Been spending a bit of time on ebay lately, assembling some minis for future gaming endeavors. I'm surprised to see the low prices on some Games Workshop figurines - you could pay less than original retail for assembled and competently painted minis if you are patient.
One thing that I ran across was sets of miniatures for a Russian game, Castlecraft. They come in sets with buildings or in blister packs of eight, with four minis from each of two sides (the factions vary from knights to barbarians to others such as orcs, etc.). Including the cost of shipping from Russia, the price comes out to about $1.00 a mini! I took a chance on a couple of packs, and was able to amass the loot pictured below.
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| The original packaging. A knights versus barbarians pack. |
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| Four knights, good for Song of Blades and Heroes or other fantasy skirmish games. |
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| Four Roman legionnaires. I hadn't planned on going historical, but it would be a chance to teach the boys about history and have fun while doing so. |
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| Two sets of slightly different barbarians (similar enough to be part of the same warband, though) from two different blister packs. I've wanted to build a barbarian warband, and now I've done it for eight bucks! |
The minis have some flash on them that I'll have to trim off, but a size comparison shows them to be on par in height (though a bit stouter) than LoTR minis, and a bit smaller than the 'heroic' scale Reaper Bones minis. They'll fit in just fine and come with beveled bases to boot - no additional basing necessary. I may give some of these guys to the boys to paint. For a dollar a piece, you just can't go wrong.
