"Advice needed on 25-28mm miniatures" Topic

I have in the last couple of years returned to the hobby of painting and gaming miniatures. For the most part historical,but it seems to me that fantasy figures allow for the most creativity in painting. I noticed that Reaper had some nice miniatures but the standard adventurer humans seemed pretty slender. I was wondering could anyone give me a scale comparison and I am looking for detailed figures along the old dungeons and dragons story line. Thanks

There's a good variety of sizes in the 5000 or so figures that Reaper makes, from 'chunky like GW' to the more slender and realistic ones. Most of the photos in the catalog have a half-inch marker on the right side to give you an idea of scale, and are shown on a 1" base. I wouldn't say any of them (the adventurers) are too tiny to paint. They are larger by a head than the old Ral Partha and Grenadier figures you might be familiar with.

If you go over to the forum on the Reaper site and ask more specific questions about what kind of figures you're looking for, folks will help you locate a few.

Check out the Otherworld Miniatures line carried by Architects of War ( architectsofwar.com ) . I understand they have a sort of old D&D feel to them.

My experience has been that Reaper figures fit in well with those by other manufacturers. The older sculpts introduced in the early 90s tend to be a little smaller than the others. If the figure is supposed to be a petite woman, or young man, the figure will be of a slighter build. But for the most part, human adventures are the same size as figures you would get from other companies such as Foundry.

Otherworld has some nice figs. Reaper does as well but they aren't consistent in scale, the older minis run from 25mm – 28mm, the new ones are pusing 30mm to 32mm. Although the Pathfinder minis seem to be 25mm.

Redbox is a great manufacturer, they are about 25 to 28mm.

What AF & SonofThor said. I have used older Reaper figures along with my Foundry, BTD and Old Glory 28mm Vikings. They are especially useful if I need a female character. The newer figures tend to be larger. Sometimes, this is OK--I have one or two of their Vikings in my army, but they are taller than the rest, the guys on the far right of the Bell curve. A few of their figures are just too big, though.
Grelber

As SonofThor has pointed out, Reaper is not a good line to collect because they are not very consistent in terms of scale.

Redbox makes some really good figures. Another manufacturer that produces really good miniatures is Hasslefree, which is my personal favourite. Hasslefree figures are a "true-28mm" scale, which means that they also scale well with some historical miniatures.

Here are a couple of scale comparison pictures, showing Hasslefree next to Warlord and Perry historical figures, and a Mantic Elf.

link

Why not just go to West Wind and get D&D sized Ral Partha's then?

In general Reaper figures are popular enough that you can find pics of a given miniature on a google search often in the company of other miniatures. They also have a forum where you can likely get the exact height of any miniature you are interested in.

As was said, they do vary quite a bit. Note also that their everything-but-fantasy line "Chronoscope" does tend to run quite large, in the area of 32mm sole-to-eye.

That said, unless strict scale is very important to you, I wouldn't shy away from reaper minis. They have one of the largest ranges of miniatures, are sculpted by top-shelf sculptors and while not bargain-basement, they are still quite affordable when compared to many other makers.

Another advantage of Reaper is that much of their line is available in P65 (lead-based pewter, with the appropriate warnings on the packaging), which is much cheaper than the lead-free stuff.

There's also the Bones line, which is supposed to be replicating the entire Reaper collection in plastic (and even cheaper than the P65s). It's just not as much of the total range as the P65 line yet.

Finally, humans have a really wide range of sizes and builds. Everywhere from about 4'8" tall up to 7'6", and the wide range of heights and bulk with a similar sculpting style of the Reaper line can really help with that.