New Miniatures... Info?

[Ambershanks]

Thing is this.
The miniatures do.not.look.good.
Period.
I've seen the pics from DDXP, and have been horribly unimpressed. The paintjobs are lackluster and a good portion of the creatures don't even resemble with MM equivalents. Hippogryphs with bright blue antennae? Unicorns that are just a horse with a horn on its head? BLERG. This is a long standing problem. It started with the giant red dragon, we were told there was like, what 300 paint steps? For a Red without even a yellow belly....

Boo.

I would pay more for well painted miniatures. These are not them.

If you want to see a miniature that looks as good online as it does in hand, take a look at Monsterpocalypse.

I love DDM, I love having them in my game to represent the things I play with. But for the price they are asking, they are gonna have to look a heck of a lot nicer than what I've seen so far.

 

[avin]

Hippogryphs with bright blue antennae? Unicorns that are just a horse with a horn on its head?

It's not antennaes, you'll need a picture from the side of it.

Unicorns are just horses with horns, period (I know about goat, lion tail, etc, but I like it as a horse)...

 

[Fifth Element]

If you want to see a miniature that looks as good online as it does in hand, take a look at Monsterpocalypse.

And how much do they cost? I believe the monster boosters retail for about $13. That gives you two versions of a single large monster.

 

[JohnnyQuest]

Regarding dragonborn, it's correct that most of the first 2009 monster set (Dangerous Delves) is composed of minis from the cancelled Feywild set. At Gen Con, we were told that we wouldn't see uncommon dragonborn for a couple more sets, as it had taken time for them to be able to produce one that looked good enough but wasn't a rare in terms of production cost. So, I imagine we'll see more dragonborn in Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 2, releasing in July.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Regarding dragonborn, it's correct that most of the first 2009 monster set (Dangerous Delves) is composed of minis from the cancelled Feywild set. At Gen Con, we were told that we wouldn't see uncommon dragonborn for a couple more sets, as it had taken time for them to be able to produce one that looked good enough but wasn't a rare in terms of production cost. So, I imagine we'll see more dragonborn in Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 2, releasing in July.

I'm going to have to go... "bwah?"

If the dragonborn wasn't a core character race, and was some unique semi-unique thing of 3.5, then yeah, having it be 'good enough' would be a real problem but it's a core race. Don't make me post a pic of the Mithril Guard to showcase that in terms of potential player races that WoTC has been all over the place in terms not only of quality, but in terms of keeping miniatures in their own scale.

 

[JohnnyQuest]

I guess I'll need to return that Bwah?, Joe. I honestly don't understand your point or how your post relates to mine. I agree that there has been inconsistency in quality, scale, etc. The Guard of Mithral Hall in particular is reported to hold a special place on Peter Lee's Wall of Shame.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I guess I'll need to return that Bwah?, Joe. I honestly don't understand your point or how your post relates to mine. I agree that there has been inconsistency in quality, scale, etc. The Guard of Mithral Hall in particular is reported to hold a special place on Peter Lee's Wall of Shame.

That instead of worrying about making it look as good, that 'good enough' you mentioned, that they should have focused on getting it out the door as a common. People don't expect commons to look good. They expect the core races to have some easy accessible pull from their random collectible miniatures.

 

[JohnnyQuest]

Oh, okay; thanks for explaining. Personally, I'd rather have something that looks good, but that's coming from the point of view of someone who has been collecting all along and has enough dragonborn minis (given that half-dragons work fine for me). I can see why others would want something, anything to represent their PC.

 

[Dire Bare]

So, what would you have done with your 5th awesome Nightwalker? You could only use one in your warband, and unless you were playing epic levels (which less than 5% of people did during 3.x), more than one or two would have been an overkill for a party to handle. Sure, you could line up 5 awesome Nightwalkers on the shelf, if you were just a collector. But how many people do you know who bought DDM just for the purpose of collecting?

For the record, I think the Nightwalker mini with a slightly better sculpt would have made a great rare. The moment Nightwalker was revealed as an uncommon huge with a 300+ point cost, it was apparent that it was a bad idea. A friend of mine quit buying DDM altogether after pulling his third Nightwalker from his third GoL booster.

For the sake of argument, let's say that we are all in agreement that no matter how good or poor the sculpt/paint job of the nightwalker was, that it ended up being a poor choice for an uncommon slot.

Doesn't change what Charles is saying, that a company trying to gauge what their customers want and providing that is actually rocket science (or at least, quite difficult). Do our customers want a nightwalker mini? What rarity do we make it? Will we get the stats "right"? Will the concept sketch we think is cool translate into a good sculpt? How will the paint job look? (especially on a monster that is a pure black "hole" in reality) How will the mini fit in with the rest of the set? Soooooo many variables.

No, it's not rocket science. It really isn't. And it's also not insulting. What's insulting is the implication that WotC can't do better. Of course they can - they've just been forced to take too many compromises recently, and the DDM line has suffered greatly for it.

Incidentally, Dire Bare, how many DDM do you own? Just curious.

When you claim these sorts of issues aren't "rocket science", you are essentially saying that the folks behind the D&D minis line are idiots and that you could do better. Heck, that a child could do better. And that is insulting. It's also arrogant, condescending, and flat out incorrect. My counter-claim that it *is* rocket science does not imply that WotC can't do better, that's a ridiculous leap there. WotC most certainly can learn from their mistakes and produce better product in the future, and I imagine that they will do just that. If they were incapable of doing better, all of my minis would have "Harbinger" quality . . . .

I own quite a few D&D Minis, although I've never bought by the caseload. Probably 4-5 boosters per set plus the various starter sets (and the icons). There are many of the minis I own that I think are sucktackular, either in sculpt, paint job, or both. There are minis that I have too much of, probably because the distribution was off (such as the nightwalker, I do have too many of those). But overall, I think WotC has done an amazing job with the D&D Minis line, and I realize the complexity of pulling this off.

If it were easy, not "rocket science", then WotC would have a lot more competition in this area instead of just the, now defunct, WizKids.

 

[Imaro]

I have no special insight into this, but here's a couple things that might be factors:

• We know, from the initial announcement of the format change, that this first release was evolved out of an already-in-development DDM release (entitled "Feywild," I think). The sculpts they had to work with may have been artificially constrained by the content of that set.
• There's another series of heroes coming out just a few months after this release. Perhaps they're planning on rectifying any imbalance in that set.

Also, I point back to my earlier points on long development time and difficulty predicting what will be popular with consumers.

Dragonborn, as a core race, are a pretty new concept. The only thing worse than not having enough of a highly popular new race in your first set of the format would be having far too many of a highly unpopular new race.

The decisions probably had to be made before there was any real consumer feedback on the popularity of dragonborn and eladrin as PC races.

I'm sorry but I don't buy this... it's backwards thinking. You create a game that is based around and tied heavily into your miniature line... You also realized awhile ago that roleplayers were your primary consumer for your minis... create commons and uncommons for another highly specialized and newly core race "tieflings" (without knowing how popular they would be with groups) but had no clue that one common or at least uncommon Dragonborn would be important to those playing the new game??? Or how about another scenario...

You realize the PC races (at least new ones when bringing out a new version of the game will be highly sought after and in order to push mini sales make sure that the only Dragonborn PC minis are rares. Especially since you've already produced tieflings that go for cheap in this set and earlier sets ( 2 different Tiefling Warlocks) and certain types of elves can easily substitute for eladrin. That leaves Dragonborn to be the new driver for mini sales.

EDIT: And let's not forget about all that market research that pointed to Dragon-anything = sales... of course that could be used as an incentive if scarcity is kept at a premium.