The other day I decided to treat my players to their own miniatures of their characters. I got these of Hero Forge. I actually had great fun playing with the software, but in the end I came up with the four characters. Two hobbits, a Mirkwood Elf and a ranger.

I bought the STL’s as I can print in both resin and filament (still cost over $7.00 each. But it was a present so I was willing to spurge in my mate’s and my eldest.

So I posted a picture of them yesterday in their raw state…

Sadly one of the hobbits failed to print properly, but the rest came out okay (ish). I reprinted them all today as the ranger had lost half of his shield and the elf lost their scabbard. Unfortunately on today’s print the ranger lost a different bit of their shield as did the hobbit, the elf still lost the scabbard, but luckily the other hobbit printed (even if she does seem to have very thin arms.

I decided to give the original ones a lick of paint tonight and here we are…

So left to right we have Tauriel, an elf of the woodland realm. Arador a ranger of the north and finally Hoban Underhill a hobbit of the Shire.

The poses were funky and as I said I enjoyed playing with all the different poses and equipment. I spent a couple of hours at least on the four of them. This is where it gets a bit interesting. There are some poses and equipment that do not work at all together. I decided to make a Samurai and Ninja. I felt the urge to make a diorama… I blame Dave and Pete for that! The Ninja was in a three point landing and the samurai was rushing forward with a spear. Whatever weapon I tried to put on the belt of the Samurai actually went through the armour. It would go on the right side of the body fine, but not the left. I then decided to do some experimenting with different figures and found similar things. The elf above has her hair in a bun, simply because if it was long it would go through her back quiver.

The other thing I found was that the resin actually has ridges on it as if it were done on a filament printer. They are faint, but they are there. At the distance you would normally see them on the table they are invisible, but they are definitely there. Now this is different resin, but the civilians I did a while back do not have these ridges. It makes me think that it could be the actual miniature itself. I have seen pictures of the Hero Forge stuff that people have bought as a miniature having them too.

Will I be rushing out to get any more, probably not. This was a one off experiment. I might fork out $16.00 for the two Japanese minis I built, but before I do I might see if I can find something from the various mini manufacturers out there.. to be honest it would probably be cheaper.

Talking of cheaper, the Up and coming Patreon that I said I was likely to follow, is more like definite now, but interestingly enough he shared a Link to a MyMiniFactory page, where I could make a ranger… okay I cannot have him doing back flips or other things like I could on Hero Forge, but it is really a nice miniature and I could have some weapon options etc. Plus they come with a full sized base, not a really thin one like the ones I just did.Price $4.00 just over half the price of the one above…