54mm!?

Sometimes the heavily caffeinated, squirrel on speed that lives in my head and drives about in this flesh-mech you all know as "Tim" makes some pretty poor decisions...

Like; "Hey, we should put together an entire maniple of imperial titans in regular 28mm 40k scale..."

Or, "Hey, we have imperial titans, so let's put together a super heavy detachment of ELDAR titans!!?"

Or, "I know we already HAVE THREE complete Imperial guard armies and a better part of a fourth... but let's buy ANOTHER complete army and a half!?"

Or "I know we have Kill Team and a dozen other skirmish games.. but let's go ALL IN for Necromunda and then track down five entire gangs worth of the old metal minis on eBay AND a pile of extra dudes for bad guys and hive scum and bounty hunters AND custom build a tonne of terrain..."

Or "hey wouldn't it be fun to make a bunch of minis out of wooden pegs?"

OR "better yet, let's individually SCULPT entire warbands of anthropomorphic critters for Burrows and Badgers!"

Or "I don't know if ONE Eldar super heavy detachment of TITANS will be enough... let's track down THREE of those old Tempest superheavy grav-tanks to make another Super Heavy Detachment of those!?!" Or look at these super cute and cheap chibi warriors - lets order a fuckload of those - I'm sure we'll figure out something to do with them, right!?"

Or "Um... do we have enough eldar...? I don't think so!" (to be fair, this last one did fill out a number of things I did need to make a viable 40K force of Eldar... AND I split it with Keira, who also was able to make good use of a number of these things... the extra 90 Guardians... well... they were just thrown in for free anyway...).

What have I always said?

"Why do things in JUST ONE SCALE when you can do them in two...?"

"or three...!?"

(Of course I'm usually being a bit facetious when saying that, mocking my own stupidity in having the same damned miniatures for the same period in two - or THREE - different scales...)

And that brings us to Inquisitor...

For those that aren't aware, Inquisitor was a low-level skirmish game published by Games Workshop - almost role-playing game-ish in scale small... but with a TOTALLY DIFFERENT FIGURE SCALE!? They produced a series of 54mm miniatures to go along with the game. I think it would have been WAY more popular - and they'd have sold way more miniatures - if they'd just produced all   those same sorts of new character minis in 28mm! I mean, there were Rogue Traders, Inquisitors, bounty Hunters, Imperial Workers, Mercenaries, Navis Nobilitai.... Sure SOME of those were available as part of regular 40K armies... but not some of the others.

I picked up this copy of the Inquisitor rulebook ages ago...  Maybe it was a game store bargain bin? SSO book and music sale? Maybe it was...? Nah, I don't even remember... It was used, dirt cheap, and I picked it up for the fluff and the artwork. No desire to play the game or ever pick up any of the miniatures...



Then I noticed a few remaining Inquisitor miniatures in the 50% Off Bargain Bin at my FLGS... I picked up the Rogue Trader mini last year one Boxing Day. The other two I picked up a couple of months ago... Still wasn't planning to actually PLAY the game... just thought they'd be fun to have and assemble and paint - just for giggles.



I started assembling them and... welll.. this is as far as I got, so far... But while I was doing this I got it in my head that these would be really fun for a demo game at a convention or something...? Maybe even ToonCon in the spring? But I'd need a few more miniatures - back up adepts, bad guys...



I had this box of 1/35 scale SAS in a box from years back others...



I tried assembling one - the guns looked PUNY by comparison to the ones from the 41st Millennium!



Here's 1/35 scale mini next to Inquisitor models....



Diggin around through boxes of random crap, I found these. Some cheap dollar store plastic soldiers I'd picked up - because they'd also looked like actual modern SAS guys - rather than the usual generic oddly posed weirdos with unidentifiable weapons. I started thinking with some creative paintwork (and maybe just a LITTLE bit of converting....) they could be made to look like Chaos Cultists of some sort.

 

They're pretty close in scale...

And then I started casting around the internet (well... eBay, mostly) to see what else was out there...



and I found some relatively inexpensive "54mm" models from Russia - they were even metal!



But WAAAAAY too big... Ah, well...



I did also find some AWESOME plastic model from Russia - These ones would make perfect Valhallan guardsmen.



Scale-wise, they are close enough to totally fit in...

And there were others that would make great Chaos Cultists and so much more...

And then I came to my senses...

I actually started writing this post months ago and then stopped when I shelved the project. I shelved it around the time I came up with the Q4 Plans - back at the beginning of October, and this post has been sitting in my drafts folder since then... I felt like I'd done all the work, might as well finish it off at some point. But I also felt maybe I should wait until I had enough distance from the project that finishing off the post wouldn't get me going on the idea again.

I still like the idea for some small demo game at a convention at some point... so it's on the back-burner... but like waaaaaaaay on the back burner... maybe not even on the burner at all... maybe it's in an airtight plastic container in the back of the freezer that I hope won't get all freezer burnt before I get around to doing something with at SOME point!!

For now, need to focus and get some OTHER stuff done: Hellboy, Necromunda, Blackstone Fortress.... all the other 40K stuff.... so much more... don't need to deal with ANTOHER scale (which would, of course, need it's own set of terrain... yeah, I really don't think these things through, do I...?)


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hellboy Miniatures!!!

Seriously.