My Little Pony

Closing out my recent string of posts on whimsical miniatures, I present models that can be used as magical ponies.


The first miniature comes from the Reaper Evil Toys blister (02887). It is of typical Little Pony proportions, with thick legs and tattooed backside. The second miniature is a 15mm Irregular horse (FAN14). This is the basic miniature that I will be using for my magic pony conversions. Last are a unicorn, and winged horse from the Reaper Foals blister (02207). These two miniatures were sculpted by Rene Perez, which leads me to believe that they were originally 15mm figures intended for the Shadow Corp line.

The ponies range in size from 8 to 11 hands high, and are suitable for adult Little Ponies. Irregular has 10mm horses as well, so I'll probably have to order some in the future to create baby Little Ponies.

I also have some plastic "alicorns" that came from a 1/72 medieval playset. The ones in my set were made in purple, and a fluorescent orange plastic. The orange one is almost impossible to photograph, so I'm not showing it in this picture. They stand at 12 hands high.


Here is my first pony conversion. I gave it a Kneadatite weave, and fixed up the right side of its head a bit. Even after lengthening the mane, the miniature looks rather subdued as far as magical ponies go. I may have to work on introducing a bit of that poofy glam rock hairstyle look for my next ponies.


When I first painted up the pony, it had a white mane, and was almost physically painful to look at. I changed the color of the mane to lavender, so it would be a little easier on the eyes.


In closing, for those of you who remain skeptical about using ponies in dungeoncrawls or for wargaming, allow me to present evidence that even Wolverine is down with My Little Pony.

Gartenzwerg

Popularized in Germany during the 19th century, the garden gnome has become a common fixture in many gardens around the world. The gnomish lifestyle was revealed in Wil Huygen's 1977 New York Times bestseller Gnomes, while gnomish travelling habits were briefly touched upon in the 2001 movie Amélie. The garden gnome should not be confused with the typical D&D variety of gnome, who is more of a smaller (sometimes beardless) dwarf.

There are a handful of garden gnomes in various scales, but I get the feeling that most of them are too big for use in 1/72 fantasy. This leaves us with 15mm miniatures, and two companies make garden gnomes in this size - Peter Pig, and Splintered Light Miniatures.

Below is a comparison of 15mm gnomes. The first two gnomes are from the SLM Gnome Snail Battle Wagon set (GNOM06), while the next six are from the Peter Pig War in the Age of Magic line (Range 19). From left to right they are are a Gnome with Fishing Rod (WAM56), a Gnome Throwing a Rock (WAM57), and four figures from the Gnome Command set (WAM58). The final figure is a Gnome Baby from Lance & Laser (00156) now available from Armorcast.


The SLM gnomes are slightly taller than the Peter Pig gnomes, but they still match up very nicely. The gnome baby is about half the size of the other gnomes, and sits between two mushrooms (one with a frog perched on top). All of the gnomes will have to be glued onto washers, as the bases are rather small.

Shake Your Tail Feather

Cursed for a transgression that is lost to time, the Durulz race has been described as humans cursed with duck-like features, or ducks cursed with intelligence and the loss of flight. Ducks are one of the signature races of Glorantha and of the RuneQuest game, and despite the persistent attitude that they are ridiculous, I rather like them.

Even though they are a rather obscure race, many manufacturers have made anthropomorphic ducks for gaming. Below are some of the miniatures that are part of my collection. From left to right, they are the Citadel Duck Adventurer from the Non Human Adventurers boxed set; a Ral Partha Duck Adventurer from the Non-Human Adventurers blister (18-014); A Chariot Duck with Sword (QAK2), and Young Egg Guard with Sling (QAK4), both from Magister Militum.



All of these ducks are suitable as Durulz in 1/72, even though the Chariot ducks are marketed as 15mm figures. Frankly, the egg guard are the only ones that I think would be suited for 15mm gaming, as the other ducks would be fairly close in size to many 15mm humans.

Lockheed D-21 Air Launched Drone

This is a model of the unmanned D-21 drone that comes with the ex-Monogram SR-71A Blackbird (Revell 85-5810). It is built pretty much OOB, except I modified the drone cart by installing two pieces of wire in place of the plastic stubs for attaching the drone, so I wouldn't have to glue the drone in place.





I'll need to take a look at my extra decals to see if I can find serial numbers to mark the drone "520" or "521" to represent drones that undertook the final operational missions of the D-21.

The operational drones were actually launched from B-52's, and had a solid-fuel booster attached to the underside, but I don't think anyone makes a model of the booster in any scale.


I'm also not sure if the red trim was on the operational craft either, so I left my drone all black.