Thoughts on D&D Minis

[pawsplay]

I was looking at the different galleries, and I had a few thoughts.

First, the minis have improved in quality. There is just no comparison. However, they have not improved all that much in terms of "giving the people what they want," people meaning me and the gazillion ebay users who could give a rat's ass about a Draegloth or a Kapak draconian.

Huge sets are cool, because Huge minis are cool. Plus they usually tuck a few regular minis in there that are just great, such as as night hag, a mind flayer arch villain, the drow fighter, inspiring marshal, and the sword of glory. But overall, the rest of the is just kind of lame. I think they try too hard to make the Huge sets crowd pleasures, when in actuality, with those sets, I think people are looking for unadulterated awesomeness, even if there isn't a lot of building room for funky dudes.

They still haven't been putting out a lot of PC friendly minis, which is nuts. You get a handful of iconics, often ones that have already been done. Very little in the way of various arms, armor, and spellcasting gear. For instance, if you have a male human wizard, your choices are the wacky looking Evoker's Apprentice, various old dudes, and an elven wand expert. How about a dude in a cloak or traveler's clothes or a simple robe who looks cool? Bards are fairly well covered, as are heavily armored warriors, monks, and various elves. Barbarians, mages, half-orcs, halflings, archers, and druids have gotten pretty weak support. There is not a single female half-orc of which I am aware.

I know it isn't their business model, but I wish I could go out and buy a pack of animals, or undead, or a particular humanoid race, or some archetypal characters for a certain setting (i.e. Red Wizards, Solamnic Knights, that kind of thing).

I wish they have more competitors in the prepainted plastics market.

 

[trancejeremy]

With some paint, superglue, a sharp knife, and some duct tape, you can customize the minis for PCs somewhat. Change weapons, or remove things anyway.

But yeah, I think they do need something like a PC set.

 

[Shadowslayer]

The D&D minis serve a purpose for both games, and they're good for what they are. There's no way they're going to make everyone happy. It was because of this fact that I discovered and learned how to paint my own. At least then you can get what you want. A PC set would be nice, but I won't hold my breath...they could actually do one and everyone would still bitch about what was missing. That may be a can of worms thay don't want to open.

I've got a whole box of DDM "PC appropriate" minis, and its been more than enough to play lots of games with. Its important to remember that a mini is simply a representation. My Paladin player just uses the common axe warrior for his. No biggie. But I began to wish that the DDM line had more cloaked wizards and other traditionals. And I was getting annoyed at having to scour Ebay and drop 20-40 bucks (or more ) just because I wanted a Beholder or a Displacer Beast...minis of pretty traditional D&D monsters that Wizards decided to deem "rare". Pewter was my answer.

But if you want to get something closer to what you've envisioned for a particular character, you should try painting. Reaper has a huge catalog of figures, and painting is not as hard, or as expensive, as you may think. Actually, DDM quality painting is pretty simple...and this is coming from a non-artist. So now I have a horde of DDM orcs, but they may be led by an Evil Wizard(tm) or a Warg Rider that I painted myself.

Best of both worlds.

Other than that, I don't have an answer for you.

EDIT-TranceJeremy's right. I saw a web pic once where a guy had taken wolf minis and goblin blackblades and turned them into really cool Worg Riders using a file, pins and some glue.

 

[wayne62682]

Just part of the reason I hate DDM, the other being the collectable garbage; the figures that you'd get the most use out of are, of course, Rare so cost you way more than a plastic figure with an amateur paintjob is worth. I rue the day when they figured out they could make money off of that and thus killed any *real* D&D miniature line.

 

[Styracosaurus]

I just wish that they would produce a box of orcs, a box of equicephs, box of dire rats etc.....

John

 

[Hussar]

Umm, guys, there's a bazillion companies out there that produce excellent minis for all your gaming needs. Why does DDM have to do it for you? Check out Ral Partha, Magnificent Ego's, Ragnarok, and I don't know how many other companies out there that are pretty much guaranteed of having that left handed elf cleric wielding a halberd.

That, or just use minis as representation and don't worry too much if the mini looks EXACTLY like your character.

 

[crazy_cat]

Umm, guys, there's a bazillion companies out there that produce excellent minis for all your gaming needs. Why does DDM have to do it for you? Check out Ral Partha, Magnificent Ego's, Ragnarok, and I don't know how many other companies out there that are pretty much guaranteed of having that left handed elf cleric wielding a halberd.

But why would we want to shop around, or purchase our minis elsewhere when we can instead complain on the interweb that WOTC DDM are not meeting our precise needs 100% exactly and therefore are obviously broken.

 

[Xyxox]

That's why I've stuck with buying unpainted minis and working them up myself. And fortunately, I've been into the game long enough that I have the Grenadier D&D mini line and the Ral Partha AD&D mini line (most in lead, some in lead free "ralidium"). I've got beholders, mind flayers, a displacer beast, and multiple other monsters.

For PC's, very little beats the Reaper lines, and you can still get many different monsters that way. For multiple figures of the iconic stuff, like goblins, orcs, dwarfs, elves, lizardfolk, Games Workshop boxed sets of plastic minis are awesome and completely customizable.

And one of my favorite things to do now is conversions of existing minis. It's loads of fun and I'm gaining a confidence level where I'm even beginning to sculpt some minis of my own.

When I started this game in the '70s, minis were one aspect I loved, so prepping, priming, and painting minis has always been a part of it for me.

 

[Huw]

They still haven't been putting out a lot of PC friendly minis, which is nuts. You get a handful of iconics, often ones that have already been done. Very little in the way of various arms, armor, and spellcasting gear. For instance, if you have a male human wizard, your choices are the wacky looking Evoker's Apprentice, various old dudes, and an elven wand expert. How about a dude in a cloak or traveler's clothes or a simple robe who looks cool? Bards are fairly well covered, as are heavily armored warriors, monks, and various elves. Barbarians, mages, half-orcs, halflings, archers, and druids have gotten pretty weak support.

They're getting better. I want more NPCs, along the lines of Harbinger's Commoner. The drunken brawler and village priest make good commoners.

I agree about the mages. The last two times I played a mage, I went for Ialdabode (a psion) in one instance and the sage from Dragoneye in another. There also needs to be more women.

There is not a single female half-orc of which I am aware.

Cleric of Kord.

 

[Vrecknidj]

First, there are several eBay sellers that pack up left-over commons and sell them in large lots (Auggie's sells a lot of things by 10 at a time).

Second, if someone really, really felt that an "orc pack," for instance, could make money, they'd buy up a few hundred cases, open all the boosters, sell off the rare singles on eBay, and then package the orcs into their own "orc packs" and offer to sell them on the secondary market.

So, let's say I were to find a few thousand dollars lying around and decided to do this. What would I have to sell the Orc Pack for, in order to make it worth my while? What would you pay for it?

Dave