This article originally appeared in Pyramid #8
ASSORTED SCENERY
And the horses it rode in onManufactured by Grenadier Models
Sculpted by Andy Chernak
Prices: $4.50 and $7.00Usually, when you talk about metal miniatures, you talk about vehicles or figures. Player characters, or units to build an army. Well and good... but some of the neatest castings out there are just stuff. Things to create a diorama, or set the scene for a dungeon adventure or miniatures battle so you're not just fighting over a flat table. Things like these offerings from Grenadier.
My favorite from this batch is #338, Pack Ponies With Accessories, which retails for $4.50. You get two solid little 25mm ponies -- the same pose, but different manes and tails. One has a full load of gear. The other has an empty frame, and the set comes with lots of junk that you can load on. It's not all fantasy/medieval, either -- you could make a full load out of things that would fit Western or even modern adventures, including a neat little iron pot.
This set had the only real casting problem I encountered in the five packs reviewed here. One of the horses obviously came from a split mold; I had to carve its foreleg out of a huge lump of metal. The other horse was almost pristine -- I could hardly find the mold lines.
The other four sets are all part of Nick Lund's 25mm Fantasy Warriors line. But there's not a warrior to be seen in this batch -- just more interesting stuff. Each of these sets retails for $7.00.
#411, Coffins, is just the thing for anyone doing Vampire with miniatures... but it fits right in with your average dungeon crawl, too. There are two solid 25mm coffins, and four more with separate lids, ranging from plain wood to an elaborate sarcophagus. I would have liked to see crisper detail on the sarcophagus, but it's good enough to paint.
#412, Sacrificial Alter (sic) With Accessories, is a great little set, even if somebody relied too much on their spell checker. There are eight pieces, including the obligatory Underdressed Victim Tied To Stake. Those of us who are unfamiliar with the details of ritual sacrifices will have to wing it a bit on the assembly of the altAr, but I think I got it right. There's also a secondary altar, with recently-deceased ram, and an ominous-looking three-candle sconce to shed the requisite flickering light on the morbid scene.
#413, Doors, has three big 25mm doors: a sliding grate (pictured), a chimney with hidden door, and a 2-piece rotating "hidden stone door." A lot better than saying "You see a doorway."
#414, Treasure Room, features a big chest, lots of little ones, and various piles of loot -- 7 pieces in all. A couple of the pieces are made up of several small chests and bags, all lined up in a row. I puzzled over these for a minute, and then realized: it goes next to a wall!
All in all, these are nice, useful pieces, well cast and finished, quite paintable. If you like metal stuff, take a look at these packs. If not, no doubt your dim, tedious life will drag on without them. But don't bother me about your 54th-level half-elf fighter-thief-cleric, OK?
--Steve Jackson
Article publication date: August 1, 1994
Copyright © 1994 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.
