Did Prepainted Minis Get You Into Minis?

[JoeGKushner]

With the ease of prepainted minis, and their initial low price back in the day... (something like $7.99?), there were a lot of buy ins.

Did anyone find themselves going to unpainted metal figs after a while?

I've always mixed and matched. I have thousands of unpainted figs scattered in boxes and enjoyed the ease of use of the prepainted figs.

Never stopped with the unpainted ones though because I enjoy painting them, and there are a lot of new companies out there keep doing awesome stuff.

 

[jdrakeh]

I was buying minis back when GW was first experimenting with plastics (unpainted). In those days, I bought minis mainly because I liked painting them myself (wargaming was a secondary interest). GWs early plastics were usually coated with mold grease, however, which made painting them a PITA. I think I bought one set before I decided to stick with metal.

The first (and last) pre-painted plastic minis that I bought many of were from the MageKnight line, though my interest waned fairly quickly, as I preferred M:TG to click minis at the time. Had there been more organized tournaments back then, I probably would have stuck with MageKnight longer, though the tourney scene didn't really pick up locally (Topeka, at that time) until after my attention had wandered.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I used to wargame a little bit before I got pre-painted DDM's. I bought both Blood Bowl and Necromunda boxed sets (two of the smaller GW games, you only needed a dozen or so models for each side) when I was in my mid-teens. However, I stopped playing both games about 6-8 years ago as I couldn't find anyone else to play with (my friends lost interest).

I bought pre-painted DDM's for the first time a couple of years ago. Since then my collection has grown to over 1,000. I love the pre-painted minis and how easy it makes having the right monsters for the encounter I want to run. However, buying the pre-painted minis has also renewed my love for my wargames and made me want to paint metal minis for my D&D game as well.

In the last year I've gotten back into Blood Bowl and I've just bought about 50-odd metal Reaper minis to use in my D&D games. I'll probably buy some pre-painted plastic DDM's in the future but I'll also probably buy some unpainted metal minis as well.

I see pre-painted and unpainted minis as complimentary products, rather than just competing products.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Jack99]

No, we used minis before there was any pre-painted (Since 89).

 

[Richards]

I have a very small collection of metal miniatures that I started collecting long before WotC started their DDM line. I've never bothered painting them, but they work just fine as-is.

Johnathan

 

[megamania]

I began using mini's in the mid-90's as I ran Darksun. I thoughly enjoyed painting them so as to create "units" and "leaders". With the intro of Gamesworkshop army builders I enjoyed mixing and matching figures. (how many people have a skaven lich?)

As my family grew and I took up two jobs I found myself with less time to spend painting. DDM worked well for that.

I still have somewhere between 400 and 600 unpainted figures to do however and I have only picked up a paint brush 2-3 times in the past 4 years as I wanted unique and special Eberron foes / NPCs.


So no DDM did not get me started but I certainly did appreciate them when they arrived.

 

[JustKim]

Yes, I started buying DDM because I never felt like I would be a good miniature painter. The price was already close to $15 when I started buying, with Blood War IIRC.

What made me switch to metal miniatures and start painting was a lack of female figures in the DDM line. I remember one DDM series had slightly more female NPCs, like 6-8, and a poster here on EN World complained that there were too many women in the set.

 

[KB9JMQ]

I had a few metal minis before DDM but never bothered to paint them until I started collecting the DDM.
I like painting them but I am not very good at it. Even the bad DDMs look better than my painting

Well most of them.

 

[darjr]

I used to paint mini's. I even liked the results. I don't think I actually liked painting them. I stopped and never planned on doing it again. DDM was a wonderful find for me later in life.

My son, however, is all a rage about painting mini's. He got a huge set of paints for Christmas, and has painted several mini's already, he's getting pretty good. The old man might have to teach him some techniques.

 

[JoeGKushner]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...ainting/133078-painting-miniatures-guide.html is a good place to go for some tips and advice on painting. Lord knows I've used it enough.