Scale Creep

I was playing a dungeon exploration game the other weekend and noticed just how much figures have crept up in size over the decades. Pictures below...

One of my New Year's resolutions was to try and play at least one game a month this year. I've managed so far, and last month (March) I decided to do a dungeon crawl using some of my 80s miniatures.

When I was selecting the adventuring party I just chose figures I liked. It was only when I put them together as a party that I realised the newer models tower over the older models - so much so that I had to replace some party members. In the end I went fairly old school with my group, mainly because I didn't have any wizard models that were tall enough to work with the modern figures.

Old school adventurers

Modern adventurers

Comparison of the two groups

The game itself was fairly uninteresting. I used Advanced Heroquest tiles and room generation rules with Ganesha Games' Song of Blades and Heroes as the games rules. I'm not a big fan of the Ganesha Games rules, but I thought they might play out better in a dungeon setting. Sadly, however, the fundamental problem remained: everything is boiled down to so few stats that there's little point bothering with figures. What I mean by that is that a heavily armoured warrior with a two handed axe facing a gnome with a pointy stick will likely both have the same combat value, meaning it's all down to rolling two dice to see who scores higher. Given the amount of time I spend choosing and painting my figures it is very disatisfying to see all that work ignored.

However, rant aside, I decided a couple of things following the game.

1. The Advanced Heroquest tiles haven't aged well. I don't mean physically, but their design, shading etc. just makes them look dated. The size of their squares is too small, even for the base sizes I was using, so I have picked up the Fat Dragon Copper Dragon 2d sets (easier to store than the 3d stuff) and have printed out a few rooms and corridors.

2. I need to buy a few figures to complete my modern adventure group. When building the party I had noticed that the old slottabase figures (first generation slottas) fitted in not too badly, it was the pre-slottas that were really too small. However, the modern "heroic 28mm" size is still too big for them, so I started looking for "true 28mm" figures. Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings (LotR) figures are this scale, so I plan to pick up one or two (just as they seem to be abandoning the range. Typical!). I bought some figures from OtherWorld Miniatures and they look like they'll be ideal. CP Models also have an adventuring party, so I shouldn't be too short of options.

I have small groups of humans and elves from the 80s (again, probably first generation slotta), so I need to check if the various sizes will play together for skirmish games, or if I'm going to have to keep the old and new separate. I'm not sure how much 25mm fantasy is out there, other than the old Denizen stuff, but it's worth investigating.

Some more size comparisons

Old and new fighters

Old and new clerics

Even when the old figure is on a slotta base, it makes little difference

Comparisons of figures with LotR ranger (the middle figure). The fighter on the left in the first picture is too big, but the one in the second picture is fine (now, if only I could remember where I got that figure).

Finally, I feel a slight apology is in order. It turns out I mentioned scale creep about a year ago in Old School Adventurers Part 1 and Old School Adventurers Part 2, and had even shown some of the same figures, although I took new photographs for this post. I shall try to pay more attention in the future :-)