D&D 5E Icons of the Realms Set 3: Rage of Demons

thalmin · Sep 10, 2015

???
There are only a few that disappointed me.
I really like the Nightmare, Drider, Djinn, and Efreet.

JNC · Sep 10, 2015

IMO, GoL was the set that DDM actually started looking good enough to buy. Aberrations is the first set to me that said 'I'm awesome'.

I love the 4e sets the most b/c 4e changed lots of stuff, I.E. elementals/archons/titans/primordials, which I love. Dungeon of Dread, Against the Giants, Legendary Evils, Savage Encounters and Lords Of Madness are awesome sets. Definitely some goofs here and there, but overall I love the 4e minis. Not the best in quality, but as game pieces they were everything they needed to be-cheap. Plus, they were messing around with terrain pieces like portals, corpses and trebuchets; which was cool.

Had 4e minis kept going they would have had the best selection of cheap minis out of all its then competition-Games Workshop, Reaper, Privateer Press, Wyrd, and ect...

Don't get me wrong, Desert of Desolation, Unhallowed, Blood War, War of the Dragon Queen and Wardrums and all previous before then are spectacular sets-that do what they need to. Wardrums is my favorite set out of them all.

The original purpose I was commenting* was to say the Wardrums Derro is much larger than the Rage of Demons version, which is why its detail looks better.

I have no real problem with the current quality b/c they are still some of the cheapest sealed product on the market, plus I just love minis-both Pathfinder and DDM.

Edit for stupid: changed commention to commenting

Kor · Sep 11, 2015

thalmin, would it be possible for you to post the amount of each figure you received? I would like to add your case results to a thread I started at:

http://plasticrypt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5625&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Thanks.

Jester David · Sep 11, 2015

WizKids was pretty hit/miss with Pathfinder as well. They started strong then got crappier and crappier until Paizo called them on it.

thalmin · Sep 11, 2015

Kor said:
thalmin, would it be possible for you to post the amount of each figure you received? I would like to add your case results to a thread I started at:

http://plasticrypt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5625&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Thanks.

The original post has been updated with the requested info, also corrected to indicate 2 figures whose names and numbers I had confirmed but I did not receive.

Queer Venger · Sep 11, 2015

thalmin said:
Among the missing would be:
Beholder [L]
Xorn [m]
Rust Monster [m]
Invisible Mindflayer [m]
Invisible Human Wizard [m]
Invisible Blink Dog [m]
another Invisible (?)

Is Demogorgon even in this set?

Thanks for sharing Curt. I pre-ordered a brick, (8 boxes) plus the Promo, but I also ordered the Beholder, glad I did because it looks like its super rare even if you get an entire box. I dont believe there is a demogorgon with this, I have the one done before, but he's tiny in comparison to the new iteration.

Nebulous · Sep 11, 2015

I'll buy a couple of these singles, not many. I've been collecting so long that I really don't need more duplicates of stuff i already have.

Some are good, some really are not good at all. The height of the plastic era was WotC Giants of Legend and Desert of Desolation and such.

You know, i just looked online for singles. Some of the commons, like the bugbear, are $3 apiece. That does not seems worth it to me.

Kor · Sep 11, 2015

chibi graz'zt said:
Thanks for sharing Curt. I pre-ordered a brick, (8 boxes) plus the Promo, but I also ordered the Beholder, glad I did because it looks like its super rare even if you get an entire box. I dont believe there is a demogorgon with this, I have the one done before, but he's tiny in comparison to the new iteration.

Sadly no Demogorgon. The image on the box is very misleading and makes me wonder if that was their original intent.

You can view a gallery of all the minis at my page here:

http://www.minisgallery.com/dnd/index.html

Jefe Bergenstein · Sep 11, 2015

Mirtek said:
However Giants of Legends was one of the heights of the WotC Mini Era. WotC produced plenty of really, really terrible minis before and afterward

GoL might have been the high watermark, but they were consistently pretty good through Night Below.

Compare the WOTC Hobgoblin Marshal

to

the Wizkids Rage of Demons Hobgoblin Soldier

Again, the WOTC mini has a blade with a defined edge vs. a duct tape covered nerf bat. While both have limited color palletes, the WOTC one recognizes that armor isnt an all metal bodysuit, and there would be leather components visible. Its a better from a technical standpoint as well as aesthetically.

Overall, Wizkids manages what I consider 1-5 good minis per set, almost all rares. In general, they are far, far worse that what WOTC put out for most of their era prior to the decline in quality the sets took after they introduced the non-blind packs. Moreover, the ones wizkids does for D&D seem worse than the ones they do for Pathfinder. I'm wondering if Paizo gives them a better license deal to let them afford better paint apps.

Nimor · Sep 11, 2015

Wow. After several years of lurking, you finally provoked me into completing my registration.

I don't agree with some of the critism posted in this thread. When Wizkids released their first D&D miniatures set (Tyranny of Dragons) I was sceptical, too. But I found that the minis look much better in hand than on most of the images on the internet. The second set, Elemental Evil, had mostly the same level of quality, so my hopes are high that Rage of Demons will be similar, even if some of the minis seem to have new issues with too much paint applied and funky colors.

Anyway... the style of the new D&D minis is considerably different from both the old D&D minis and the ones from Wizkids' own Pathfinder Battles line. On the one hand, the paintjobs are somewhat minimalistic and usually lack a wash. On the other hand, the paint is applied in a much cleaner manner than on many of the Pathfinder Battles humanoids. There is next to no bleeding between different-colored areas. You can clearly see the pupils of the eyes on many of the commons and uncommons. I also didn't have extra glue on any of the bases of my 100+ minis, which has been a major annoyance with some of my Pathfinder Battles minis, including rares.

The minimalistic style has also grown on me when it comes to hordes of the same mini, because it makes it easier for me to add the little details in my mind rather than having a super-detailed army of clones. The Pathfinder Battles ghoul, for example, holds a skull in its hand. That's a nice touch if you are facing just one ghoul, but not so much if you face 10 ghouls. One thing that is also worth mentioning is that that most of the sculpts are superior to their old D&D counterparts. The Hobgoblin Marshal posted in this thread is a good example of an old D&D mini with a static pose that looks boring and unnatural from the side angles. The Hobgoblin Marshals I own also have completely unpainted faces, which means their teeth are the same color as their skin. While I agree that the Rage of Demons Hobgoblin Soldier seems to have an issue with his weapon (which some of the D&D minis from the earlier sets also had btw) and while I'm not so much into the the bright red skin tone, the miniature does have a more dynamic pose and a basic level of detail in the facial area that puts Hobgoblin Marshal to shame. I think I will order one to appoint him to lead the leather armor wearing Hobgoblins from Tyranny of Dragons.

For me, there hasn't been a single miniatures set in any of the aformentioned lines without a bunch of "hit or miss" minis in it. This is why I almost always buy singles. On the plus side, this set does not have a mindnumbingly high number of dragons in it, which has been my pet peeve with the first two sets of the line.