fed up with mini randomness...back to counters? (teeny-tiny rant)

DaveStebbins said:

One difference is that molds for plastic are much more expensive than tools/molds for metal. Molding pressures are much higher and most molten plastics can squirt through smaller openings than most molten metals. All this leads to an upfront, non-recurring mold cost which is (my guess) between two and five times the cost of tooling up a metal mini. I'm sure this contributes to a desire to see a minimum distribution level (and thus a certain minimum manufacturing run) of each plastic mini.

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I've seen a thread on Mage Knight forums where someone stated the price for a mold for a plastic miniature ran about £10,000 (IIRC, it might have been higher) when he was in the business. Of course, each miniature is often made of a couple of pieces placed together.

The main difference between metal miniatures and plastic minatures is where the cost for producing them goes. A metal miniatures costs more for the metal compared to the plastic. Metal miniatures use rubber molds which aren't too expensive. Plastic miniatures require cast iron molds which is where the bulk of the cost is. When a rubber mold wears out, it is inexpensive to replace. When a metal mold wears out (admittedly, probably less often) it is very expensive to replace.

The price might vary based on the type of plastic used for the miniatures. However, this definitely brought out to me that the production costs for plastic miniatures are more expensive than most would guess by several orders of magnitude.

Glyfair said:

Plastic miniatures require cast iron molds which is where the bulk of the cost is. When a rubber mold wears out, it is inexpensive to replace. When a metal mold wears out (admittedly, probably less often) it is very expensive to replace.

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Again, I'm not sure how things work in miniatures manufacturing, but in general manufacturing most molds for plastic are made of hardened steel. They also wear rather quickly, especially if they are trying to hold lots of close tolerances or fine detail. Generally, plastic parts are cheap because the plastic is injected at high temperature, high pressure and high speed which reduces the cycle time to make each piece. However, all of these circumstances cause molds to wear more quickly.

Glyfair said:

The price might vary based on the type of plastic used for the miniatures. However, this definitely brought out to me that the production costs for plastic miniatures are more expensive than most would guess by several orders of magnitude.

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Very true. It is easy to look at a small piece of plastic and think that there isn't much money involved in making it. This is true if you are making them in high volume to spread out the tooling costs, or if you can allow large tolerances to account for mold wear and refurbish or rebuild tooling less frequently, or if the mold can be manufactured by conventional machining techniques. However, I would imagine that molds for plastic miniatures are made on EDM machines (I think that's electro-discharge machining), which are extremely expensive machines to purchase and thus carry a high hourly production cost and a relatively slow material removal rate. However, they are unparalleled for making the kinds of complex 3-D shapes required in a mini.

Again, this is all just semi-educated guesswork on my part.
-Dave

Does anybody have suggestions as to where to buy bunches of the common or uncommon figs online? I wouldn't mind a horde of kobolds or skeletal dogs myself.

Painfully said:

Does anybody have suggestions as to where to buy bunches of the common or uncommon figs online? I wouldn't mind a horde of kobolds or skeletal dogs myself.

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http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=102294

I can highly recommend the sites listed in post #7.

MerricB said:

A non-random miniatures company makes 10,000 copies of a "Flumph" miniature (generic exotic creature), which costs them $2000 in design and production.

The marketplace thinks the "Flumph" is stupid, except for 5 people who like it. They get back $10 on their investment of $2000. So, that's a loss of $1990 on the production of the "Flumph".

Two options:
* They make back the money by raising the cost of their other miniatures to cover the losses of the "Flumph"-like minis
* They produce no more "flumphs", and go back to only orcs and goblins.
Cheers!

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An extreme example to illustrate the point obviously, but the obvious observation is that you don't just bust out 10,000 copies of a "flumph" that you have no idea if anyone will want. There is room between making ONLY the most popular top-selling minis of bog-standard orc and goblins, and making minis of the sorts that they will indeed sell fewer of but still can expect to profit on without betting the farm or needing to price them so high that they languish on shelves.

The challenge lies in being able to determine BEFORE production begins whether a given mini will sell enough at a given price point to produce profit. Perhaps the answer lies in continuing to sell "boosters" much as they do now but by fixing the contents so that roleplayers know before they buy whether they are getting figures they want or could use. That way even by charging higher prices upfront the roleplaying buyer is getting a better deal by not having to invest exceptional sums in figures they don't want to get the few that they do, or to scour the secondhand market and pay an additional premium for arbitrarily determined rarity on top of additional shipping costs. What would otherwise be costs to a roleplayer - which they ARE currently paying - would be taken as additional profit by the manufacturer at the original point of sale, simply by letting the buyer know the ACTUAL contents of the box.

Boosters with larger, more expensive to produce minis like giants and dragons would be packaged with smaller, cheaper minis, or perhaps FEWER minis to maintain the set price point. The ONLY significant change would be knowing by simply reading the package or looking at the illustration of its contents precisely what you're getting before you buy. And the elimination of that requirement of having to buy the boxes blind because of "randomness" concerns is what roleplayers are most bothered by, true?

D+1 said:

An extreme example to illustrate the point obviously, but the obvious observation is that you don't just bust out 10,000 copies of a "flumph" that you have no idea if anyone will want. There is room between making ONLY the most popular top-selling minis of bog-standard orc and goblins, and making minis of the sorts that they will indeed sell fewer of but still can expect to profit on without betting the farm or needing to price them so high that they languish on shelves.

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Indeed. However, one aspect of D&D is that there is a very great array of creatures out there - many of them new (or not traditional). The normal scheme of marketing (non-random) miniatures has the flumph drawback, with the additional drawback that you don't know that the miniature will be useless.

If you package them in clear containers, the "cherry-picking" syndrome sets in. It's not quite a solution.

However, keep in mind that if you buy a pack of Harbinger, you know the chances of getting a dragon are 0% (Crested Felldrakes don't count!) OTOH, if you want orcs, Harbinger is the set to buy.

Traditional miniature schemes have generally rewarded those who buy only a few miniatures. D&D Miniatures reward those that buy them in bulk.

Cheers!

It's also worth examining how you use miniatures.

In the traditional way, you design your adventure, then go out and buy the miniatures for that adventure.

The the D&D Miniatures way, you get your miniatures, then design an adventure around those miniatures.

Cheers!

Well, I broke down and bought a package of Giants of Legend.

(Formorian Giant, Dire Wolf, Astral Construct, Bugbear Cutpurse, Werewolf, Basilisk, Bladeling, Zombie and Eberk)

The quality is magnificent, The paint job is great, much better than I could do and the range of colors (especially the Metalics) would cost a lot to get and the giant is freaking huge!

The only thing keeping me from buying more is that random aspect. If there was some "theme boxes" or just a label on the bottom that told you what was in them.

As to buying them individually, I don't do eBay and looking at RPGShops list, the price each is just too much. If I was going to use minis, I would want to buy minis for my game, not force my game to fit the minis (see last Dork Tower in Dragon).

Crystal Ball

The problem with non-random products is that they require predicting the future. The larger the fixed costs ($10,000 per mold = OUCH!) the more important it is to guess correctly.

Fortunately the secondary market (just like the stock market) handles selling non-random product for D&D Miniatures. Each rare "should" be worth $10 because you get 1 rare in a booster (before the price increase). Rares that are worth more than $10 (like Large Red Dragon @ $20+) are desired by more people than other rares that go for $6.

It doesn't matter who is doing the selling. Non-random figures cost more because they have to cover the cost of all the figures that are less desirable. Imagine, if randomness bothers you, that Wizards is selling non-random figures (via the singles dealers). You can't buy boosters directly from Wizards any more than you can't buy non-random singles from Wizards. So either way a retailer has to provide minis in the packaging (random vs. non-random) you prefer.

For everyone who thinks the "good" figures (i.e. rares) are too expensive, you wouldn't be willing to pay the appropriate price if they were offered non-random because you already aren't willing to pay the price for the non-random version. Since your pocketbook has already said no to the true price then no manufacturer is going to listen to you.

Dark Psion said:

Well, I broke down and bought a package of Giants of Legend.

(Formorian Giant, Dire Wolf, Astral Construct, Bugbear Cutpurse, Werewolf, Basilisk, Bladeling, Zombie and Eberk)

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You got some excellent minis there - especially the Dire Wolf.

Cheers!