Eilif wrote:Until the scale change in 2021, Heroclix were all around 34mm (1/48). Quality varies, but many are pretty darn good sculpts and affordable.
Dig through Troll and Toad and see what I mean. The number of great figs for less than a buck is amazing. Lots of
NPCs, troopers, cops, etc, in addition to heroes. Just pop off the clix bases
I just wanted to say that Eilif is spot on with this recommendation. Heroclix started out with terrible sculpts, but they got a lot better. If bad paint jobs / mold lines hold you back, know that Clix can be effectively and relatively easily stripped of all paint using acetone, and then have their mold lines trimmed off with an exacto knife like any other PVC figure. First, snip the figure free of the polystyrene black heroclix base, which will dissolve completely into messy paint-like sludge in acetone. Then, after soaking the figure for a short period and using a toothbrush to get rid of extra paint, wash it thoroughly with soap and water. Getting the timing right on this can take a bit of practice, and leaving it in the Acetone for too long will cause the details to fray and ruin the figure, so its best to try this first with a couple of cheap figures you don't care much for. Done right, you will lose none of the detail, which is often revealed to be very impressive beneath the caked-on factory paint jobs. At that point, you have a PVC mini that's ready to be mold-line trimmed, primed, and painted, which is as good as any you will get in any boardgame set (and in some cases, better.)
Expensive heroclix collector's pieces at ridiculous prices? They exist, but you can ignore them. There are hundreds and hundreds of Heroclix minis, and there are commons and uncommons with great sculpts and sci-fi designs that you can buy for $1 to $2 apiece.
But you want Sci-Fi, not superheroes? Not only are many of the (often more obscure) heroclix characters from Marvel and
DC quite easy to use as generic sci-fi troopers, aliens, robots, and monsters, but there's also haloclix, which largely consists of power-armored sci-fi troopers and alien troopers armed with sci-fi weapons. Any of the many iterations of "Master Chief" would look great as a generic sci-fi visored, armored trooper. (Haloclix will often run you a bit more than $1 or $2, but many great figures can be had for $5 or less. They'd make fine troopers in any sci-fi setting.) There's also Gears of War clix, although those seem to be harder to find / pricier than Haloclix, and it's comparatively a very small set.
Check out this General Zod figure, which Troll and Toad had for about .90 cents when it was in stock (it's usually not hard to find cheap on ebay also.)
https://www.trollandtoad.com/heroclix/man-of-steel-gravity-feed-singles/general-zod-003-man-of-steel-gravity-feed-dc-heroclix/1028568 Having stripped it of paint, I can tell you the almost H.R. Giger bio-mechanical detail on this figure's armor is truly intricate, with no Kryptonian letter symbol on the chest. There's very little about this figure (based on a modern comic book iteration, not the classic Reeve movie Zod) that ties it to Superman or
DC comics. It's just a great design and a great pose of a very sci-fi looking guy holding a gun, with a terrible all-black paintjob that's pretty simple to remove.
Or take this Haloclix drone with plasma pistol, which is available for a little over $5 at troll and toad:
https://www.trollandtoad.com/heroclix/other-halo-10th-anniversary/drone-plasma-pistol-007-halo-heroclix/321850. Great detail, great design. In fact, it's one of the best individual "flying alien trooper with a gun" figures I've encountered. Be careful of those antennae if you ever buy it and strip the paint, though, and remove the transparent wings before dousing the figure with acetone. Those antennae tear off easily (a problem I've encountered very little of overall after stripping the paint from at least 50 heroclix figures), and the wings will discolor and become opaque if you soak them in acetone.
Overall, the figure's a bargain. And there are many more great sci-fi things available at similar prices and cheaper throughout the Heroclix line. It just depends on how willing you are to sift through a lot of spandexed hero figures on sites like trollandtoad, nobleknight, and coolstuffinc, to find the sci-fi gems you're after.