Fangs, fur, fashion and firearms
July 26, 2009There comes a time in every man’s life, when the zombies of childhood must be left behind. I’ve finally taken that step and am now completely over my foolish zombie infatuation. No, not really. I’ve just recently taken something of a detour to visit another dear old friend of mine, also in the genre of modern horror. Vampires and werewolves, that is.
Lately I watched the first two Underworld and Blade movies, which are chock-full of cool, stylized battles between vampires, werewolves and humans. How could I not want to game – or at least collect – something similar? Now, I already have a lot of models suitable for modern horror games which is no wonder considering my love for zombies. The cops, SWAT teams, bikers, military types and such easily fill the role of humans. But what about the vampires and the werewolves? That’s where I’m lacking, at least until the next two weeks at least when I start receiving the €70 worth of minis from various manufacturers that I’ve ordered.
To those of you that might be interested, here are my picks. All images are © of their respective companies, used without permission and will be taken down on request. Click on the images to be transported to the manufacturers’ pages.
Vampires – I wanted to capture the look and feel of Underworld’s vampires. Stylistically they’re lifted almost 1:1 from White Wolf’s Vampire: the Masquerade game (which even lead to a legal dispute), meaning that they are the embodiments of modern-goth cool. Long coats, leather clothing and black, a lot of it. What makes modern vampires so easy for the collector is that unless you want to give your vampires a feral look, you can simply buy any modern figures you like and just give them a very pale complexion. The image below is a prime example, click for a larger version.
Again, luckily, such models are easy to find. Here’s what I picked for my games:
Click to go to Hasslefree Miniatures
Kat by Hasslefree miniatures was a natural choice for me. She has it all, with the tight clothing, pistol and a touch of the archaic brought by the sword. One could almost imagine she was sculpted for such a purpose, but that’s pure speculation of course. Kat is a beautiful sculpt, and one of my all-time favourite models.
Click to go to Heresy Miniatures
Cartwheel from Heresy’s scifi range was my next choice. The somewhat crazy firing-while-cartwheeling pose fits the genre perfectly, as do the tall boots, the bald head, the shades and the long coat.
Click to go to HeroClix Wikipedia entry
Ultimates Hawkeye is a somewhat surprising entry from the currently defunct HeroClix line. While the model isn’t the most detailed, the combination of dynamic pose, modern bow and skintight clothing justify his repainting as a vampire. Update 28.9.2009: HeroClix and HorrorClix are apparently making a comeback under a new company.
Click to go to Foundry
With the previous three comprising my characters, I still needed some lesser vampires to provide some support. Along comes Foundry, with their Hired Hitmen pack. With their trenchcoats and modern weaponry, they fit the bill just fine.
Click to go to Reaper Miniatures
Vampire spawn from Reaper topped off my vampire selection. I bought these in case I needed some more feral vampires, and simply because they’re wonderful sculpts. They’re also useful if I want to play some period vampire games, as their look makes them suitable for several different time periods.
Werewolves – I wanted something a bit more unrefined. Compared to vampires, werewolves are often portrayed as strong brutes of the working class, whereas vampires are all about elegance and aristocracy. With this in mind, I went off looking for miniatures that in their human form were fairly everyday, and not uniform in their looks as well as armed lightly compared to the vampires. However, in their wolf forms I wanted them to be big and imposing. See below for the imagery I was after.
I had a fairly good idea where to start looking, and as with the vampires, I ended up using miniatures from only a few different manufacturers.
Click to go to Hasslefree Miniatures
Click to go to Hasslefree Miniatures
Click to go to Hasslefree Miniatures
Harby, Kendra and Zombie-hunter Kev are all from Hasslefree. Harby will undoubtedly become the leader of my werewolves, being the large, imposing and brutal looking guy that he is. Kendra and Kev are normal looking people with handguns, which is exactly what I was after. The fact that both of the men carry very heavy pistols is an added bonus. There’s nothing like a Desert Eagle shot to the face to keep a vampire down.
Click to go to Heresy Miniatures
Click to go to Heresy Miniatures
Security officers Hawque and Dove from Heresy were picked for the same reason as the previous ones. They have mundane clothing and are packing handguns. There’s a variety of different pistols to choose from, with some being more scifi than others.
Click to go to Foundry
I happened to have Gideon from Foundry’s Doc Friday’s Yardies pack lying around, and decided to add him to the fold as well. The model is absolutely massive, towering head and shoulders above many 28mm miniatures. The large mane of dreadlocks gives something of a wild, hairy appearance which is perfect for a werewolf. The only downside is that he carries a rocket launcher in addition to his assault rifle, and I’m thinking of using some greenstuff to convert the launcher into a duffel bag.
That’s it for the human forms, but what about the real meat of the things, the wolf-forms themselves? It was clear to me from the start that I wasn’t going to go for Lon Chaney style Wolfmen, but wanted large slavering wolfbeasts instead. This is what I ended up picking for my force:
Click to go to Reaper Miniatures
Click to go to Reaper Miniatures
Jean Paul Werewolf and Male Were Wolf (consistent, no?) from Reaper were easy picks. They’re wonderful sculpt of suitably vicious looking werewolves. I like the exaggerated claws and proportions as well.
Click to go to West Wind Productions
Click to go to West Wind Productions
Click to go to West Wind Productions
I was happy to find that I could actually pick up the rest of my werewolves (to complete the original group of five that I had in mind) from West Wind. They have a few suitable ranges and a good variety of all sorts of werecreatures. Loup Garou, Wolfgang and Mondheulen all share a vicious look, with Mondheulen looking especially bloodthirsty.
And that’s it! Two groups of magical creatures ready to do battle with each other and any humans that happen to get stuck in the middle. After they are finished, I would love to get me a few champion types for both sides. For the vampires, Heresy’s Vampire in Bat Form is a wonderful model, and to fight him, the Warwolf from the nowadays defunct(?) Ilyad games is pretty much the best you can get. At €20 for one model, it should be. The Warwolf can be found by googling, and is still stocked by some retailers.
Click to go to Heresy Miniatures
The sadly OOP(?) Warwolf
…but I’ll look into these after a year or five, when I’m actually close to completing this project. Luckily it’s not the destination that matters, but the road that leads to it.
Dawn of the Lead 
Loved this post, thanks. I’ve been thinking along similar lines for a while, now that Fear & Faith is out. (I confess I was originally looking at the Superfigs rules, because, well, Underworld was more of a superhero movie.)
Some suggested figs:
The initial release of Horrorclix has an excellent werewolf that’s well worth tracking down. An intimidating 38ish mm to the top of its head. It was only a common, but it’s a popular one, so you might have to keep your eyes open. (You only want the vet, though, the rookie and the experienced aren’t half as cool.)
Also from the Horrorclix is the Wildman from the Freakshow expansion. Perfect for a young feral vampire.
And for some freaky gothy vampires, I note there’s some choice picks in the Rezolution Dravani, especially the Human Form (Female) and the Executor Vassals.
OK, more later if it comes to me.
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Haha, I bought Fear and Faith last week for exactly this reason! Great minds think alike, as they say.
Another pre-painted plastic one that I’m drooling over is D&D miniatures’ Werewolf lord.
The Dravani Executor vassals are indeed nice, thanks for the tip. There were some other suitable minis in that line.
If any other come to mind, keep ’em coming!
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My Blade Trilogy boxset was watched last week for exactly the same reasons as yourself 🙂
I spotted your post about the werewolf rules on the Ganesha Yahoo Group yesterday; you had similar queries that I had had a couple of weeks before. The first time that I sat down to play an Underworld type F&F game it became apparent that vampires could kill weres in close combat but weres couldnt hurt vamps… at all. The rules were clarified as a result a day or two later.
I love the choice of figures that you made. I have a lot of unused Horrorclix lying around that are suitable for the aforementioned F&F games and so I have decided to go the cheap route and simply use those for my Underworld project. Looking at the nice selection of figures that you have in your post has me reconsidering somewhat…
As soon as you get any of those guys painted be sure to put up some photos. In particular I would love to see those werewolves painted up.
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Mikko, I admire the direction you’re going in. I agree with you that zombies are great fun but so too are vampires and werewolves. I named my blog-site Vampifan’s World of the Undead to encompass all kind of supernatural figures. Whilst werewolves aren’t undead I still like them and hope to cover my own collection sometime in the future. At the moment I’m concentrating on zombies but vampires, werewolves, ghouls and mummies are all on my “to do” list. As for the Underworld and Blade trilogies, you couldn’t have picked finer genre examples to base your figure collection on. I like the start you’ve made – you have some very impressive figures on show. As the previous poster said – get ’em painted and show them!
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