HeroQuest Compatible Miniatures

[Sjeng]

well, they are the right scale, and there's barbarians, dwarves, elves and sorcerers, so yeah, I'd say they are. But they're sold in seperate sets mind you.

[Daedalus]

The bases will leave them a bit taller, but the actual figures should match. Here's one thread on the subject.

[knightkrawler]

It's THEE thread about miniature scale.
An epic argument of celestial proportions between Slev and Ogre.
That thread made me join OldScratch's I tell you.

[Sjeng]

Mega Mini is closing its business by the end of this month, if you want some minis this is the last chance:

http://freeboardgamesnow.com/townfolkx24.aspx

[chaoticprime]

Mega Mini is closing its business by the end of this month, if you want some minis this is the last chance:

http://freeboardgamesnow.com/townfolkx24.aspx

I know the owner of MegaMinis. He usually sells his molds off--for instance, my friend Matt bought all of his Julie Guthrie Grenadier molds. I can probably find out where these end up going.

[mikemacdee]

I've been looking over these miniatures sold at the Game Crafter website and considered buying some as extra heroes and stand-in men-at-arms...except the measurements they give sound MUCH shorter than the Heroquest figures! That is, they did until I read this on one of the links posted here:

Figure scale is defined by one of two system, both named for their origin, both commonly used everywhere.
The UK system measures an average height (5'8") male from the tip of the foot to the centre of the eye.
The US system measures an average height (5'8") male from the bottom of the base to the centre of the eye.

As a result, if the HQ minis are 24mm UK, they'll be 26mm US.

Is this why the miniatures sound so much shorter? The measurements given don't take the entire figure size into account?

In either case, has anyone used miniatures from this site? And are the ones in my search (linked above) nicely compatible with HQ?

[chaoticprime]

I've been looking over these miniatures sold at the Game Crafter website and considered buying some as extra heroes and stand-in men-at-arms...except the measurements they give sound MUCH shorter than the Heroquest figures! That is, they did until I read this on one of the links posted here:

Figure scale is defined by one of two system, both named for their origin, both commonly used everywhere.
The UK system measures an average height (5'8") male from the tip of the foot to the centre of the eye.
The US system measures an average height (5'8") male from the bottom of the base to the centre of the eye.

As a result, if the HQ minis are 24mm UK, they'll be 26mm US.

Is this why the miniatures sound so much shorter? The measurements given don't take the entire figure size into account?

In either case, has anyone used miniatures from this site? And are the ones in my search (linked above) nicely compatible with HQ?

That Sorceress mini could pass well for the female wizard. Its similar to the concept art, even.

[mikemacdee]

Well I went ahead and ordered a bunch to see for myself. I'll post the results here somewhere.

[mikemacdee]

Been browsing a LOT of miniature figure sites and online museums. Dunno if they were mentioned here yet, but a lot of figure sets by Caesar and Redbox appear to be in the same sort of cartoonish proportions as HeroQuest figures, though I'm not sure if they're the same scale.

[chaoticprime]

Scale must really reference two points, so terms like "25mm scale" are erroneous. Types like "25mm to the eyes," the most common scale during the 80's and 90's, actually compares to average human height. That was Julie Guthrie's favorite. When it comes to the works of Kev Adams or Tim Prow, as well as all the vanguard of what is now called the "Citadel" style, scale is about the size of the head. This may seem silly, but fantasy gaming miniatures (basically for D&D) were basically the product of Tom Meier. This is wear the strange "to the eyes" measure comes from. In the UK, however, there was already a tradition of toy soldiers--HG Wells basically wrote the rules for the first table-top wargame in 1912 or so. Anyhow, the point is that sometime in the past, toy makers figured that by altering the proportions of toy adults to that of a child (bigger head) they would appear less threatening to discriminating adults, while children wouldn't actually care. What is also interesting, is that like toy dolls, UK sculptors (more then, than now we may assume) also started with the head.

http://www.crooked-dice.co.uk/wp/wp-con ... 50x150.jpg

Here's an example by my friend Mark Evans. He sculpts heads first, and then moves on from there. The Tom Meier method involved making a wire mannequin and adding putty in armature. Almost everybody does that, now days, but classical UK favorites like Kev Adams still start head first.

The whole history of gaming has been filed with examples of makers in the US putting together a great concept, but with almost arbitrary methods and the someone else in the UK localizing it using an established skill-set. Compare Keep on the Borderlands to The Sinister Secret at Saltmarsh (my favorite module) and its abundantly clear which culture did best, at least on the D&D front.

I guess the point I'm making, is that UK miniatures were designed to look like toys, because there was already an established precedent for the right way to make similar things. Tom Meier is easily the greatest living miniature sculptor, and is capable of photo-realism. If you stop and think about which style of miniature would actually serve you better in the gaming you intend to use it for, that photo-realism starts to seem like a better fit for a painter than a player.

Also, while miniatures in the US have drastically grown larger and larger (compare Reaper minis at two-year intervals), GW/Citadel miniatures are the same size they've always been. That's because they measure scale by comparing two values. YOu know, they use math.