Good alternatives to proper miniatures?

[timbannock]

Circling back to the start of this thread, I highly recommend PF Pawns. I bought a few boxes, but when I want to do some wargaming type stuff, I knew I needed MOAR! More goblins, more zombies, that kind of thing. So I went on eBay and lo and behold you can get them STUPIDLY CHEAP. If you aren't picky about specific sets, just look for people selling a box of them punched out without any organization and it's a goldmine for (relatively) cheap.

FYI, there were NPC and PC Pawn sets (not boxes) that were pretty small (only about 5 or 6 boards) but had a great mix of all the humanoids you'd ever need.

 

[MGibster]

As much as it paints me to recommend an alternative, Arcknight Games makes some flat plastic miniatures that might serve your purposes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Heck, use candy - M&Ms and Skittles for small things, larger and larger candies for bigger targets.

Players get to eat what they kill.

Anyone going the edible minis route, whatever you do, DO NOT use sugar-free Haribo gummy bears. IYKYK.

 

[Pirate O’ Caribbean]

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[SlyFlourish]

You can make some excellent universal tokens with one inch epoxy stickers, one inch adhesive magnets, a one inch hole punch, and some artwork printed out at one inch scale or even old magic cards.

Here’s an article I wrote about it:

Crafting Lazy Monster Tokens for D&D

What to use to represent characters and monsters when running combat in D&D is a constant and continual conversation among D&D enthusiasts. Some swear by a large collection of pre-painted miniatures. ...

slyflourish.com

 

[Meech17]

I am tempted to buy an order of those Meeples. I can't find them now of course... But I purchased a package of "Peeples" which are kind of like the Meeples but plastic, and with round heads. I really like them, but I need to find a way to number them or something. 10 red goblins is fine.. But can be challenging when the party(And myself) is trying to remember which goblin is which

 

[Meech17]

I am tempted to buy an order of those Meeples. I can't find them now of course... But I purchased a package of "Peeples" which are kind of like the Meeples but plastic, and with round heads. I really like them, but I need to find a way to number them or something. 10 red goblins is fine.. But can be challenging when the party(And myself) is trying to remember which goblin is which

I've also just used spare D6s.. Which is helpful. You can place them numbered side up to differentiate them. So the die with the "1" facing up is the Goblin Shaman, and "2" is the warrior who already took damage, but "3" is the one that hasn't been hit yet. etc..

 

[MGibster]

Anyone going the edible minis route, whatever you do, DO NOT use sugar-free Haribo gummy bears. IYKYK.

Remember when the BBEG cursed you? Mwa ha ha ha ha!

 

[innerdude]

One alternative I tried once with decent success was to create color printouts of monster pictures in 1-inch circles on a page, then use a 1-inch circle craft punch to carefully punch them out.

Once punched out, get a bottle of clear craft glue finish and then glue the circular prints face up to the bottom of a 1-inch / 25mm rounded half dome glass marble beads / tiles / "cabochons".

When finished, the clear glue lets you see the top of the printout through the glass.

My wife helped me try doing this several years ago, and the results were decent. The trick is to get the cutout to be as precise as possible.

If you want to represent larger sized monsters, increase the size of the printout circle to 2 inch / 50mm, though these are much more expensive than the smaller 1 inch / 25mm tiles.

I absolutely LOVED using these for large "minion" fights, where I could easily scatter 10-12 orcs or kobolds across the battle mat, and have them still be easily recognizable.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Remember when the BBEG cursed you? Mwa ha ha ha ha!

In your head* be it!





* as in “bathroom”