Trinity Battleground Figure Gallery

 Today's post is a bit of history from back in 1997, a partial gallery of painted figures for White Wolf's short-lived Trinity: Battleground miniatures game.  The figs were sculpted by Bob Naismith, and are fairly hard to come by these days thanks to the game's brief lifespan and limited production run.  My own collection of them was never complete by a long shot and these were all sold off almost a decade ago, but posting what images I do have might help collectors get a better idea of what they looked like.  You can find more complete (but unpainted) listings of the range at the Lost Minis wiki.

These figs are from the "Support Squad Dragon" pack, a set of five identical sculpts of close combat troops with armored cestuses.  They were painted up for the Supersystem minis game, with the one guy being a "Legion-class psionic" who created and army of "prismatic energy" duplicates of himself to do the fighting for him.  I lucked into rather a lot of these models in one big purchase when Alliance Distribution was liquidating the line following its cancellation.  Think I was paying under $2 a pack back around 2000 or 2001.

The large green beastie is the aberrant Gommora, who was sold both in blister packs cast in metal and in the core game cast in resin.  The pink one is (I think) Naushka (who was cast in metal and packaged with another aberrant called Drummach), and the little critters are Trogs, a support squad that was sold in packs of three in theory - pretty sure I had  acouple that contained 4 or 5 at random).

And yes, Naushka (or possibly Dummach) has a hole completely through its chest.  It's pretty freaky.   

The large four-armed aberrant is Nazul, who was cast in both resin (in the starter box) and metal (as a solo blister).  His pal is Drummach (or possibly Naushka) from their shared blister pack, and there's another couple of sets of Trogs.

Drummach (or possibly Naushka) narrowly escaped re-purposing into astrofauna back in my Full Thrust days.  Makes a good space monster if you trim the base tab, do some drilling and stick it on a flight base.  Still rather regret not doing the conversion, but I've never found another copy of the model despite years of hunting. 

Aside from still more Trogs, I believe the other three aberrants are Keeper, Sang and Luka, but I have no idea who's who.  They were sold in a single three-figure blister pack toward the end of the game's distribution, and are kind of ridiculously hard to find.  They're definitely not unreleased (I got mine in the store I was managing at the time and it came in from Alliance normally) but quite rare.

Scale shots with an old Vor: the Maelstrom neo-Soviet rad-trooper, who's pretty much as average a 28mm scale fig as it gets.  Bases are 25mm throughout.

Hope whoever bought these is still getting some use out of them.  They aren't the fanciest paint jobs I've ever done, but the sculpts are too quirky to be left on a shelf forever - or worse, wind up in a landfill.

Found On A DVD Part 2: Old Figure Gallery

 More random old minis from a long-forgotten DVD.

"I am too an umber hulk.  We didn't always look like spindly bug-men."

Old school Ral Partha Umber Hulk, from back when they had the AD&D license.

"Prince of Shadows?  Never heard of the guy."

One of my earliest attempts at source lighting from the glowing green daggers.  Didn't come out too bad.  A dynamic metal Reaper sculpt.

"Phantasmal Killer?  Yeah, I know that spell."

Reaper mini, originally a metal sculpt, translated to Bones plastic pretty effectively.  One of the better attempts at sculpting a spell effect in mid-cast.

"How come you get the helmet?"  "Shut up, you.  I'm the boss around here."

Old Reaper fig, all cast as a single piece.  A really weighty hunk of metal.

"..."

It's still a stone golem.  Did you really expect a witty quote?  Another massive chunk of Reaper metal.  I'm a little baffled why this one doesn't seem to have been re-done in plastic, it would really be a good fit for the cheap Bones white material.

"Backhand chops are my specialty!"

Oh hey, the miniature for my very first 13th Age character.  A Privateer Press mini from their original RPG range.

"Me?  A sinister cultist?  Whatever makes you think that?"  

And my very first homebrew villain for 13th Age, along with her big creepy idol.  The gal is another Privateer Press RPG fig, while the idol is an old Reaper Metal fig.  The thing's cast in two pieces so it's hollow, but still weighs a lot.  Another one of those figs that really should have been done in Bones when it came out but inexplicably didn't.  It's really a shame, the figs has a lot of character.  

Found On A DVD: Old Figure Gallery

Some random old miniatures from years gone by, salvaged from a nearly-forgotten DVD burned ages ago.  The things I find while spring cleaning.

"Trolls, why did it have to be trolls?"

Reaper Bones figs, from back when there was only the white stuff.  Think those are 40mm bases, maybe 50mm.

"Actually, I prefer good sturdy boots for treading jeweled thrones beneath my feet."

Metal reaper fig, arguably the best "Conan" barbarian sculpt ever made.

"Give a hoot, don't pollute.  Try not to bleed all over the forest when your arm is ripped off."

Metal owlbear fig from WotC's Chainamil range.  Over twenty years old at this point.

"I'm so old there is actual lead in my alloy.  Fear me!"

Grenadier had some interesting sculpts back in the day.  Think Mirliton still has this one in production.

"My sculpt was inspired by an even older fantasy book cover."

Another ancient sculpt, this one from RAFM.

"Snakes, why did it...wait, we did that gag already."

Not even sure who made this one, possibly Grenadier.  Swap meet find from years ago.

"Worms, why did it have to be...damn, stop that!"

You'd think it would be something from D&D's Age of Worms but nope, OOP Hell Dorado figure.  Kyuss would be proud, regardless.

"Way creepier than snakes any day of the week."

Say what you will, Mage Knight had some neat sculpts.  Just need a bit of rebasing and a decent paint job.

"Aren't yetis supposed to be white?"

"Don't be racist."

Remember when most of Reaper's miniatures were metal?  I do.

"Raar, I'm a dragon."

One of the better early Reaper Bones sculpts.

"Raar, me too."

Not quite as striking in green, although it is a more traditional color scheme.

"You expect a quote from a stone golem?"

Early Bones plastic was probably at its best with relatively simple sculpts.

Dreadful Things: Squirming Brain-Eater

 

Quick conversion today, using a Reaper Bones Bathalian body and arms with a head swapped on from a Troll Forged Games alien head.

I've done quite a lot of Bathalians over the years, in part because the arms and heads swap easily between the three different Bones sculpts.

It's also very simple to find other heads that can be swapped on, obviously.

They are quite large, which offsets the usual Bones white tendency to flex and bend despite the relatively thin limbs.

This one's mounted on a 60mm base and positively looms over the Frostgrave barbarian here, who's mounted on a 25mm base.

Assimilation Alien Host: Alien Queens, Guards and Eggs

 

The new year in a few days will mark eleven years gone by since the now-defunct Ed Fortae as Troll Forged Games ran his Assimilation Alien Host kickstarter, a project that could safely be called ill-fated.  Ed has long since left the industry following some health issues without managing total fulfillment, and Impact Miniatures (one of my fellow backers who went in big on the project) stepped up and volunteered to try to finish it off, which still isn't entirely done.  Looking at the most recent comments shipping costs seem to be the main sticking point, and it seems unlikely that these sculpts will ever be on sales at retail.

Now, I have no personal complaint about the project, but that's only because I was one relentlessly pushy SOB back when it started to show signs of having problems, and managed to not only pester my own pledge out of them, I bought another backer's pledge on the TFG market page and managed to get that too.  People who weren't as demanding are still waiting and have been for over a decade.  It's not something that has a good fix, but it does serve as an excellent cautionary tale when considering backing a crowdfunding project.

Anyway, in the interest of preserving some memory of Fortae's sculpting for posterity, I've done a full gallery page of the stuff I painted from the range which covers about 80% of the minis that were promised, not all of which were finished and produced.  I've still got a fair number of figs unfinished even after all this time, but I did do a few of them this year so I'm adding them to the record.

   These are the Alien Queen and the Queen's Guard sculpts, along with a couple of bases of Eggs.

The Queen is a seven piece model - thorax, abdomen, head, two arms, two pairs of legs - and is one of my favorite sculpts in the whole range thanks to its truly creepy design.

The Guards are five pieces - serpentine lower body, torso, head, two arms.  The eggs are all separate castings, I've just clumped them together here on 45mm bases from Reaper.  I believe there are three or four different variations of them. 

The bigger models are quite large, fitting comfortably on 60mm bases.  Everything is made of a restic material that was a proprietary formulation of TFG as far as I know.  It's light and pretty durable, although its flexibility seems a bit variable.  There was (and maybe is) a vid of Ed bending the heck out of a goblin spearman fig without the stuff deforming permanently or breaking, but I've had small protrusions snap off while cleaning off the excess from casting.

Still had enough of them to do two sets with minor pose variations.

Started with three sets, you can see the other ones on the gallery page.

The arms on these figs (and the majority of the rest of the range) are simple spur and socket affairs, very easy to position as you like.

Truly a shame this project went as badly as it did, the minis probably would have done well at retail.  Still, I give some credit to both TFG and Impact for not selling them until the project fulfillment was complete, despite the fact that it most likely would have led to a cash influx that could have concluded fulfillment many years ago now.

If they ever do become available on the general market (most likely through Impact) I heartily recommend picking some up.  They go well beyond merely being Tyranid proxies and show some real creativity.

Couple of shots to give a feel for their size.  The gentleman with the pistols is an old Mordheim fig, so pretty much 28mm scale.

Say, what's that other thing there in the center?  Guess we'll find out next time...