A Cheapass Solution for Miniatures

I used to have a lot of miniatures and years ago, I cleared them all out. Recently, I have returned to the idea, but with less of a desire to spend a lot of money, less concern about cool sculpts, and less concern about having consistent scale models. So after a purchase of a lot of Dungeon Crawl Classics minis from Loot, I decided to get even cheaper and buy some 1/72 scale plastic toy soldiers from Caesar Minis sold by the Michigan Toy Soldier Company. For about 25 bucks plus shipping, I got a pile of undead and adventurer types and one big troll-type in semi-soft plastic at about a 22mm scale -- a bit small compared to the old Grenadier and Ral Partha minis of my youth, and notably smaller than the 28 - 30mm minis you find today.

28, 25 and 22mm for comparison

I glued the minis onto 1" fender washers from the hardware store with some cyanoacrylate glue, filled in the bases with spackle, and flocked them with corn meal before doing simple base coats, a dark brown ink wash, and a simple clear finish. I can't call them award-winners by any stretch, but with a little work and a pretty small cash outlay, I ended up with a good basis for running a game.

My paint job and photography don't capture detail well

Caesar makes a sets of Adventurers, Orcs, Goblins, Elves, Dwarves, and Undead, which could give you a good basis for most flavors of D&D games, as well as some simple games of HOTT or Chainmail, as long as you are okay making some small compromises in quality.