Pathfinder 1E Plastickrack - Pathfinder Miniatures Edition

Aluvial · Jan 26, 2012

Erik Mona said:
I could be really out to lunch here, but with a couple of exceptions (already noted in this thread), I think the majority of the Heroes & Monsters minis _are_ on the same scale as DDMs.

This is more an issue of fine tuning and calibration than it is a major catastrophic flaw in the line, or something. The two lines are the same scale. Each line has a mini here and there that is a little out of scale relative to the others (and we're trying to improve that with each release), but I don't want people to get the impression that the line has major scaling issues, because that impression would be false.

--Erik

I finally decided to open my case and ended up really liking the miniatures. Erik, your assessment is fair about the size. I believe the miniatures were scaled to match. The troll is a bit small for a large but I don't see that as an issue considering that I have trolls of all sizes from other sources. The dire rat might have been called a wererat hybrid... The dragon is off scale. It is still an amazing sculpt, but it definitely doesn't scale correctly with the other huge dragons. That said, idon't really care about that much. At first, I was disappointed, because I really wanted another cool black dragon. The sculpt makes up for it and this mini will be featured in my next low level game and it will serve its purpose, be scary, eat gnomes.

I was impressed with both the sculpts and the paint, and the material. The sculpts are in many cases crisper due to the consistancy of the plastic. They look pretty durable to me; no, you can't jump on them, but you really couln't step on other minis either and expect them to make it through the ordeal. I could see you dropping the large spider ( which is awesome) and snapping a leg.

Overall, this is a good set of figures. I will still go back and recount my earlier assessment. They are expensive. I opened a $65 brick and got out 20 minis. This is a price I saw for them online somewhere. I bought my case for $200 plus shipping and once priced out, my set has miniatures around $2.75 a figure. While this is a nice beginners set, really nice in fact. It would be hard to imagine people spending for more than one case. I would invest in these, but only if the price per mini came down. I'm extremely impressed that the distribution allowed me to get a whole set in my case. That never happened to me with DnD minis. This alone adds value to the case buy. I think that my reasonable price break for a pre-painted plastic miniature is around $2.00. I got 80 something miniatures, I would gladly pay $160 a case for these. That's a price point I hope you find. I think that otherwise you are pricing out a lot of potential buyers. It is lemonade stand. You sold out of your product. If you made more would they cost less and would you still sell out?

Great set. I really only decided to open mine based on the fact that Erik came and discussed the miniatures here. I would have been really impressed if some one from Wiz Kids had dropped in as well. Thanks Erik. The miniatures were a birthday gift to myself and you saved me from retuning them due to their cost. I hope you can help me decide to purchase the next run by fixing something in the cost. Perhaps soften them a itsy-bit and get them loose in the box. There eas a lot of packaging for one mini.

Aluvial

Twowolves · Jan 26, 2012

Olaf the Stout said:
Maybe, maybe not. They may have not produced many minis for their first run. That could be why they sold out.

People keep saying this every time Paizo has a smash hit of a product.

Olaf the Stout said:
Or it may have been a case of many DDM collectors giving them a go to see what they were like (especially since they don't have DDM to spend their money on any more). After buying the first set and finding that they don't match well with DDM's they may decide not to buy any future sets.

Which could be another way of saying "They know their target audience with an uncanny degree of accuracy".

Olaf the Stout said:
Having said that, in terms of scale, some of these people may buy a few boxes or bricks of minis. From my experience DDM collectors tend to go in pretty large to these sorts of things, buying enough to either get 1 of every mini in the set or, in some cases, multiples of every mini in the set.

Here's where I counter that Wizkids did such a good job of colation that buyers of the Pathfinder Battles set don't have to buy multiple cases to get a complete set. No guarantees, but effectively every factory sealed case will contain at least one of every mini, and a preordered case gets you the huge dragon incentive mini. Not every potential customer cares about that sort of thing, but for those that do, the colation is pretty sweet. I only bought half a case and a few individual boosters at my FLGSs and I got 34/40, and 3 of the ones I'm missing are eitehr common or uncommon. Plus they intentionally made the Common minis the sort you would actually want multiples of, like zombies, skeletons, goblins and orcs, cutting down on the infamous "ANOTHER dwarf?" problem of DDM.

So I guess what I am saying is that getting the Pathfinder minis on the same scale as DDMs will only increase sales further, which can't be a bad thing from a Paizo/WizKids perspective.

Olaf the Stout

A little late to the reply here, as Erik Mona has already addressed this, but they did not set out to make them a different scale, and I'm not sure what part of any of my posts implied that they had. In fact, I specifically pointed out that the scale discrepencies (of which there are only 2-3 out of 40) were being addressed, which wouldn't be needed if the differences were intentional. Size creep has been happening for decades, as a casual glance at any Ral Partha mini vs Reaper mini in my collection will tell you. "25mm" morphed into "28mm" and is hovering around "32mm" now. IMO, the "humanoid" minis in this set are smaller than the "heroic scale" minis that are common in Reaper's line now, so they do seem a little anorexic to me, but that's ok. I mostly paint the PCs/major NPCs that are the "heroic scale" and use the prepaints for monsters and mooks, and the slight difference just emphasizes the spotlight on the PCs, IMO. But to me, the paintjobs on these are head and shoulders above what DDM ever put out, and for a debut set, things only look better down the line.

Olaf the Stout · Jan 27, 2012

Twowolves said:
People keep saying this every time Paizo has a smash hit of a product.

Which could be another way of saying "They know their target audience with an uncanny degree of accuracy".

Nice of you to selectively quote me. :hmm:

I also said in the very next line:

Olaf the Stout said:
Alternatively, they may have produced a huge amount of minis and been more successful beyond their wildest expectations. Without us knowing the numbers we're just wildly speculating, not that wild speculation isn't fun!

I'm not out to "bash" Paizo. I own a heck of a lot of their products and have yet to have anything other than a positive experience with them.

Twowolves said:
A little late to the reply here, as Erik Mona has already addressed this, but they did not set out to make them a different scale, and I'm not sure what part of any of my posts implied that they had. In fact, I specifically pointed out that the scale discrepencies (of which there are only 2-3 out of 40) were being addressed, which wouldn't be needed if the differences were intentional. [SNIP]

Twowolves said:
The people complaining about the sizes are comparing to DDM, which isn't really fair. These minis are designed around Paizo's illustrations and sizes, so as long as the sets are internally consistant, they should be ok. And that's the problem with the dire rat and troll. But Paizo has admitted the error for these and will correct them in future sets.

Bolding above mine. This is where I got the impression that the size differences were done on purpose. Your statement gave the impression that the dire rat and troll were made too small/too big on purpose. Erik Mona's comments later in the thread seem to indicate that this wasn't the case.

Olaf the Stout

TheAuldGrump · Jan 27, 2012

In honesty, I think WizKids was being cautious for their first run, better to sell out of a small run than try to swallow the costs of an overly ambitious run.

Is this going to be a single run, or will they go back and make a second batch?

The Auld Grump

Dice4Hire · Jan 27, 2012

Twowolves said:
People keep saying this every time Paizo has a smash hit of a product.

Funny also how some people say every product launched by Paizo is a smash hit.

Rogue Agent · Jan 27, 2012

Aluvial said:
The dragon is off scale. It is still an amazing sculpt, but it definitely doesn't scale correctly with the other huge dragons. That said, idon't really care about that much.

Which dragons are you comparing it to? I only own one of WotC's Huge Dragons (the Elder Iron Dragon), but the black dragon from Paizo appears comparable to it in every way.

Erik Mona · Jan 27, 2012

TheAuldGrump said:
In honesty, I think WizKids was being cautious for their first run, better to sell out of a small run than try to swallow the costs of an overly ambitious run.

Is this going to be a single run, or will they go back and make a second batch?

The Auld Grump

There are no plans at present to reprint the set. Once again, though, I will remind people that this is a MANUFACTURER sell-out. There are still plenty of boosters out in the hobby stores, at hobby distributors, at for sale on paizo.com.

--Erik

Alaxk Knight of Galt · Jan 27, 2012

Well, I did something I've never done before: I purchased random pre-painted miniatures.

I dipped my toe into it when I purchased the Huge Black Dragon (the promo and not random) at my FLGS. I snagged a couple of boosters just to see. Then purchased a few more just to see again. Impressed, I ordered a brick which arrived yesterday.

Thoughts

Seelah, Human Paladin is great
I loved the cartoony style of the models
The Wolf and Werewolf models were really great. I liked that the fur matched on the models. Somehow, I ended up with 3 werewolves and only 1 wolf.
Surprisingly, I really love the Dire Rat Model
The plastic feels great, much better then the DDM models I've used
The Black Dragon is a beautiful model. If it was 10% bigger, it'd be perfect
Of the models, I really didn't care for the Orc Brute or the Manticore.
The troll was too small for my taste.
One brick didn't give me enough, but there wasn't a single duplicate in it

Twowolves · Jan 27, 2012

Dice4Hire said:
Funny also how some people say every product launched by Paizo is a smash hit.

Until they start putting out some real stinkers, it's not an unreasonable assumption either.

Twowolves · Jan 27, 2012

Olaf the Stout said:
Nice of you to selectively quote me.

I am not trying to put words into anyone's mouth, I just don't want to quote huge blocks of texts. That line wasn't specifically aimed at you, just at that line of arguement that's so prevailant. Sorry if it seemed I was getting personal or attacking anyone.

This is where I got the impression that the size differences were done on purpose. Your statement gave the impression that the dire rat and troll were made too small/too big on purpose. Erik Mona's comments later in the thread seem to indicate that this wasn't the case.

Olaf the Stout

I don't see how the bolded text gives that impression, but ok. I specifically said "that's the problem with the dire rat and troll; they are not internally consistant with the rest of the set in terms of size and scale. You admitted to not even owning any of these, so unless you borrowed or examined someone else's and put them side by side to some comparable DDMs (which have been pointed out to vary widely in their own scale/internal consistancy) I don't see how you can claim that no one is going to buy these because they won't mesh with their pre-existing DDMs.

At any rate, my only purpose in posting was to let folks know that there isn't any real problem with this line, especially since it's the debut release and what few minor issues there might be are already being addressed and the line going forward looks to have a promising future.

Like this http://paizo.com/products/btpy8qsa/discuss?Pathfinder-Battles-Champions-of-Evil-Encounter-Pack#tabs