"Giant Ants...." Topic

Does anyone know a good source for toy giant ants? preferably with a queen and a good number of workers?

Ironwind makes a game called Antz, I think, but I am not sure of the size of each mini.

How big do the ants need to be? If very small is OK, various places sell something called "Bag o' Ants" (along side "Bag o' Flies", "Bag o' Spiders", etc.), which includes a large number of small insects; no queen that I recall. If you need them large, dollar stores sell bags of very large insects; the drawback is that only 1 of the 2 (if that) will be an ant, and thus you may wind up with a lot of other varieties.

Pity it's not closer to Halloween. Last year I got a couple of packs of plastic ants (50+ per pack) for a couple of quid each, for a "THEM" clear-the-sewers scenario for my ShadowPunk RPGers. They're moulded in soft polythene and pretty basic, but look enough like ants to do the job.

You might try the educational section of places like Toys 'r' us. There are often bumper packs of themed models - dinosaurs, farm animals, sea creatures and the like, including insect packs.

As Chris J suggests, you might have to buy a bundle of other things just to get a couple of ants, but they may be useful for other scenarios.

Many moons ago, Ral Partha did some beautiful Shadowrun Wasp Spirit models with a couple of human-size insectoid creatures, plus a human-wasp hybrid. It's a pity they're not still available.

RobinH

Steve Jackson has a line of Ants for 25mm (would look real good against 15mm soldiers).

Toy Soldier Recruitment has soft plastic warrior ants.
They are about 45 mm / 1 3/4" scale, stand mostly upright on some of their hind legs, and sport a quasi Greek look.

They are 'painted'.

You've inspired me. Months ago, I bought some of those plastic ants from a local drugstore. I thought, "If I ever use the Giant Ants, in my AD&D game, these will be perfectly scaled for 25mm-30mm figures, and no painting required..."

Then I looked up their stats, and saw how many usually appear. After giving it some thought, I realized a colony of Giant Ants, would utterly destroy the surrounding countryside, with little chance of Humans/Humanoids surviving -- Shudder! They're a real game-world breaker, so I've shelved the idea.

I have so many ants, though... What to do? My wife came home, the other day, with another pack for me: someone used them at a party, at work, and my wife thought I could use them. Now I'm really in a bind...

Then I realized that Giant Ants make a formidable army, albeit utterly stupid, and fearless (much like an undead army). I realized that I could do a one-off miniatures game, featuring a human(?) army defending a village against the ants... Magic would be somewhat effective, and hand-to-hand would be deadly: the Giant Ants are equivalent to plate mail armor, for each and every ant, akin to ultra-heavy infantry... Duhn-duhn-Daaah!

I'm really looking forward to this game. A castle would offer no protection, as the Ants would simply climb its walls, like a spider. A water moat would only slow them down as they formed a living/drowned bridge. It would not make for a fun campaign game, but for a single battle, it would prove interesting, and challenging for the defenders. Thank you, gentlemen, for the inspiration! Cheers!

"M'Lord the ant horde has veered off towards the giant suger cube as our wizard predicted."

"Very well, unleash the catapults we modified into giant fly swatters and have at them"

Big Lots (a close-out store) has packs of 12 plastic ants for a buck from time to time. These pretty much cover up a 25mm miniature base to give you an idea of their length. I would avoid paying for lead versions of these unless you could get 'em cheaply. There's just too many plastic ones in the toy market.

Hello,

I found, just today, that the Rainforest Cafe has a huge bin of large (perfect for 25mm/28mm) plastic insects. I picked up several spiders, scorpions, and beetles for $.75 each.

No painting required and I figure that I will base them on GW (gasp!) bases.

They also have various worms, dragonflies, ants, grasshoppers, preying mantis, etc....

A friend of mine called today, asked if we could do some skirmish gaming. He has been helping me playtest my rules for modern/Viet Nam so I agreed to meet him at the FLGS.

I have a tube of big nasty bugs (mostly spiders) that I got at the dollar store, so I said "I'll surprise him".

When he got there, I was setting up the board, there was a road down the middle (long ways) and a small town in the middle of that, bordered on both sides by palms, woods, and swamp. I told him that he had a platoon of Florida National Guard, 2 Sherman tanks and a Half-track. A town near the coast had been found deserted and he had to check it out. He thought he was going to be fighting some sort of altrenate history fight against Cuban soldiers....

They set up a CP in a burned house on the edge of town, then had a squad clear the gas station. After checking out movement in the house next door, they encountered the first of several giant spiders. My friend was rather surprised but thought it was pretty cool. Other highlights included the Lieutenant breaking morale and being pursued from the CP by a giant fly, one of the Shermans shelling/machinegunning the movie theater to get a spider, and another spider coming out of the woods and climbing into the half-track to eat the reporter. The cricket jumping 3/4 the length of the town to munch on the point men was pretty good too....the look on his face when that thing jumped was classic.

Now I need more bugs :-)

I love it! It reminds me of the classic genre mix that was written up in Dragon Magazine, back in the 1970's, where some historical gamers showed up, and crossed into... "The Twilight Zone", fighting a mage and his troll lackey, plus some undead.

I really like the scenario set-up. This is a a classic idea. Not sure how well received it would be with my historical gaming group (some won't touch fantasy, but the majority would enjoy it...). I'll have to play with this a bit. Cheers! And thanks for sharing!