Giants of Legend Expansion Pack
Swiftbrook
First Post
Bias
I’ve previously purchased a Harbinger Entry Pack (Amazon 60% off), several individual Dragoneye miniatures and a case of Archfiends off Ebay. I purchased my Giants of Legend expansion pack at a local bookstore for full price. Why? Because I just had to see these minis. I’m not a miniature gamer – I use the minis to enhance my D&D.
First Impressions
This set is HUGE! Each box is about twice as wide and twice as deep as any previous expansion box. My general impression is that the sets are getting better and more expensive.
My draw
Huge: Red Dragon (71)
Rare: Otyugh (27)
Uncommon: Warmage (7), Lidda, Adventurer (19), Drow Rogue (46)
Common: Blue (29), Dire Rat (30), Lizardfolk Rogue (35), Ettercap (47)
Huge Red Dragon – This miniature is really big. 4.25" tall, 4 oz. and sits on a base almost 3" in diameter. In comparison, my Archfiends Silver Dragon is 2.5" tall,1 oz. and sits on a base about 1.5" in diameter. The paint job is nice too. Again, better than my rare Silver Dragon. My only complaint (and I’m stretching here), the dragons skin looks like a checkerboard or waffle iron instead of scales.
Otyugh – Another large ‘miniature’ – 3" tall. I think it looks better than the picture in the Monster Manual. Paint job is well done.
Warmage – Almost an all brown miniature (studded leather armor is my guess). Detail is OK. Paint scheme is unimpressive.
Drow Rogue – I don’t like dark cloths on dark skinned miniatures, you just can’t see the details. The Drow Rogue has a dark blue cloak, and a beep brown shirt covering the drow’s black skin. There is only a small hint of a mail shirt and the drow’s silver eyes to add contrast.
Lidda, Adventurer – This is a remake of the Lidda, Halfling Rogue (27) that shipped with the Harbinger set. The original Lidda was .6" tall, a scale 3' and just right for a halfling. The remake is much larger, .8" tall and she’s crouched over. The extra size allows for extra details and they show. But she’s 33% larger than she should be and it’s not worth the extra details.
Blue, Dire Rat, Lizardfolk Rogue, and Ettercap – Each one of these miniatures is a good representation of the creature and they all have nice paint jobs.
Rating
Detail: 5/5 – these miniatures are nicely detailed.
Paint: 4/5 – painting has improved over previous sets but there still is room for improvement.
Price: 4/5 – yes there is a HUGE miniature, yes they are using at least twice the material to make these sets, but IMHO with only adding one huge figure they’re not worth twice an Archfiend, Dragoneye or Harbinger expansion pack.
Usability 3/5 – I am disappointed with the selection of miniatures in Giants of Legend. There are no new ‘iconic’ characters from the Players Hand Book. Instead of new ‘iconic’ characters, we get two remakes: Lidda and Regdar. Lidda is too big and Regdar, from the picture, looks uninspiring.
Overall: 4/5 – If you are a collector or miniature gamer, this set is a must have. If you’re a D&D gamer, you might be better off getting just what you want off the many trading or auction sites.
A Note On My Favorite Local Book Store
As mentioned before, I purchased this pack from my local book store. For me, price is very important. I don’t like paying full retail price especially since I think this pack is over priced. But with these huge packs, being able to hold a box in your hand is worth a lot. The bookstore had 40 or so huge packs. I picked each and every one of them up and compared their weights. There is a difference. I purchase the heaviest pack from the bookstore, paid full price, and got a huge red dragon. The two packs I ordered from Amazon will truly be random, I don’t know what I’ll get. Yes, I saved $6 per pack by purchasing from Amazon, but I’m also still waiting for them to arrive.
I’ve previously purchased a Harbinger Entry Pack (Amazon 60% off), several individual Dragoneye miniatures and a case of Archfiends off Ebay. I purchased my Giants of Legend expansion pack at a local bookstore for full price. Why? Because I just had to see these minis. I’m not a miniature gamer – I use the minis to enhance my D&D.
First Impressions
This set is HUGE! Each box is about twice as wide and twice as deep as any previous expansion box. My general impression is that the sets are getting better and more expensive.
My draw
Huge: Red Dragon (71)
Rare: Otyugh (27)
Uncommon: Warmage (7), Lidda, Adventurer (19), Drow Rogue (46)
Common: Blue (29), Dire Rat (30), Lizardfolk Rogue (35), Ettercap (47)
Huge Red Dragon – This miniature is really big. 4.25" tall, 4 oz. and sits on a base almost 3" in diameter. In comparison, my Archfiends Silver Dragon is 2.5" tall,1 oz. and sits on a base about 1.5" in diameter. The paint job is nice too. Again, better than my rare Silver Dragon. My only complaint (and I’m stretching here), the dragons skin looks like a checkerboard or waffle iron instead of scales.
Otyugh – Another large ‘miniature’ – 3" tall. I think it looks better than the picture in the Monster Manual. Paint job is well done.
Warmage – Almost an all brown miniature (studded leather armor is my guess). Detail is OK. Paint scheme is unimpressive.
Drow Rogue – I don’t like dark cloths on dark skinned miniatures, you just can’t see the details. The Drow Rogue has a dark blue cloak, and a beep brown shirt covering the drow’s black skin. There is only a small hint of a mail shirt and the drow’s silver eyes to add contrast.
Lidda, Adventurer – This is a remake of the Lidda, Halfling Rogue (27) that shipped with the Harbinger set. The original Lidda was .6" tall, a scale 3' and just right for a halfling. The remake is much larger, .8" tall and she’s crouched over. The extra size allows for extra details and they show. But she’s 33% larger than she should be and it’s not worth the extra details.
Blue, Dire Rat, Lizardfolk Rogue, and Ettercap – Each one of these miniatures is a good representation of the creature and they all have nice paint jobs.
Rating
Detail: 5/5 – these miniatures are nicely detailed.
Paint: 4/5 – painting has improved over previous sets but there still is room for improvement.
Price: 4/5 – yes there is a HUGE miniature, yes they are using at least twice the material to make these sets, but IMHO with only adding one huge figure they’re not worth twice an Archfiend, Dragoneye or Harbinger expansion pack.
Usability 3/5 – I am disappointed with the selection of miniatures in Giants of Legend. There are no new ‘iconic’ characters from the Players Hand Book. Instead of new ‘iconic’ characters, we get two remakes: Lidda and Regdar. Lidda is too big and Regdar, from the picture, looks uninspiring.
Overall: 4/5 – If you are a collector or miniature gamer, this set is a must have. If you’re a D&D gamer, you might be better off getting just what you want off the many trading or auction sites.
A Note On My Favorite Local Book Store
As mentioned before, I purchased this pack from my local book store. For me, price is very important. I don’t like paying full retail price especially since I think this pack is over priced. But with these huge packs, being able to hold a box in your hand is worth a lot. The bookstore had 40 or so huge packs. I picked each and every one of them up and compared their weights. There is a difference. I purchase the heaviest pack from the bookstore, paid full price, and got a huge red dragon. The two packs I ordered from Amazon will truly be random, I don’t know what I’ll get. Yes, I saved $6 per pack by purchasing from Amazon, but I’m also still waiting for them to arrive.
Reflex
First Post
The large blocky box abundantly illustrates the key selling point behind WotC's latest D&D miniatures expansion. Nestled within each, braced by stiff protective cardboard, lurks a miniature of size Huge. All that extra plastic comes at a stiff price, however- Each booster costs $10 more than any of the previous releases. Whether or not the massive minis merit the money is a matter for closer investigation.
Giants of Legend (GoL) boasts 72 miniatures, 59 of which come in the sizes familiar to owners of previous expansions. Of the remaining 13, 12 are Huge, while one lone miniature, the Quasit, debuts as the first Tiny miniature. A close examination of the figures in question reveals a substantial step forward in the quality of the painting. This improvement is evident in many respects, from the use of washes on miniatures such as the Zombie resculpt, to the precision of the painted eyes, now featuring almond shaped whites and tiny spherical pupils, a Monk-like leap forward from the mishapen black dots haphazardly adorning the faces of earlier minis in the line. Details such as the individual suckers on Grick tentacles and the Ming the Merciless eyebrows on Mordenkainen demonstrate similar advances, as does the use of more colors per figure, allowing for more interesting blends and shading techniques. Certainly there is still room for improvement, but just as clearly, marked progress has been made. The quality of painting still varies somewhat among identical figures and dramatically among different minis in the set. While several uncommons boast particularly decent paint jobs and most rares are above average to good, some still profoundly disappoint, the Stone Golem falling squarely in the latter category.
Sculpts have improved in flair, detail, and fidelity to the canon as well. Comparing the excellent new Bugbear Footpad to the previous Bugbear provides an excellent example. The level of attention to the small print is surprisingly good and occasionally excellent, as in the case of the Rakshasa sporting hands with reversed thumbs, an often negelected detail in the description. There are still a handful of miniatures that are mediocre sculpts for reasons of aesthetics or design, the Minotaur Skeleton offending on the former count and Regdar the Adventurer on the latter. On the whole, however, GoL must be considered to offer the best sculpts the line has yet shown.
But the focus of the release, for better or for worse, must be the Huges. Since buyers are paying $10 more for a GoL booster than they did for Dragoneye or Archfiends and getting only 1 extra figure for the extra doss, the Huges are essentially $10 items. As usual, they are a mixed bunch. Some are solid sculpts, but not generally as desirable in typical Campaign play (The Warforged Titan and the Fiendish T-Rex). Others are relatively dull paintjobs (the Nightwalker). However, the remainder are sure to be highly sought after, both because of utility in most games, power in skirmish, and fine sculpt and paint jobs. The question is HOW willing a prospective buyer is to chase those figures, because WotC introduced more permutations than price and size alone- They also experimented with rarities.
Previous boosters followed the same trend in rarities per pack, containing 1 rare, 3 uncommons, and 4 commons each. GoL added 1 Huge per box, but in a marked departure, these Huges are not of the same rarity- The most desirable Huge minis are seeded 3 to a case. Consequently, this raises the spectre of "cherry-picking' on the single booster retail level. When buying a booster from the store, it is never clear whether a previous customer (or the proprietor!) weighed each box to select for the packs most likely to contain the 'chase' pieces. As a result, buyers potentially (and, from anecdotes on the WotC boards, actually) may purchase 9 or more packs and never get a rare Huge. Since each pack retails for $19.99, and since 9 out of every 12 packs contain an assortment of the same 6 Huges, buyers left with 5 Nightwalkers and no dragons or Glabrezu after buying 6 packs are left to wonder whether they really want to lay out another $20 for a 'chance' at getting a rare Huge. With previous expansions, even if a newly purchased booster contained a rare already in your collection, it was still relatively valuable as a commodity for trading to others to get the figures you were missing. Conversely, the excess stockpiles of 'Uncommon' Huges are harder to trade, being less useful in large numbers than smaller pieces and common enough (because of the distribution) that most people buying boosters from the line already have all the T-Rexes they are likely to want.
Buying cases provides some protection from this fate, but even after shelling out $150+ for a case, a collector will still only have, by design, 3 of the 6 rare huges. At some point, collectors are left asking themselves whether to continue to plunk down $20 for chances at the mini they want, or whether to bite the bullet and resort to paying $10-$30 on the secondary market for the precise huge they want.
So is the expansion worth the higher price? The figures are better sculpts with better paint jobs. Some of the units chosen for inclusion are either very useful in RPG play (Dire Wolves) or are clever homages to D&D history (King Snurre from Against the Giants, Lord Soth, and Mordenkainen). The Huges are sure to impress when revealed by the DM. But at $20 per booster, the $10 premium for each Huge adds up quickly, particularly when the buyer has little control over WHICH Huge that $10 will buy.
Production: 4/5
Presentation (Painting): 4/5
Figure Selection : 4/5
Deal for the Doss : 2.5/5
Total Score (not an average): 4 stars
Giants of Legend (GoL) boasts 72 miniatures, 59 of which come in the sizes familiar to owners of previous expansions. Of the remaining 13, 12 are Huge, while one lone miniature, the Quasit, debuts as the first Tiny miniature. A close examination of the figures in question reveals a substantial step forward in the quality of the painting. This improvement is evident in many respects, from the use of washes on miniatures such as the Zombie resculpt, to the precision of the painted eyes, now featuring almond shaped whites and tiny spherical pupils, a Monk-like leap forward from the mishapen black dots haphazardly adorning the faces of earlier minis in the line. Details such as the individual suckers on Grick tentacles and the Ming the Merciless eyebrows on Mordenkainen demonstrate similar advances, as does the use of more colors per figure, allowing for more interesting blends and shading techniques. Certainly there is still room for improvement, but just as clearly, marked progress has been made. The quality of painting still varies somewhat among identical figures and dramatically among different minis in the set. While several uncommons boast particularly decent paint jobs and most rares are above average to good, some still profoundly disappoint, the Stone Golem falling squarely in the latter category.
Sculpts have improved in flair, detail, and fidelity to the canon as well. Comparing the excellent new Bugbear Footpad to the previous Bugbear provides an excellent example. The level of attention to the small print is surprisingly good and occasionally excellent, as in the case of the Rakshasa sporting hands with reversed thumbs, an often negelected detail in the description. There are still a handful of miniatures that are mediocre sculpts for reasons of aesthetics or design, the Minotaur Skeleton offending on the former count and Regdar the Adventurer on the latter. On the whole, however, GoL must be considered to offer the best sculpts the line has yet shown.
But the focus of the release, for better or for worse, must be the Huges. Since buyers are paying $10 more for a GoL booster than they did for Dragoneye or Archfiends and getting only 1 extra figure for the extra doss, the Huges are essentially $10 items. As usual, they are a mixed bunch. Some are solid sculpts, but not generally as desirable in typical Campaign play (The Warforged Titan and the Fiendish T-Rex). Others are relatively dull paintjobs (the Nightwalker). However, the remainder are sure to be highly sought after, both because of utility in most games, power in skirmish, and fine sculpt and paint jobs. The question is HOW willing a prospective buyer is to chase those figures, because WotC introduced more permutations than price and size alone- They also experimented with rarities.
Previous boosters followed the same trend in rarities per pack, containing 1 rare, 3 uncommons, and 4 commons each. GoL added 1 Huge per box, but in a marked departure, these Huges are not of the same rarity- The most desirable Huge minis are seeded 3 to a case. Consequently, this raises the spectre of "cherry-picking' on the single booster retail level. When buying a booster from the store, it is never clear whether a previous customer (or the proprietor!) weighed each box to select for the packs most likely to contain the 'chase' pieces. As a result, buyers potentially (and, from anecdotes on the WotC boards, actually) may purchase 9 or more packs and never get a rare Huge. Since each pack retails for $19.99, and since 9 out of every 12 packs contain an assortment of the same 6 Huges, buyers left with 5 Nightwalkers and no dragons or Glabrezu after buying 6 packs are left to wonder whether they really want to lay out another $20 for a 'chance' at getting a rare Huge. With previous expansions, even if a newly purchased booster contained a rare already in your collection, it was still relatively valuable as a commodity for trading to others to get the figures you were missing. Conversely, the excess stockpiles of 'Uncommon' Huges are harder to trade, being less useful in large numbers than smaller pieces and common enough (because of the distribution) that most people buying boosters from the line already have all the T-Rexes they are likely to want.
Buying cases provides some protection from this fate, but even after shelling out $150+ for a case, a collector will still only have, by design, 3 of the 6 rare huges. At some point, collectors are left asking themselves whether to continue to plunk down $20 for chances at the mini they want, or whether to bite the bullet and resort to paying $10-$30 on the secondary market for the precise huge they want.
So is the expansion worth the higher price? The figures are better sculpts with better paint jobs. Some of the units chosen for inclusion are either very useful in RPG play (Dire Wolves) or are clever homages to D&D history (King Snurre from Against the Giants, Lord Soth, and Mordenkainen). The Huges are sure to impress when revealed by the DM. But at $20 per booster, the $10 premium for each Huge adds up quickly, particularly when the buyer has little control over WHICH Huge that $10 will buy.
Production: 4/5
Presentation (Painting): 4/5
Figure Selection : 4/5
Deal for the Doss : 2.5/5
Total Score (not an average): 4 stars
Reflex
First Post
Actually, there are two new iconics from the PHB: Eberk and Aramil. I'd even venture that there is another- Mordenkainen may not be a front-of-the-book iconic, but his name adorns enough spells that I'd have to consider him more iconic than Lidda or Regdar ever can be.
Please note that King Snurre (the Fire Giant King from the legendary G1-G3 Against the Giants series of modules also makes an appearence, as does Lord Soth from the Dragonlance and Ravenloft campaign settings. All five of these minis are also particularly nice sculpts even though two of them are uncommons (Eberk is the best looking dwarf thus far by a wide margin).
Please note that King Snurre (the Fire Giant King from the legendary G1-G3 Against the Giants series of modules also makes an appearence, as does Lord Soth from the Dragonlance and Ravenloft campaign settings. All five of these minis are also particularly nice sculpts even though two of them are uncommons (Eberk is the best looking dwarf thus far by a wide margin).
Swiftbrook
First Post
I consider the following "Iconic" Characters:
Barbarian - Krusk - p.25
Bard - Gimble - p.27 and Devis p.105
Cleric - Jozan - p.31
Druid - Vadania - p.34
Fighter - Tordek - p.37 and Regdar - p.38
Monk - Ember - p.41
Paladin - Alhandra - p.43
Ranger - Soveliss - p.46
Rogue - Lidda - p.50
Sorcerer - Hennet - p.51
Wizard - Mialee - p.56
Illusionist - Nebin - p.57
Note, I consider Devis an "iconic" character because he appeard as the bard in the 3.0 PHB.
Naull p.110, Eberk p.165, and Kerwyn p.168 I didn't classify as "iconic" because they are not identified with a class. But to be fair, I should consider these "iconic" characters as well because they are named in the PHB.
I consider the Greyhawk characters "classic" or "legendary" as they appear in classic adventure. Also, I think they look great and wish they all weren't rares.
-Swiftbrook
Barbarian - Krusk - p.25
Bard - Gimble - p.27 and Devis p.105
Cleric - Jozan - p.31
Druid - Vadania - p.34
Fighter - Tordek - p.37 and Regdar - p.38
Monk - Ember - p.41
Paladin - Alhandra - p.43
Ranger - Soveliss - p.46
Rogue - Lidda - p.50
Sorcerer - Hennet - p.51
Wizard - Mialee - p.56
Illusionist - Nebin - p.57
Note, I consider Devis an "iconic" character because he appeard as the bard in the 3.0 PHB.
Naull p.110, Eberk p.165, and Kerwyn p.168 I didn't classify as "iconic" because they are not identified with a class. But to be fair, I should consider these "iconic" characters as well because they are named in the PHB.
I consider the Greyhawk characters "classic" or "legendary" as they appear in classic adventure. Also, I think they look great and wish they all weren't rares.
-Swiftbrook
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