands art but suck at digital beyond a little mix and match.

 

Hmmm... well I pretty much suck at "traditional use your hands art" but can do all right moving things around, cut and paste.

 

The card board fold up mini's are ok, but most companies (that I have bought/seen) make them so there are 10+ images per sheet and you have to print all or nothing. Need 10 thugs? You can't select "thug" and print off 10. Instead you have to waste 10 pages of paper and ink.

 

I wish there was a line that worked like labeling software. Select the figure and the number you wish to print on the page. Need 10 "Thug A's", select Thug A, and print 10.

 

Of course it has been a few years so things may have changed.

[Blue]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

Someone poke Bill. He had an awesome article on Super minis and proxies in DH.

I think you just did. Your posts were simultaneous.

[BNakagawa]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

Then.....same question I asked steamteck

 

Mostly, I do a pencil sketch, ink it (or not) scan it in, color it in photoshop, flip it over and just do a solid fill for the back side, or draw a rear view picture if I'm feeling particularly ambitious.

 

(Mostly, villains get the silhouette treatment)

 

PCs that are played long enough (or that I am particularly jazzed about playing) get illustrated rear views.

 

I scale them to approximately 1" tall and print them on photo paper, fold them in half and stick them into bases I bought from the local game store. SJGames used to sell them from their website, but I'm told they're out of stock.

 

One little box holds dozens and dozens of them.

 

One of my PCs has a visible force field, so I did a double sided cardboardhero that had one side with no visible FF and one with.

 

It's cheap and effective. (Assuming you have a color printer and some sort of drawing program) Even if you can't draw, you could get an account from City of Heroes for a month and spend all your time making characters and taking screenshots of them, front and back for all your PCs and villains.

[DEFCON Clown]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I use ghetto minatures. All of my minatures are LEGO people.

[Doc Samson]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

We use the old Marvel Battle Dice miniatures. It's a shame that they were discontinued. They are mounted on a hex shaped base that is the same size as the hexes on standard hex maps.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I use cardboard minis, and have for over a decade. I have a ton from SJG, plus a bunch I made up myself and printed on cardstock. (I collect character pictures, which I often shrink down and put into a template in PageMaker, with the character name on the back.) Along the way, I picked up a cheap plastic carrying case for fishing lures, and used the many compartments to organize and store my minis as groups (i.e. Eurostar in one, Ultimates in another, with bigger compartments for VIPER, PRIMUS, etc.).

 

I also use the colored plastic bases from SJG -- they are *MUCH* better than folding and slipping tabs together. And by using different color bases (red for the heroes, green for primary opponents, grey or black for others) you can get an instant visual overview good for quickly contemplating tactics.

 

For vehicles (cars, vans, trucks, buses, forklifts, etc.) I created plain cardboard overhead views and printed up a *lot* of them. One of these days, I hope to create more three-dimensional ones. Well, I did 3-D ones for some VIPER tanks (including rotating turrets), plus some VIPER airborne APCs, but I really should do that for the commonly-used vehicles.

 

Of course, I also use maps (mostly drawn on Chessex battlemaps, though common ones get drawn on paper for use with a transparent hex overlay). If time allows I love to put detail in the maps. Somebody once joked that I'm the only GM that worries about whether the bathrooms are large enough, and if there are appropriate numbers of janitors closets. I've even gone so far as to mark locations of fire extinguishers, forklift recharging stations, copy machines, etc. in an attempt to get the PCs to interact with their environment more.

[GreyGuardian]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

For champions and science fiction games I use paper minatures. Mostly Steve Jackson Cardboard heroes. I supplement this by creating a character in City of heroes and taking screen shots that get pasted into a paper minatures rtf doc and printed on cardstock. I posted my swarm of viper agents on these boards somewhere.

[Spence]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

For champions and science fiction games I use paper minatures. Mostly Steve Jackson Cardboard heroes. I supplement this by creating a character in City of heroes and taking screen shots that get pasted into a paper minatures rtf doc and printed on cardstock. I posted my swarm of viper agents on these boards somewhere.

 

do you remember the thread title?

[aylwin13]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

do you remember the thread title?

That would be here. His post is #8. I also posted some VIPER guys in #10.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

Count me in as among the many who use Heroclix. There's enough of them out that I can find a reasonable proxy for just about any character. Sometimes, getting a specific figure will inspire me to do a homage character anyways. The newer sets are nicely sculpted....and my group is mostly made up of common archetypes. I find the group has a better handle on how combat works if they can visualize it on the tabletop.

 

Rob

[ArchLight]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I also use hero clix for my game and have repainted and customised a few.

 

I have not been buying boosters because many Comic shops in my area are selling singles clix. If your not concerned about the clix color most got for about a buck. the Rares or uniques can cost large but most run from .25 to 5.00.

 

I will try to take some pictures of a few i have modified and post them.

[Susano]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I have hundreds of SJG Cardboard Heroes that I've used in all sorts of games. I also used a photcopier to scale up old Car Wars counters into Hero scale vehicles of all sorts. I also have flat V&V counters and some Shadow Run stand-ups.

[Spence]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

That would be here. His post is #8. I also posted some VIPER guys in #10.

 

Thanks

[mvoncannon]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I have done what most of you have done, copied images and put them on my own cardboard minis. I even go the Viper ones from Aylwin13.

 

I also use http://www.worldworksgames.com/ these guys products. Fairly inexpensive. Decent cars and vans. I have toyed with their floors and put HeroHexes (as I call them) on them.

[Dreadnought]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

My group uses whatever we have on hand. If there are actual miniatures hanging around, we use those. If not, we will often use dice. Recently, though, one of my friends has started making lego representations of our characters. He has come up with some amazing likenesses of our Champions characters. He even managed to give Tome a book chained to his hip!

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

The group I used to bve in (along with Super Squirell and Alice the Owl) made shrinky-dinks minis. We would design the character in Heromachine, print it out at about 3", copy it onto Shrinky-Dinks, color, cut, bake, let cool, and stick on bases. A relativly cheap and easy way to get just about exactly what you want.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

The group I used to bve in (along with Super Squirell and Alice the Owl) made shrinky-dinks minis. We would design the character in Heromachine' date=' print it out at about 3", copy it onto Shrinky-Dinks, color, cut, bake, let cool, and stick on bases. A relativly cheap and easy way to get just about exactly what you want.[/quote']

 

That is pure genius! Repped.

[Lord Kruul]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

My group uses whatever we have on hand. If there are actual miniatures hanging around' date=' we use those. If not, we will often use dice. Recently, though, one of my friends has started making lego representations of our characters. He has come up with some amazing likenesses of our Champions characters. He even managed to give Tome a book chained to his hip![/quote']

I've always wanted someone to do my bragging for me.

 

The Lego guys are hard to stand up on a battlemat, leading to fights with everyone sitting down, but since we're fighting bottlecaps and tiny D6s, it's not a big deal. I'd post photos, but you kinda need pictures of the characters for comparison. If there's any interest, I can see what I can do.

[MrBunraku]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

The BEST miniatures I've ever seen are CpSpalding's twist-tie JSA! They're too cool! Maybe he'll post a picture...

 

Ed

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

That is pure genius! Repped.

 

Thanks, but I didn't come up with it. As far as I know, it was Super Squirell.

[Ghost Face]

Re: Do you use miniatures?

 

I decided to use HeroClix. I bought a few boosters before hand and decided that they were suitable enough. I ended up buying a box of 100 randoms from a site. Now I have to get a carrying case!