I love everything Warhammer, but I love the miniature painting hobby in general too and here’s a few miniature lines I love outside Games Workshop. They all have their own reasons to seek them out, and it’s exciting to find something out there completely different to Games Workshop’s offerings while still showing beautiful sculpting. This isn’t an exhaustive list, just a few lines that came to mind while pondering tiny model people.
Infinity
This is a current miniatures range by Spanish company Corvus Belli. They have a distinctive aesthetic influenced by anime and hard science fiction, beautifully crisp sculpting and casting and some gorgeous designs. Their mechs, called TAGs, are particularly spectacular.
Confrontation
Not the ancient Games Workshop hive gang game, but a range of miniatures by French company Rackham. Confrontation isn’t around any more but some companies have access to their sculpts and originals can turn up on eBay (but expect to pay through the nose for a complete boxed set). Confrontation was a range of fantasy miniatures with amazingly characterful sculpting, especially in some of their non-human races (the evil dwarves are amazing). The casting wasn’t always up to scratch compared to the sculpts so flash and lumpy bits of random metal can make preparation a headache. I fondly remember ordering these models from France in the late 90s/early 20000s and being amazed there was a world beyond Space Marines.
Marvel Crisis Protocol
MCP is one of the few games I play semi-regularly. The main attraction of their miniatures is the fact they’re superheroes, which have been ill-served by the miniatures world except a couple of dedicated games. The models are pricey for what you get, but you don’t need many to play a game.
Kingdom Death Monster
For some reason, I am cursed to finish perhaps one out of every five KDM miniatures I get. I keep breaking or losing bits of their limited-run boutique resin figures, which have a mix off anime aesthetics and extreme strangeness along with excellent detail and dynamism. One day I will actually finish two of these in a row.