"minis for Awful Green Things from Outer Space?" Topic

This is an unusual request, perhaps, but I'd be more than interested in miniatures (20 to 25mm scale) that could be used in lieu of the cardboard counters for the Tom Wham/TSR/SGJ boardgame classic Awful Green Things from Outer Space. Green Things could be made readily enough from modeling epoxy or clay (I've known someone who did this) -- the trick is finding figures that approximate the crew of the spaceship Znutar! Any ideas, anyone?

Piper,

I had never heard of that game before, until you mentioned it here. So, I made a quick Google search and found this:

link

Check out photos #355 and #356.

I would love to make something like that!!!

Dan

I hope these are the direct links to the two photos:

picture
picture

More:

picture
link
picture
link
sjgames.com/awfulgreen
link

Dan

I'd be more inclined to do the game in 15mm, both for space reasons and because and because of these:

picture

Finding a close match for the crew is trickier, but you could easily pick other alien figs to proxy for each race. Gorilla Games' 15mm Battlestations range seems like an obvious mine for that sort of thing, especially since they're rather cartoonish already:

link

Incidentally, this isn't really an unusual request at all. AGTFOS gets mused about here about as often as Rivets or Chitin: 1 – there have been previous threads on the topic over the years.

Awful Green Things, Rivets, Chitin: 1 – All excellent games that *need* some small-scale minis. I have enough of the old Rivets minis for one side, and I've supplemented with some of Germy's 2mm GZG minis, but I'd like to pick up some new minis that match the game illos one of these days.

I have had several people order these from me for this purpose as well:

link

Sadly, as I understand it, the IP for Rivets and Chitin I is still owned by the former owner of Metagaming, Howard Thompson, who refuses to talk to anyone about doing anything with it. I would be happy to be wrong, but I think those are going to live in OOP-land.

Someone could do unlicensed, similar figs like the Glow Worm spacecraft that looks something like Serenity. But that way madness lies.

AGT is not published by SJ Games. They've done some minis, but according to the Daily Illuminator they weren't very profitable. The Giant Ants (awesome) were discontinued altogether, but I think you can still get Hellboy. The Ogre miniatures are all available, though sometimes you have to wait a bit. These are available online only.

It's tough for me to imagine SJ Games doing AGT minis, after all, the game itself is out of print at the moment. I would love to be wrong, and I would love to buy those minis – that would give me an excuse to do a Znutar model to play in.

A lot of people have done polymer clay AGT. I was going to try polymer clay Rivets, but I never got around to it. I like those cartoon robot tanks a lot better than I like those rules, so I'd need better rules for one thing.

Andrew

Heres a nice site with some home made figures.

link

Love the homemade awful green things, crew and escape vehicles. Super-cool!

Talk about 'Green Slime!'…AGTFOS is darn 'close!'…

.and those other figures from Battlestations too! (they have ship sections etc too….)…but the FIMO/sculpy ones look like they'd be 'fun' to make as well as use!

I'd say pick up the game first then get some fimo/ss and gofer it!!!

Slishfully,
Sgt DWW-btod

Andrew wrote:

Sadly, as I understand it, the IP for Rivets and Chitin I is still owned by the former owner of Metagaming, Howard Thompson, who refuses to talk to anyone about doing anything with it. I would be happy to be wrong, but I think those are going to live in OOP-land.

No, you're right, Andrew: link

Many parties have tried to contact Mr. Thompson over the years regarding licensing these games, but the closest anyone could get was "a source close to Thompson," as the wiki article notes. It's a shame, because Rivets and Chitin are fun little games that I still play at least once a year.

Headzombie, those Muccins are nice. I'll make a note of those for the future.

I never thought to check for HT on wikipedia.

I'd really like to ask Steve Jackson, I bet he knows the whole story. Not that he'd tell me. But I bet he knows.

In the meantime, I don't approve of people running off with someone else's IP just because they're not doing anything with it and not protecting it, but several of those products are being pirated.

In the end, though, Ogre and AGT are safe, and the rest are good, but not Earth-shattering. You can nearly always find a second-hand copy on BGG or eBay, and we're all free to be inspired by them to create new designs.

And the Znutar characters are perfectly suited to polymer clay…

Andrew

Absolutely, I'm definitely not advocating anyone stealing the IP just because it's languishing. That's why I wish HT would pop up at least long enough to sell or license the games to someone else.

As I understand it, Paul Jaquays retained his rights to the Chitin bug artwork (though not the game itself). So he could license mini versions of the Chitin bugs, as long as they didn't use the names from the game. In fact, I think Khurasan was looking into it back in '08: TMP link

I don't think anything ever came of it, though.

I worked for HT at Metagaming back in the early 1980s, just before he folded the company. He was always a little strange and difficult but normally he liked to make money. Since he could make some easy money selling the rights to these long OP games, I'm very puzzled why he doesn't do so. He must be even more paranoid than he used to be about getting screwed somehow.

These homemade AGT 3-D games, BTW, are absolutely amazing!! Thanks for all the links and pictures. I will pass these on to other interested parties.

Grenadier Miniatures waaay back in the day made official 25mm scale figures for Snits/Snits Revenge IIRC… not for AGTFOS 'though, sadly enough…

I saw some pre-production figures for Chitin I from Martian MEtals one year at Pacificon, however, sadly, the Martian Metals production plant was burned out by a fire a few moths later. I would have bought swarms of the little gems had they gone into production…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

I've noticed that Khurasan miniatures makes some 18mm monsters that might serve as acceptable Awful Green Things and their babies (they are one-eyed green slime monsters with two tentacles -- the tentacles aren't canon but I can overlook this, postulating that Tom Wham has simplified the nasties for the boardgame cartoon feel). This looks to be a reasonable way to create a 3-D version of the game without having to make my own clay sculpts (beyond my abilities).

So, now: where to begin to find acceptable 15mm sci-fi or fantasy figures that can serve as stand-ins for the Znutar crew? Obviously exact matches are impossible -- but what I'm looking for at this point are reasonable facsimile types. I'll need four distinct races plus a "mascot". The Robot I've gotten from a set of plastic space robots. I'm not likely to stumble across the perfect ranges or figures on my own, out of the scores or hundreds of possibilities, so I throw myself on the mercy and good guidance of TMPers. Please post your suggestions and links here!

the tentacles aren't canon

Yes, but they are for what AGT itself was based on!

I've got a play set of the Awfuls covered, along with some spare adults:

link

I'll be listing them on ebay shortly along with a set of spacesuited humans that will let you play both Green Slime games and (with a bit of squinting, using different squads as the different crew races) AGTfOS. We'll see how they do – if there's enough interest maybe I'll see what SJG wants for a minis license.

I think I'd rather sculpt Planet Busters ships, but that's just me. :)