DIY Minis

One thing I never quite understood was when people slam 4e (or even 3e for that matter) one of the things they point to is the use of miniatures.  Haven't we always used miniatures?   I know I have seen that somewhere before...

Plus minis are so cool to have.  I can imagine with the best of them and I have a pretty good visual memory.  But having a mini on the table is great fun.  I also happen to LIKE the collectible aspect of it all and the surprise of not know what you might get.  I got a Tiamat once out of regular old box of minis for 20 bucks.  You can't really beat that feeling.

But sometimes I want something special or sometimes I something laying around that I can use.  So here are some DIY mini ideas.  Yes you can use them with any version of the game.

This one you have seen before.

Orcus and Aspect of Orcus set me back quite a bit.  Destroyah and Aspect of Destroyah set me back about 10 bucks. Total.

Here are some others.

Some undead dinosaurs threaten the Dragon Slayers.  The one in the back even glows in the dark.  Some of these came from a teacher's supply store, one or two of them where attached to a dinosaur shirt I had bought for the kids at the mall.  The size looks about right to me.

Here the Dragon Slayers see if they can live up to their name.  A couple of HeroClix (or maybe some other similar game) dragons bought cheap at GenCon, a couple of fire breathing dragons bought at the Ren Faire a few years ago, a McFarlane dragon and Sea Dragon and a viper fish from Safari Ltd. a company that makes scientific models for schools of real (and fantastic) animals.  The McFarlane dragon has a sigil on it's wing so we decided that even though he is an evil red dragon, he cares more about finding more magic than hording treasure, or rather he hoards magical items and books.  Need to stat him up one day for you all.

And of course this one.

The Dragon and the Phoenix.

So basically there are tons of great mini ideas out there.  Go read Zak's blog to see all the cool things they do with props and do-it-yourself stuff.  All I did here was raid the kids toys for a bit.  Sometimes we find a toy here or in the stores for cheap and say "we need that for D&D!".  And given my oldest loves to collect dragons, they usually serve double duty.

And not to let my Unisystem games go unloved,

Willow and Tara in the Charmed Ones' Attic during the events of "Semi-Charmed Life" where they also got to meet the Paradox versions of Willow and Phoebe.  Ok, these are a bit bigger than mini, but they are still pretty cool.  All of these I got from CineQuest, my favorite place to shop for little plastic people.