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Last night I reorganized my minis. They're now in a 7-drawer organizer (not all the drawers are used for minis). Each drawer has a general theme, and within each drawer specific groups of monsters are sandwich-bagged together. Here's what I ended up doing (the bulleted lists are the bags in the drawers, also have loose minis that didn't fit a theme):
Drawer 1: PCs & Uniques
Primarily human, elven, dwarf, gnome and halfling minis which are interesting and/or that I only have one or two of, making them good for PCs and also for unique characters who I want to be recognizable.
*Halfling
*Dwarves
*At some point I'll probably go and bag the rest of them into general themes, i.e. armored, casters, etc.
Drawer 2: Mooks
Human minis which I have lots of copies of, bagged by theme.
*Archers
*Guards
*Bandits
*Cultists
Drawer 3: Adversaries
Primarily-evil humanoids and other minis uniquely suited for adversaries.
*Undead
*Drow
*Goblins
*Kobolds
*Orcs
*Gnolls
*"Saurian" (lizard-like people, e.g. lizard men, medusae, draconians, dragonspawn...)
*Demons & Devils
Drawer 4: Animals, Elementals & Constructs
Like the name says... The stuff in here is all "neutrally-aligned." No bags, it's all loose.
I'm curious how others have organized their minis for ease of access during a game.
I'm in the midst of this project myself. I'm using the Sterilite "Shoe Boxes" for broad groups with ziplock sandwich bags for sub groups inside the larger boxes. My generic, melee "Soldiers" box is still packed full. Archers and Spellcasters in another shoe box, Kobolds, Tieflings and Cultists in another (Needed a spot for Tielfings because the "PHB2" race box is full of the rest of teh non-human/elf/dwarf/eladrin PC minis). It's working okay so far, but I need a second shoe box for the "skeletal" undead because I have way more undead than a box full.
I keep them in several $3 single layer tackle boxes, about as big as a standard RPG book each, if quite a bit thicker. These boxes are kept on my two bottom most shelves on the RPG bookshelf in my game room.
Each tackle box represnt a theme: 'PC/NPC - Humans', 'PC/NPC - Demihumans', 'Orcs', 'Undead', 'Animals', etc... and I use the compartments inside the tackleboxes to further break them down into things like 'Fighters' 'Wizards' 'Rogues' 'Archers'.
I try to keep each one labled on the side, and they are clear so you can see into them without having to open them up. Makes finding a particular mini a breeze.
Oddly, I'm also in the midst of inventorying and re-classifying my 2500+ minis collection. Is it something in the air?
I use THESE. I have about 40 categories (e.g., "Weapon-and-Shield Warriors," "Arcane Casters," "Dwarves," and so on), so I have four of these.
I use colored plastic slide-out bins, 14 or 15 of them, for my Large-based minis.
My Huge-based minis sit on shelves that circle my game room, and my Gargantuan- and Colossal-based minis have their own shelf, up high and out of the way.
Going the card-house route was the smartest choice I ever made, in terms of storage. I can have a suitable mini for pretty much any encounter in 10 seconds, and I can have a specific mini in 30 seconds.
I also use an Excel spreadsheet to track my inventory (including things like what's stored where). I'm just now wanting to learn how to link an image to a cell, so I can click on, say, "Cleric of Order" and have the image of that mini show up in the worksheet.
__________________ Jeff Wilder, San Francisco Bay Area If your sig is longer than your posts, your sig is too
long. Nobody reads it, they just get annoyed by it. And if you bore me, you lose your soul to me. - Belly
I have at least one of every D&D mini produced to date, and just outgrew my organization system.
I used bead cases from Michael's or AC Moore to contain them, and had about 10 full when I made my recent switch.
I had originally:
PC cases - one big section for each 3e class. Fighters were by far the largest. Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Gnomes and Half-Orcs got their own sections.
One section for particularly eeevil looking humanoid villains. One section for guards, one for mooks.
Monster cases section sizes allocated as needed - One for each: Drow, Orcs, Goblins. Undead, Lycanthropes, Animals (dire and summoned), Elementals. Fiends
Ziploc bags with dupes of commons for: Guards, Thugs and Mooks; Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, etc...
Problem was, some sections were getting simply huge, and you can imagine the difficulties of finding a mini in the "green miscellaneous" section, especially if you don't know exactly what you are looking for.
New system:
2 Separate containers for each set (from Target) - I have the sets enumerated in a big Word doc with photos from the galleries pasted in. I can flip through to find the mini I want, then find it easily in the container. Haven't indexed/printed them yet, but I'm on the way.
Open-topped cardboard bin trays. I divide out sections for each type, mark on the front the contents of each section and store on the bookshelf over the books. My shelf holds 8X2 boxes, and is the exact same depth, which is the prefect amount for my minis. My large and bigger dragons/giants are on display on a smaller shelf.
I have small boxes from cross stitch which I have stolen from my wife. All categorized by things like: demons, undead, player stuff, gnolls, orcs, goblins, kobolds...
The Large and Huge are mixed up in plastic boxes. Except the dragons.
__________________ And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
I do the same as Jeff, but I have four much larger plastic drawers for the over sized minis. They are all on an excel sheet, but I hardly use it... I pretty much know what and where everything is
Sorry for the mess
I just bought a house and will be dealing with this soon as well (I don't have a lot of minis at the moment, but I will have more and will keep some there for some friends as well).
I have a room in the house that is strictly dedicated to D&D so it will have books, minis etc in there. I was thinking of doing something like mach1 has set up, but we'll see. I'm wondering how well a big tool box would work (the big red ones) as I know someone with one they don't want... I should take a closer look at it I guess.
__________________
Dark Water Campaign run in the Last Lands
----=====----
I use ziplock bags, the kind that what a white bit so you can write on the outside of the bag with a permanent marker. Then I put smaller zip locks of groups of things within.
So for example, undead 1gal bag contains quart sized skeletons, zombies/ghouls, spirits/ghosts. All the bags fit neatly into recycled paper boxes for storage... and it cost me only a few pennies to accomplish.
Last night I reorganized my minis. They're now in a 7-drawer organizer (not all the drawers are used for minis). Each drawer has a general theme, and within each drawer specific groups of monsters are sandwich-bagged together. Here's what I ended up doing (the bulleted lists are the bags in the drawers, also have loose minis that didn't fit a theme):
Drawer 1: PCs & Uniques
Primarily human, elven, dwarf, gnome and halfling minis which are interesting and/or that I only have one or two of, making them good for PCs and also for unique characters who I want to be recognizable.
*Halfling
*Dwarves
*At some point I'll probably go and bag the rest of them into general themes, i.e. armored, casters, etc.
Drawer 2: Mooks
Human minis which I have lots of copies of, bagged by theme.
*Archers
*Guards
*Bandits
*Cultists
Drawer 3: Adversaries
Primarily-evil humanoids and other minis uniquely suited for adversaries.
*Undead
*Drow
*Goblins
*Kobolds
*Orcs
*Gnolls
*"Saurian" (lizard-like people, e.g. lizard men, medusae, draconians, dragonspawn...)
*Demons & Devils
Drawer 4: Animals, Elementals & Constructs
Like the name says... The stuff in here is all "neutrally-aligned." No bags, it's all loose.
I'm curious how others have organized their minis for ease of access during a game.
I dont think I have that many minis as you do but I do have a few boxes and a large tacklebox. Since the tacklebox fits a good deal that I'll ever need, I put the top drawer is adventurers, the second is monsters and undead, and the third is miscellaneous. I have a bin part where I stick all the big minis in there.
Like many others here, zip-lock bags were the answer to my problems. I also keep my PC minis (i.e. humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-orcs) in a separate plastic storage box to my monster minis.
My Huge-sized minis and many of the overly-large Large-sized minis are kept in a third under-the-bed style plastic storage container. It work really well for the bigger minis as the container is quite shallow, but long and wide so you can fit a lot of minis in there, but they aren't stacked on top of each other so you can quickly find what you need.
My PC minis are separated into:
Weapon and Shield
Single Handed Weapon (No Shield)
Two Handed Weapon
Two Weapons
Ranged Weapons
Exotic Weapons
No Weapons (i.e. farmers, prisoners, etc.)
Casters
Cultists
Halflings and Gnomes
Half-Orcs
Dwarves
My Monsters are normally divided into zip-lock bags by type. Some examples are:
As I got more and more minis I have found that my divisions have become more specific. I used to have an Undead bag. Now Zombies and Skeletons have their own bag.
In addition to my zip-lock bags and storage containers, I have a couple of Plano Prolatch Stowaway boxes. The 4/24 size box fits most Medium-sized or smaller minis (as well as some Large-sized ones). The 4/15 size box fits most Large-sized or smaller minis.
I use these to keep the current PC minis in, as well as some of the minis that I plan for my PC's to encounter in the next few sessions.
It takes a bit of time to sort out all your minis, and you will end up with a few monsters that just defy categorization. However I have found the time spent to be well worth it.
Despite having over 1,500 D&D prepainted minis I have found that with my system I can generally find the mini I want in under a minute. I often grab a mini out of my collection during a session and I am able to do so without telling the players to have a 5-minute break to dig through the collection for it.
Olaf the Stout
__________________
Currently running my group through the Shackled City Adventure Path
Oddly, I'm also in the midst of inventorying and re-classifying my 2500+ minis collection. Is it something in the air?
I use THESE. I have about 40 categories (e.g., "Weapon-and-Shield Warriors," "Arcane Casters," "Dwarves," and so on), so I have four of these.
I use colored plastic slide-out bins, 14 or 15 of them, for my Large-based minis.
My Huge-based minis sit on shelves that circle my game room, and my Gargantuan- and Colossal-based minis have their own shelf, up high and out of the way.
Going the card-house route was the smartest choice I ever made, in terms of storage. I can have a suitable mini for pretty much any encounter in 10 seconds, and I can have a specific mini in 30 seconds.
I also use an Excel spreadsheet to track my inventory (including things like what's stored where). I'm just now wanting to learn how to link an image to a cell, so I can click on, say, "Cleric of Order" and have the image of that mini show up in the worksheet.
I also track my inventory (only about 1,200 minis) through Excel, and as I often can't recall what a specific mini looks like, I link to a system of folders of pictures. If you right click on the cell of that minis name, for example, you can create a hyperlink to the file. When you click on the link, it will open up a window with that minis picture in it. The links are absolute, so you'll have to keep the file structure the same to keep the links valid. I have about 95% of my spreadsheet now linked, and its very nice to have that reference.
I also track my inventory (only about 1,200 minis) through Excel, and as I often can't recall what a specific mini looks like, I link to a system of folders of pictures. If you right click on the cell of that minis name, for example, you can create a hyperlink to the file. When you click on the link, it will open up a window with that minis picture in it. The links are absolute, so you'll have to keep the file structure the same to keep the links valid. I have about 95% of my spreadsheet now linked, and its very nice to have that reference.
I also have my inventory listed in Excel. Being able to link to the pictures is something I hadn't thought of. I might give that a go.
Olaf the Stout
__________________
Currently running my group through the Shackled City Adventure Path
My unpacked metal minis are organized in grey Chessex boxes, each with a Half-dollar sized label that says something like "Undead #1", "Spellcasters #2" or "Sci-Fi Minis #1." I also have my Chainmail minis sorted out by Warband..."Kilsek", etc.
My Dwarven Forge stuff is stored in a set of large stacking drawers that are about 2' wide.
My unpacked plastic minis are stored in towers of 16" Sterlite stacking drawers.
My packed metal minis- largely Ral Partha, Grenadier, Reaper, Chainmail, and Rackham Confrontation- reside in tubs in my attic.
My packed plastic minis are stored in (or stacked on top of) a large sized Elfa cart.
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