The most impressive in this round of painting are my Reaper (Dark Heaven “Legends”) #02498 Snakemen.
These are great figures. They were easy to paint and they will be great as “Hissers” for Gamma World, and Ophidians or Yuan-ti for D&D. They do tower above the Star Wars figures, both being about 45mm high. This leads me to my recent dissatisfaction with Reaper. I’ve had problems with painting Bones figures, but my concern here is size/scale.
I ordered a number of Reaper figures following Christmas with some specific plans for each figure – most of those I received are much larger than I expected. I’ll use them, but I might have looked at something else if I’d know their true size. I wish Reaper didn’t just class whole groups of figures into broad categories, and actually gave a height of each figure on their website. Dark heavens figures are “25mm Heroic Scale Fantasy Miniatures”. I expected the snake men to be around 30 to 35mm high, not one-and-a-half times as large. My catfolk warrior (not painted yet) is also Dark Heavens and he’s a full 35mm high. (At least a 7′ tall cat-man isn’t out of place in Gamma World.) How are any of these 25mm “heroic”?
My four Star Wars figures are Ral Partha (in conjunction with Lucasfilm & West End Games, 1988-89). These are all 25mm figures and definitely NOT heroic. They look a bit small against my other miniatures, but most of them I’ve been gluing onto a 25mm round base which makes them look a little taller. These are part of some boxed sets I bought long ago and really hope to finish painting this year.
SW23 “Shrike”, a Gand. While this figure came out to be used with the WEG’s adventure “Tatooine Manhunt” (which I have), the figure is based on “Zuckuss, from The Empire Strikes Back.
SW73 “Female Minor Jedi”, SW75 “Ewok” and SW78 “Male Minor Jedi”. The male Jedi is a little dissapointing – he has a seam across his face that I didn’t notice until I inked them. It actually puts his eyes at slightly different levels. I wasn’t going to try and clean up the face and repaint, so it can be treated like a scar. He’s not painted in traditional Jedi colours either, since if he gets used for anything it probably won’t be as a Jedi.
I’ve built up a collection of Star Wars pre-painted minis – aliens and humans holding laser guns work great for Gamma World humans & mutants. These will fit right in, and now I only have eight of the figures left to paint.
Dragons of Lancasm 