The necessity of figurative figurines

[Cion]

We use a lot of minis.
All PCs are represented by a painted mini. Of course this representation is often wrong, but we don´t care.


Our enemies are usually represented by Heroquest-Minis, but in one group our DM uses well painted minis for the important enemies. It´s great! Our campaign is focussed on Drow and Zhentarim, which means he doesn´t have to paint new minis for every adventure.

Hopefully our next campaign will be set in the Iron Kingdoms. With their Warmachine-Game coming up I´m really looking forward to using even more minis.

 

[Silver Moon]

I have hundreds of minis, some painted some not

Same here, we've always used them. We began when I was on a tight college budget, and most of our initial collection of thirty came from a "loose miniatures" box where the local gaming store dumped the contents of all the broken blister packs. For the next decade I bought a few more as I could - then attended a GenCon with its massive dealer room, and I bought several hundred at bargain prices. (It was right when many companies were changing to lead-free, and they marked down the older lead-based products). Since then I've bought a few hundred more, ususally online. To date only about half are painted.

 

[kengar]

For many people, painting the minis and/or making scenery & terrain is a hobby in and of itself. Me? I like to paint & I have a whole table in the basement just for painting, but I'm a gamer first & foremost. Still, I'm that guy who -at the start of a new campaign- is saying to the other players "Ooo! Reaper has a great mini for that kind of character! They're only about $3. I'll even paint it for you!" Or worse still, "Hey! I have the perfect fig for that character/creature/NPC! Hang on, lemme go look for it!"

It's a sickness I suppose.

 

[Maxboy]

Yes Kengar it is a sickness Called "Figmentia" , I suffer from it all the time.
That inexplicable urge to own every mini that Reaper bring out





Cheers

 

[Zappo]

We use whiteboards (with squares on them) and erasable markers. Works wonderfully. Though we started using them with 3E, I really wish I had used them earlier. Unlike minis, they are cheap, easy to carry anywhere, and don't fall over if someone accidentally rocks the table. They are as representative as plain counters, but unlike counters, you don't lose them everywhere. And as the battle scene changes (due to moving or powerful area effect spells) you can easily erase and redraw.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

I bought Firey Dragon's third counter set (for Modern) and I haven't looked back. When it becomes my turn to DM fantasy I'll get the fantasy series.

But before that I did just fine with dice, paperclips, and other such things.

 

[Surfal]

The importance of minis

We have always used miniatures to represent the PCs and their allies. With the advent of 3E, we evolved our battleboard from a whiteboard to a series of wooden room 'templates', each with 1" grids, that get laid out to map and battle. At this point we usually used small chess pieces or occasionally counters (like those in Creature Collection) to represent the baddies.

Big bad nasty guys would sometimes get a figure. My players usually respected any bad guy that had a figure.

Then I pulled a nasty trick. They were set up for a major encounter that included two tough opponents and a whole bunch of fodder. I put out miniatures for all of them. The result? My players panicked. Some even started to flee. They did pull it out in the end, but the psychological impact of having figures on the board was tremendous.

So, for all future games, we'll be using figures exclusively. The initial shock will be gone, but its still more intimidating to be assaulted by 25 painted orcs than 25 small black pawns

 

[Rpjunkie]

In my games we use the Pozo's counters, but we also use Dominos! Yes you heard me dominos. They are exactly 1 inch wide by 2 inches long. They are great for walls of a room or even horses or anything else that has a 5 x 10 face. You should try it out sometimes. Amazing what works when you need something

RPJ

 

[Hawkshere]

Yep, dominos are king. We use a battlemat, but I've gotten sick of erasing and smearing crap years ago. With dominos, its easy as pie to add on that secret corridor when they find it, and you get strong sense of dimension with vertical walls.

 

[CaptainCalico]

Does anyone remember Shrinky-Dinks? I was at a local con and one of the GMs had a box full of 2D minis made from Shrinky-Dinks. It worked really well for both standup-cutouts and 1-inch square flat tokens, plus you could also make area affect grids etc, very cheaply. If you had an artist in the group you could make several mini's for your character.