D&D General Miniature Survey

[el-remmen]

One hypothesis I'm getting from reading all of this: if someone in the group likes minis in and of themselves (they enjoy collecting and/or painting them, for instance), you'll have them available and use them. If no one in the group likes minis as things, you generally don't have them and improvise when maps are needed or just run TotM.

In other words, the presence or absence of minis seems to happen by factors outside of whether you like them for actual gaming.

Maybe - but for years I just had the majority of my minis unpainted (and used pennies or other tokens for lots of little things). The PCs might be painted because a player would volunteer (I'd pay for them because I wanted to keep them) or I might ask a friend not in the group to paint a monster for me for a big scene or something - but it was not until 2020 when we moved to remote play and telling unpainted minis apart via the table camera became too difficult that I started painting in earnest - just table ready for play - and after 35 years of playing D&D finally got good enough (not good, just good enough) to enjoy it.

 

[J-H]

I have two little kids and don't buy minis. I have the money, but I don't have the space for storage, nor am I willing to invest the time to paint them. I mostly DM, so I just use paper printouts cut to size. If someone brought minis, we'd use them, and in one of my campaigns we've had minis for PCs for a while (they are packed up somewhere now). It's nice and convenient...as long as I don't have to keep them at my house.

 

[David Howery]

I go back far enough that the majority of my minis are from Ral Partha, Grenadier, and Minifigs. These were the ones I used when I was an active gamer/DM. Ended up with some minis from GW when me and my nephews were into Warhammer and LOTR. Nowadays, I buy some from Reaper occasionally just to paint for fun. I've gotten some odd figures over the years that I've found at several trips to Gencon (always loved poking through some booth's bargain bins)...

 

[el-remmen]

Yes, I am running into storage issues, esp. with larger and awkward shaped minis.

 

[Oofta]

One hypothesis I'm getting from reading all of this: if someone in the group likes minis in and of themselves (they enjoy collecting and/or painting them, for instance), you'll have them available and use them. If no one in the group likes minis as things, you generally don't have them and improvise when maps are needed or just run TotM.

In other words, the presence or absence of minis seems to happen by factors outside of whether you like them for actual gaming.

Long before I ever painted my first mini, even before playing on a grid was really talked about much, we would use tokens for PCs and monsters just to show positioning. I've just never really cared for TOtM for complex fights. I still use printed out tokens sometimes with appropriate monsters on them because I don't want to spend that much money on minis and don't have storage space even if I did.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One hypothesis I'm getting from reading all of this: if someone in the group likes minis in and of themselves (they enjoy collecting and/or painting them, for instance), you'll have them available and use them. If no one in the group likes minis as things, you generally don't have them and improvise when maps are needed or just run TotM.

In other words, the presence or absence of minis seems to happen by factors outside of whether you like them for actual gaming.

Nah. I love converting and painting minis and I have a ton of GW stuff. I still just use symbolic tokens for D&D.

 

[David Howery]

Yes, I am running into storage issues, esp. with larger and awkward shaped minis.

Yeah, there are some rather large and awesome minis out today that are about impossible to store. I have the Mumak from GW, and I mounted it on a board and keep it out in the open cuz there's no way it'll fit into a box. But... for minis that aren't quite so large but still rather big and awkward, you can find some plastic storage boxes at stores. I have a bunch of bobbin/thread storage boxes I use for ordinary sized minis, and some customizable/size ones for bigger pieces. With some foam sheets cut up to fit the bottom, they work pretty good so long as you don't shake up the boxes a lot. I used to have a bunch of old cardboard/foam rubber storage boxes from Grenadier, but those all disintegrated after a few years.....

 

[el-remmen]

Yeah, there are some rather large and awesome minis out today that are about impossible to store. I have the Mumak from GW, and I mounted it on a board and keep it out in the open cuz there's no way it'll fit into a box. But... for minis that aren't quite so large but still rather big and awkward, you can find some plastic storage boxes at stores. I have a bunch of bobbin/thread storage boxes I use for ordinary sized minis, and some customizable/size ones for bigger pieces. With some foam sheets cut up to fit the bottom, they work pretty good so long as you don't shake up the boxes a lot. I used to have a bunch of old cardboard/foam rubber storage boxes from Grenadier, but those all disintegrated after a few years.....

If you find a link or have one handy for the plastic containers you are talking about I'd love to see what to look for.

Currently, I use the old school chessex hard plastic boxes (I have six of them), one soft carrying container with foam inside which I don't like nearly as much, and the rest are on the shelf, either the curio shelf thing I shared a pic of above or another small shelf unit that has larger minis on top. The chessex boxes are terrible at the newer minis with huge swords and flowing cloaks or anything with a larger base, but I do like the ease of looking through them and use them for most of my older minis. The softness of the shoulder bag type and its different trays means lookin through it is a pain, and the pull-foam is not great for custom spaces that hold their shape.

 

[David Howery]

If you find a link or have one handy for the plastic containers you are talking about I'd love to see what to look for.

I got mine at Hobby Lobby and Walmart... most are basic bobbin/floss boxes, which have nice size holders for the average PC/NPC figure. They also have some larger boxes with sides that you can move around some and customize for the sizes; I've used them for giants and dragons. I just cut up some thin foam sheets to fit the bottom, which keeps them fairly safe. But... these are good for simple storage (and will hold a lot of them), but not so great for carrying them around for gaming, etc. For that, you might want to find some better boxes that will hold them securely and just take the minis you are going to use in a game in them (those Chessex boxes you mentioned would probably be better for that).

 

[guachi]

Lego minifigs for the good guys. Tokens for the bad guys. Lego minifigs allow a good mix and match of head, torso, legs, accessories in a way that miniatures don't.