Recently I stopped in at Target and was looking through the sports section for a new bike for exercise purposes. As chance may have it, the toys section is right next to the sports section, and when I passed through one of the aisles I noticed something I rarely see:

Really amazing looking, high-quality miniatures. The company that makes these is Schleich, and let me tell you, the tiny images provided here and on their website don’t really do these things justice.

They seem to have a fairly extensive line of medieval-style figures which look great. Unfortunately there were only about four styles on display, but some places I’ve looked at online have a much greater variety of figures. I have no clue how it’s possible to have such nice looking figures available at such cheap prices (roughly $5 per figure, although the mounted Knights run you the cost of the Knight and the Horse together, or about $10). These things come pre-painted too. Amazing.

The only problem is they’re not to D&D standard scale. These figures are maybe two and a half times the size of your usual 32mm (?) figurine.

Still, a lot of the animals and other such creatures such as the dinosaur above would work even with standard D&D scale. Even though it’s entirely unlikely that I’d ever need a huge selection of crazy dinosaurs to throw at my players I’m tempted to buy them. A few stray cows and pigs and chickens would certainly be interesting though… And the human models could be used for NPCs — Even altered if I got the urge to repaint them…