Joe, I'm not sure what you're asking. Can you rephrase?
At what point in the development of the D&D 4e core rules did they know what Dragonborn were going to be a core race? If we assume that 4e was in the works for at least two years, I find it hard to believe that they were 'snuck' into the book at the last minute. This is especially true when the art preview book that came out many months before the actually rules had them in it. If the lead time is a year, I'm thinking, that there has to be some point where the D&D game, well out after a year now, has an unnatural shortage of a core race.
Again, I'm not sure I understand your meaning entirely, but it makes sense to me to offer up an older sculpt that is harder to get, rather than something produced more recently.
That with the dearth of Dragonborn miniatures, instead of some of these odd choices, if they are correct, like combat medic I believe one of them is (human?) that more effort should have been put into making the dragonborn random miniatures into regular non-collectible miniatures.
Herschel said:
The Dragonborn Warlord is a repaint of a very nice Giants of Legend miniature.
Which one? I'm looking over the Giants of Legend and don't see it. Any help on that one? War of the Dragon Queen has a Dragonborn. Look pretty similiar. If so I'll give a thumbs up on that selection as it's the only 1 of 18 figures that's a dragonborn. I'll disagree with the other figures being anyother other than a proxy.
WotC_Logan said:
Making a dragonborn mini also requires concept art we're happy with (which we didn't get until late in the process). We also need to get sculpts that look good. If we don't have both of those, it delays the release of dragonborn minis.
Logan, thanks for responding. The only 'thing' I'd hold against this is that there have been dozens of wretched figures that have made their way out where the sculpts could not have looked good. The dwarf guard of mithral hall is a fairly recent example of that. Not only is it not a good sculpt, it's completely out of scale with most other dwarves. The grillion that's squatting down is an example of a sculpt people were satisfied with from the Demonweb set? I'm just not seeing this quality control on even recent releases.
If we're talking about a race, like dwarves, elves, even halflings, that have a lot of coverage that you'd want to shut down an inferior model but with one where you don't have anything resembling solid coverage? Let those puppies through.
To say that there is not solid concept art, when WoTC was charging people for preview books that seemed that it could easily do dual roles as concept art? Or the art in the Player's Handbook, Forgotten Realms core book, etc.. .etc... etc... One quick example, on page 54 of the adventurer's vault, which came out in Sept 2008 (and who knows when the art was first commissioned), there is a great picture of a female dragonborn spellcaster. Another example, Uune 2008, Player's Handbook, page 294. Great picture of a dragonborn charging. Unless the miniature department is completely isoldated from the RPG department, which I suppose is possible, that makes very little sense that there would be no art worthy of putting into sculpt.
Or that the sculpts were bad? Maybe it is the better move to make no dragonborn as opposed to bad dragonborn but based on some of the figs still coming out in this last set, my opinion as a buyer who has two seperate players at the moment with Dragonborn, neither of them a female rogue, I'd say no.
), so I apologize for coming into the conversation late.
