Seen the Dreamblade minis? Like/don't?

[Abstraction]

I was checking stuff out at Wizards yesterday and ran into the Dreamblade minis. I hadn't heard of them before so I checked them out. I thought they were freaking awesome! I especially liked the one called, I think, Doomball. It is very reminiscent of the orbs from the Phantasm movies. I don't have any and probably wouldn't buy any for at least month. What are your impressions? Does anyone actually play? How long have these been out, anyway?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I own some Dreamblade and its first expansion. I don't play the game- I just preferred the minis to the Horrorclix ones. They've been out for over a year, but I don't think they're doing too well.

I use them for minis for RPGs. Unfortunately, the bases are a bit oversized, but I usually ignore that. If you're into modification, you can remedy that fairly easily, I'd imagine.

 

[Glyfair]

They've been out for over a year, but I don't think they're doing too well.

Indeed, the gameline was canceled.

I picked up a few packs a few months ago when my FLGS had a them on sale for 2 boosters for $5. A few would be good to use in my D&D games.

IMO, there are two major flaws with the game for my purposes.

1) Scale is not D&D scale. It makes the figures usable mostly as large figures, if you use them at all. In a related point, a lot of the figures have a technological/modern feel that hurts their use in D&D.

2) The figures are very difficult to remove from their base. Unless you are willing to put in a major effort, it won't happen.

 

[frankthedm]

[IMaGel]http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/747/safead6.gif[/IMaGel]
Dreamblade figs can be a real pain to cut of their bases. What I find is the safest way to cut them is carefully hold the base against a wall while standing up. Take the x-acto blade and cut AWAY from you, towards he wall, keeping the blade as flush with the base as possible while using every bit of force needed. Determined rocking helps make the blade cut. Because of the force required to make progress, You will nick the wall with the blade, but this is better than having the blade cut deep into your finger. You'll get results like this..





...rather than results like this!

I also picked up a few cheap commons and re-based them a while back.

As has already been said, some were a bit of a pain to cut from their original bases (yes I sliced my thumb ) ...but all in all I think they are perfectly usable.

Here's a quick pic of some of them re-based (and I've put a D&D figure in amongst them for scale purposes).

Hope that helps.

 

[Abstraction]

Canceled? What a bummer! I wonder if these can be removed like I did with my MageKnight. You put them in the freezer overnight and the glue just snaps right off.

 

[frankthedm]

Canceled? What a bummer! I wonder if these can be removed like I did with my MageKnight. You put them in the freezer overnight and the glue just snaps right off.

Sadly no. A dreamblade figure is a solid piece, base included, glued into a larger base. Gotta cut through right where the feet meets the base. The clear figures are notably harder than the normal black rubber figs.

 

[jdrakeh]

Canceled? What a bummer! I wonder if these can be removed like I did with my MageKnight. You put them in the freezer overnight and the glue just snaps right off.

If not, wrapping them with a strip of 1" wide terrycloth (i.e., cloth towel), clamping them in a vice with the base sticking out, and using a jeweller's saw to cut through the bonded plastic works just fine. It's a bit time consuming, yes, but it has three advantages over other methods:

1. 100% guaranteed not to result in sliced digits.
2. 100% guaranteed not to result in damage to the mini.
3. 100% guaranteed not to result in damage to the wall of your home.

Of course, I no longer 'do' minis because of this level of obsession with perfection. It got to where painting and basing a squad of 10 troops would take me about three weeks. While the detail was excellent and actually generated some minor income (people paid me to paint their own minis), it caused some problems.

Between the painting and the resin casting (oh, yeah, I learned how to mold and cast my own minis using an existing mini as a model), the hobby was taking up far, far, too much of my life.

Today I use counters

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Its stories like that that make me glad I never fully succumbed to the mini painting disorder...

Besides, I'd have a real problem painting my 1000 tons of minis at this point...

 

[jdrakeh]

Its stories like that that make me glad I never fully succumbed to the mini painting disorder...

Well, to be honest, part of me regrets never having put together a resume as a sculptor for Target games (the company whose sculpts I learned to duplicate in near perfect imitation). I suspect that I could have turned my obsession into a career. That said, another part of me realizes that being required to sculpt, cast, and paint minis would take pretty much all of the enjoyment out of it for me.

 

[blargney the second]

I picked up a pile of them when an LGS deep-discounted them. It's a seriously fun game just by itself - we usually skip the warband building by just drawing random figures from a big box.

I haven't yet gotten around to using them for RPG purposes for two reasons: 1) they're a very awkward size for D&D's one inch scale, and 2) I have way too many actual D&D minis that need to see use first...