Monster Manual: Legendary Evils Complete Set!!

[avin]

What I really want to know is which Wotc employee has a girlfriend/wife/daughter who plays a female dragonborn rogue using yellow leather?

Cleric, Paladin, Fighter and many others are the really useful choices to be in PHH for Dragonborns. Rogue makes no sense.

 

[Klaus]

Joe, if you want firm numbers, 6 dragonborn miniatures have been killed because of concept art, sketch, and sculpting issues. Most of these figures were killed before I arrived at the company so I don't have the full story, but I do know around half of those figures were killed because they were based off concept art that didn't work out.

For Legendary Evils, the production time for miniatures was around 18 months. (It's much sorter now.) It's probably 16-15 months after the sketch phase was complete. Art is one of the first things done for miniatures, and one of the last things done for an RPG product.

Can I help?



I actually got info that the CAD sculpting make the sketches obsolete. If that's not the case, I'd love to contribute.

 

[avin]

I guess the sketches are still necessary, CAD sculpting is based on concept art, but it's better Logan or Peter to confirm that...

 

[JohnnyQuest]

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?

Ah, I get it now. You were asking me a question that was tangential to the point I was making (i.e. why there are repaints) and the answer to which I couldn't possibly know

 

[Olaf the Stout]

There are two other things you can be sure of:

1. All of the minis will be monsters.
2. All of the minis will be RPG-oriented (not in the set due to the demands of a skirmish game).
3. [Three things! The three things you can be sure of . . . I'll come in again.] The number of paint steps (and hence, presumably, the quality of the paint jobs) is higher.

The first two alone are worth the price of admission, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather pay for 40 minis I'm really likely to want instead of 48 minis I might want.

While I still don't like the fact that I am getting less minis for my money, I do like the way sets are done now a whole lot more. It really used to suck when half the rares you got in a case were humans, elves, halflings, etc. When that spot could have just as easily been a large dragon, beholder, or some other awesome monster you couldn't help but feel a little bit disappointed. Now you know it will be nothing but monsters (or close to it - I don't want to buy into the monster/PC argument), which is definitely great.

The paint steps, I don't know about. I do know that this set looks better than the last one and definitely better than Demonweb. However that may be because the sculpts are better as the designers get used to creating the minis via CAD (I hope that was the reason for the downturn in mini quality because a couple of the sets after Unhallowed were pretty woeful).

I am also not sure if the minis in the spoilers are production minis or not (the pics are from an eBay auction so who knows if they are production minis or not). I'll reserve my final judgement until the minis are in hand. Things definitely look like they are on the way back up now though.

Olaf the Stout

 

[pawsplay]

Some nice stuff. Obviously, as a 3.5 dude, I can think of about squat to do with a bunch of Archons ("dress up day for elementals," is what I say), but I'm super happy about a beholder with ten stalks. I know they did that just for me. Nice green dragon... I'm glad they toned down the tree snake pointy nose thing.

As far as the PCs go, I'm not excited, but it does look like a better lot. I have no idea what I would do with a male halfling barbarian or the hillbilly ranger, but it's nice to see a little more variety. The human female warlord is welcome, but I can't shake the impression I've seen her before. Repaint? Reused pose? Does anyone know?

 

[Peter Lee]

She was originally Alusair Obarskyr released in Aberrations.

 

[humble minion]

Nice green dragon... I'm glad they toned down the tree snake pointy nose thing.

I think the pointy nose thing is still there in all its pointy glory, but the angle of the photo manages to hide it somewhat.

Still the rest of it looks so damn nice than I can live with the pointynosiness!

 

[doctorhook]

I don't understand the hate-on for that pointy nose on the Green Dragon. People don't complain about the Blue Dragon's huge nose horn (which looks a bit weird if you're not used to it), so why are they all up on Green Dragons?

 

[CharlesRyan]

I take particular offense to this statement. Skirmish was about figure stats that were playable, not the actual mini itself. What, we skirmishers played some sort of different D&D with alternate races just to screw you over? Posts like this are why there was so much hatred towards misguided rpg-only types.

Sorry to have caused offense.

I think any time a product line has to serve multiple masters, it ends up losing some focus and not serving any of them to perfection.

The DDM line now serves only one master. Hence, I believe it will now do a better job at serving that particular master, which was my point. Obviously, it will also do a worse job at serving the skirmish game master, and if you're into the skirmish game I can understand your frustration.

But for RPG players, this increased value offsets the increased price, at least in part.