Pathfinder 1E Paizo Announces More Details about Minis Line

[Dausuul]

I don't really care for paying rent or taxes for that matter, but as long as I want to keep a roof over my head that ain't jail, I'll have to cough up the dough ;-)

I don't really care for paying this much money for plastic minis, but as long as I want to... have more plastic minis, I'll have to cough up the dough.

Of course, the consequences of not having more plastic minis are slightly less dire than the consequences of not having a roof over my head. So maybe I won't be coughing up that dough, after all.

 

[AeroDm]

This is a really interesting announcement and reaction from Paizo and the community. I think it would be interesting to see how the exact same announcement from WotC would be received. Not as nicely, I imagine.

Whenever the WotC vs. Paizo debate comes up people seem to take for granted that WotC tarnished its goodwill while Paizo continues to dedicate resources to develop and maintain theirs. Yet, in the next breath, they wonder why reactions to the two companies differ. As someone not in either camp, that has always confused me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Personally, I think Paizo (and WotC before them) do the randomized miniatures packaging SPECIFICALLY FOR the re-seller market. I suspect THAT'S where they get most of their sales from... the miniature re-sellers... and NOT the individual player base.

If you sell minis individually... you have to do all the crap that goes along with that as others have said... shipping, stocking etc. Plus (as others said) those that don't sell can get sent back to the distributors.

But if you bundle them up in random boxes... most of these stores and re-sellers will have no choice but to OPEN these boxes in order to find the good ones, which they will then re-sell at a much higher price-point to the customer on certain ones, hoping to get their money back from the commons that they won't be able to.

Paizo/WizKids and WotC don't care about any of that... all they care about is getting the $2.00 from the stores for the boxes of minis... who then turns around and either sells the box for $4.00 direct to the customer, or more often than not, opens the box up and sells the individual minis for like .75 for commons up to $20 for the really cool rare ones. And what's important is that once those boxes get open by the re-sellers, they never have to worry about the minis that don't sell getting returned to the distributor. So it's a win/win for the company that makes them.

So yeah... all us customers would love to buy the individual minis from the company itself that is making them... but that's NOT what the company wants to deal with. They want to force the re-sellers to buy the minis by the crateful for a set price... then make THEM go through the effort and cost of opening everything up, tagging them, storing them, and then shipping them one-at-a-time to all of us customers. It makes absolute perfect sense. And it means that we should be going through the re-sellers in the first place.

 

[S'mon]

But like S'mon, $4 is about the top of my price range as far as medium-sized prepainted minis go.

I'm kicking myself because I just yesterday paid $4 on Troll & Toad to replace a missing Howling Hag I need for my new Wilderlands campaign - and today I'm going through my "medium, cold-using, Forgotten Realms box" minis, and there it is!! I guess the blue colour confused me.,,

 

[S'mon]

opens the box up and sells the individual minis for like .75 for commons...

.75 for commons? I'm there!

 

[dogoftheunderworld]

My wife is Not going to like this news...

At the case level: ~$3 per mini+ plus most likely a complete set = I'll bite.

I also like the idea of Visible Encounter packs in-between random Full sets.

I've stayed with singles from the secondary market for the last several WotC sets, but I think I will jump in one case deep on this first Paizo/Wizkids set. After this, I'll probably see how the secondary market prices shake out.

Sculps so far are not bad. I'm sure their will be some Pathfinder stylings that differ from D&D standard (the troll for example), but it's not like WotC didn't flip-flop around from set to set anyway. I hope more & more people hate the Black Dragon.... that should help my odds of getting one

All-in-all, I hope this venture works out (for at least 20 sets or so )

good luck & good gaming!

 

[darjr]

Looks like Paizo/WizKids is encouraging retailers to break open the random sets. My FLGS just said that is what he's going to do.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

For what it is worth, I am fairly certain that WotC had, at various times, posted much the same reasons that Paizo/WizKids has in regards to the random packaging.

One difference is that Paizo is encouraging retailers to a case and sell the singles. WotC, as far as I can remember, neither encouraged nor discouraged such an action; though it has always been common for Magic, so they may not have felt a need.

One other thing - the Small miniatures have been enlarged for the pictures. It is likely that the Dire Rat, in particular, will look better in person.

But for some reason the Gnome reminds me of Rumpelstiltskin from Shreck 4....

The Black dragon still looks silly, though not as silly as:

Grenadier's Huge Black Dragon is the only black dragon that I have seen with puppy eyes....
If Miriton ever gets around to it then it shall be mine!

The Auld Grump

 

[Falstaff]

I've never purchased one D&D miniatures pack because they were random. I won't be buying any of these either.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Except its not a bad call at all. Its the only way thats demonstrated any measure of variety and decent prices. Otherwise all you get is the same old crap over, and over, and over, because orc with axe, goblin with short sword and kobold with dagger are the only things that sell enough individual units to justify the mold cost. Once you go random, everything now sells the same number of units, so you can actually have a line with room to grow and depth.

You miss my point.

If randomization stops people from buying your product, it's something you don't want. Paizo makes it pretty clear that they felt they had no viable alternatives if they were going to get a decent line. If it stops enough people from buying the product that the product can't bring in a profit, then it stands to reason that minis producers are in a vicious little catch-22: The only thing they can do to get their line out there is ALSO the thing that will make the line a failure.

That presupposes that randomization is a problem, which, for the market in general, it might not be. Though certainly plenty of people are posting in this thread and elsewhere about why it's a problem for them, and they probably aren't unique anomalies.

But the point of my post wasn't "BOOO RANDOMIZATION!", the point was "If they HAVE to randomize it, and randomization leads to its failure, how can ANYONE hope to hit the RPG minis market?"