Dungeon Command: Heroes, Drow, and Goblins

Pour · Dec 26, 2011

The new miniature expansion packs are announced. Not sure if this was already covered, but Amazon is listing three come summertime.

Dungeon Command: Heroes and Dungeon Command: Drow are released on July 17th, 2012, and the following month we get Dungeon Command: Goblins. No images just yet, but there are $36.00 price tags.

Anyone have any ideas what these might include? I'm picturing, for 36 bucks, a map-box, or some poster maps and scenarios, as well as the minis themselves.

On a side note, June will see Urban Underdark tiles in addition to the already known about Vaults of the Underdark dungeon tiles. I think it's safe to assume the 'new' setting for the year is Menzo, which is cool for what it is, but a big let down for those of us hoping for another uniquely 4e setting.

Source: Amazon.com: wizards of the coast: Books

Lalato · Dec 26, 2011

From the playtest documents we learned that the game

will be diceless, will use cards for action resolution
will use tiles, not maps
each set will be themed (as noted above, the first few ill be Heroes, Drow and Goblins
minis are apparently non-random
Retail looks to be about $40

What we don't know for sure...

Will the cards have any randomization?
How often will new sets come out?
Will this product use new sculpts or old DDM sculpts?
Will the minis be pre-painted?

One other thing we don't know... how much money I'll sink into this before I get heartbroken when it is discontinued.

Frostmarrow · Jan 3, 2012

Cool. I wonder if they have mastered 3D-printing yet? Seems so old fashioned to blow superheated plastic into moulds these days.

Saracenus · Jan 3, 2012

The problem with new fangelled-tech like 3-D printing is the capital expense of investing in the equipment, training your folks to use it, getting processes in place to reduce the time and cost to produce your product.

Even worse, 3-D printing does not paint the minis and frankly you can mass produce injection molded minis by the boat load while a single mini is being "printed" on that new 3-D printer.

Just because the tech is new does not mean that it is cost effective or desirable.

Where 3-D printing is awesome (but probably cost prohibitive) is custom minis that you could print on demand. Now that would be a great service if you could get the price point to a reasonable level.

You could choose a dwarf for example, trade out an axe for a hammer, maybe swap different head styles and boom instant custom mini. That would be awesome.

My two coppers,

Ryujin · Jan 3, 2012

Well there's no need to produce a single mini in a single print run. In fact that would be incredibly cost and time inefficient. You could do 50 of the things, at the same time, and not be bound to any single template. Need 25 orcs, 10 elves, 10 knights, and 5 individual character figures this run? Done.

And while the university I work for doesn't have the technology, my understanding is that colour 3d printing is available. Even so it wouldn't be impossible to produce the 3D printed product and then ship it off to Taiwan for painting, if it proved to be more cost effective.

I believe that it would certainly be cost prohibitive at this point though.

Then again, where this topic is concerned, did not Wizards state that any further minis would strictly be for board games and be produced in single colour?

Frostmarrow · Jan 3, 2012

Thanks for the insights [MENTION=47839]Saracenus[/MENTION] and [MENTION=27897]Ryujin[/MENTION]. I think it's safe to say that we will get there sooner or later. We'll probably be printing the at home before too long.

Dire Bare · Jan 4, 2012

Ryujin said:
Then again, where this topic is concerned, did not Wizards state that any further minis would strictly be for board games and be produced in single colour?

No.

Stormonu · Jan 4, 2012

My gut guess is that each of these sets will be 5-6 figures, with a mini booklet (maybe 4 pages) and a tile or two. I'm also suspecting these will be re-used sculpts with no new figures.

I'd certainly enjoy being wrong with it having much more figures (8 feels worth a $36 tag, 12 would be Harbinger-awesome).

mac1504 · Jan 4, 2012

Stormonu said:
My gut guess is that each of these sets will be 5-6 figures, with a mini booklet (maybe 4 pages) and a tile or two. I'm also suspecting these will be re-used sculpts with no new figures.

I'd certainly enjoy being wrong with it having much more figures (8 feels worth a $36 tag, 12 would be Harbinger-awesome).

I can't see WOTC pulling something so egregious as to not put any new sculpts in the box. I definitely agree they will reuse a lot of older sculpts, but even the board games received a few new sculpts as well did the beholder and dragon sets. Maybe a 75/25 ratio?

Pour · Jan 4, 2012

Now has there been any word on any correlation between the minis and the monster manuals/vaults, or even with iconic racial paragons? Given the competitive nature of the game to come, there could be something like 4 infantry, 1 commander, 2 artillery, a leader, and some sort of iconic or legend. There should be some sort of logic to the 8-12 minis, right, as part of a predefined set?