Using Miniatures.

I'm pretty tired of using chess pieces on a dry erase board and I'm thinking of switching over to battlemat and miniatures. The battlemat is relatively easy, but how should I go about geting a decent collection of miniatures? I can't say I'm fond of the random assortment I'd get out of a set of the D&D minature line, but the minatures don't look bad. Is there anywhere online I can buy specfic miniatures aside from eBay? Or are there any other decent pre-painted miniature suppliers out there that arn't random? I really just want a basic assortment of stuff from the monster manual as I don't use any other monster books very often.

Local game shop

A couple of local game shops here (Salt Lake City, Utah) have single D&D Miniatures for sale. Prices range from seventy-five cents to twenty dollars, depending on the miniature. And, they include the cards. So, check some shops near you. I am glad they are willing to open the random boxes and poor them into a crate for us to sort through. I only recommend online auctions for rare molds - like the much coveted dire wolf!

I have also seen a D&D Miniatures Web site where members trade their figures online. Alas, I do not remember the URL, since I've never sone it. I am sure one ENWorld's members will know.

Happy gaming.

You can use another brand of minis, Reaper makes great mini's.

Well, cardhaus.com has D&D miniature singles, they can be kind of pricy though. You can probably do a google search and find other online stores that sell singles as well.

Melon

I've purchased single minis from both FRPGames.com and popularcollections.com. I'd buy from either again.

I've bought quite a few single minis from Popular Collections. If you stick to the commons (and some of the uncommons), they're pretty cheap. If you decide you must have that rare beholder / illithid / whatever, be prepared to pay a bit.

If you want pre-painted, there's not a lot of other options beyond D&D Minis. There's a couple of companies (Crystal Caste comes to mind) that offer a few painted metal minis, but those tend towards PC-type figures, rather than monsters, there's not a huge selection, and they tend to sell them in (non-random) 5-packs. Dwarven Forge (the folks that do Master Maze) has a small line of pre-painted resin monster minis (skeletons and orcs, last I saw).

If you're willing to sacrifice the third dimension, Fiery Dragon's Counter Collections are good, pretty inexpensive, and specifically made to feature critters from the D&D books.

Steve Jackson Games' Cardboard Heroes give you back the third dimension, and you get several hundred minis for $20 or so, but there's some assembly required (lots of cutting with a straightedge, mostly), and the monsters aren't always perfectly analogous to the Monster Manual.

I sort of look at the random packs as 'adventure seeds.'

Hey look, I got an ogre mage! Hmmm... how can I use him....?

DDM trading on the 'net is mostly done at http://www.maxminis.com/

You can go a long way by buying just a few DDM boosters and then trading for the figures you need. With the Ogre and Troll having recently been released as uncommons, there's only a few creatures that you'll find are rare and necessary.

Cheers!

Ho there Darkjester!

I'll second what Greyson said...about checking the local shop. The guy that I deal with will start cracking open boxes only when the next release is out...presuming he doesnt have scads of loose ones around from the release before that. Just gotta be in the right place at the right time.

But let me tell ya my experience OK? Cuz I hated the random minis idea too, but bought some because they were neat and I could use them. (I too come from a roleplaying background and didn't put much stock in playing skirmish games)

A: Turned out the D&D minis game is actually fun. I've still never gone really nuts about it, but as a diversion on an off night...its a pretty darn good one. (I also inadvertently turned my 11 yr old nephew into a gamer with them) Get a starter pack and spend the buck or 2 to laminate the map that comes with it. Makes a boss battlemat for the RPG too.

B: (this one has been said before) If you get a number of these things, you may find yourself changing the way you plan adventures. For example, I ended up with witha mittful of Azer Raider minis. I'd have never considered using Azer Raiders before, and I found myself writing an adventure that would give me an excuse to use them. Kinda broadens the horizons a bit.

Also, if you don't like the monster as written on the card, you can make up something to your tastes. (My azer raiders actually turned out to be small Lava Trolls) In this way, the randomness can be your friend, but you have to be willing to tweak your thinking.

C: Even if you only have one of something, you can use ye olde chess pawns and just say "these guys are the same as that one" (I use a bag of those smaller game markers that I got in the dollar store...the little pawn shaped one with the ball on top...got 6 each 6 different colors) Sure you may want a whole horde of zombies for an encounter, but how many times will you use a whole horde of zombies? Sure there's guys buying minis by the crate and ending up with a bajillion Goblin Sneaks, but my budget don't allow for that. I've been gaming for a year on a medium size cookie tin full of Harbringers and the odd other expansion pack.

D: I know theres a few places, Paizo being one, that sells small packs...like a goblin pack and an orc pack...but they still have asoortment in their packs (You may get an orc archer, orc spearfighter, orc warrior etc but they don't sell you 10 orc spearmen.) Keep an eye out though. I think its still just as cheap to buy a bunch of expansions and see what you get.

Ebay can kill ya if you don't keep a close eye on the fine print regarding shipping fees. I saw one guy charge a fair-to-middling flat rate for an auction with the notation that shipping can be combined with other auctions for another 25 cents. The fine print: it was 25 cents per mini, so even if you won a lot of 10, it was an extra 2.50. Sorry, the extra minis don't weigh that much or take up much space. There's good guys on Ebay for sure, but be careful.

E: Look to see if your shop has a dump bin of Mage Knight figs. Theyre going cheap from what I've seen. They're not exactly to scale with D&D (they're bigger), but you can always introduce them as half giant opponents, amazons, or something. Just pry off the bottom part of the clicky base and trim the rest to fit in a 1 inch square. (a Dremel sander is great for that if you have one)

In conclusion, lots of guys bemoan the random packaging because they feel "forced" to buy minis they don't want. I say go for it, and find clever new uses for what you DO get. Don't get too set in your ways. There's lots of gaming goodness yet to be learned.

Trev

EDIT_ a few guys have posted since I began writing this. The cartoon post illustrated why the game piece idea works better than substitutions.