First of all, let me just say this about that: B2 KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS? Cool. Very, very cool. While those sheets are impossible to read, I also don't see a lot of clutter on them so it could be that the base game is yes indeed a very streamlined and easy-to-snap-onto form factor. Looking forward to more info.
Now, regarding minis...
I don't not want minis. I have two dozen DWARVEN FORGE sets, some 500 plastic minis and 300 metal (about 1/5th of which are painted).
I like me some miniatures and terrain as an AD&D player, however...
Insofar as DWARVEN FORGE is very subtly carved into grids, I do not use a gridded combat system. Most miniatures are "heroic" 28mm scale, which is to say they are 32-35mm. Even WIZARDS OF THE COAST's miniatures feature a 1" round base. This means that two man-sized figures can just stand in a corridor of DWARVEN FORGE, which I want to represent the average 10' (2") dungeon hall. Scale combat rules for AD&D dictate that three man-sized figures can fight abreast in a hall, four smaller humanoids or demi-humans can (gnome/halfling/kobold/goblin etc.) and so on. Current miniatures don't afford me the room to do that. Thus, miniatures (and terrain) are for general placement only when it comes to the figures themselves. Spell areas of effect I hew more closely to the rules on, noting that just because a group of figures may be crammed in at odd angles on the terrain, that does not mean that they are not as they claimed they were - woebetide the low-level, closely grouped party that encounters an enemy magic-user with a sleep spell (or indeed is incautious with their own)!
What irks me is not the miniatures and frankly I boggle at my fellow AD&D fans who are dismissive of them; no, what gets under my skin is the insistence on them, and the ridiculous (and I mean that literally: it is, should be and has been rightly the target of ridicule) "gridding" rules that accompany later miniature play!
Were we playing at Roundheads and Cavaliers, or the desperate struggle of a fire-team in the jungles of Southeast Asia, or an arbitrary but agreed-upon set of rules for fantastical future conflict mapped on a sand table or foam terrain out-of-doors, yes, then precise measurements should be the rule of the day! But insofar as Redoleent the Fighter's plastic avatar can't be wedged in between Gutboy Barrelhouse, the expertly painted REAPER MINIATURES dwarf and the chess-piece representing the cleric, I think some room for abstraction is in order, and not forcing a grid-only, miniatures-not-optional rule gives we DMs (and players!) the breathing room we need, yes?
