Alternatives to WotC Minis

[Gez]

What I'd kill for is a "character pack(s)". I'd really like a set of minis that consists of a male and female of each race of each class in the PHB/SRD.

I'd love that as well. But even if ditching the half-elf (reasonning a half-elf character could use either a human or elf miniature), you still have 2 sexes (male and female) times 6 races (dwarf, elf, half-orc, halfling, human, gnome) times 11 classes (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, wizard) for a total of 132 miniatures.

If you merge wizards and sorcerers together, you can get the list down to 120. If you consider that skin color doesn't matter and that, at that size, minute racial details won't be seen, you can merge halflings and gnomes together. You'll still have 110 miniatures.

But on the other hand, to allow for a bit of variety for the most common combinations (human anything, elf wizard, half-orc barbarian, halfling rogue, dwarven fighter, etc.), you'd have to raise the limit back up.

I think such a box would need 150 miniatures -- including half-a-dozen oddballs thrown in for good measures, like a goblin wizard or a kobold bard. Even with mass-production, that would make the box cost around as many dollars.

If the quality of the minis is at least the same as for WotC's Aberration set, I'd buy it sight unseen, though.

 

[Droogie]

Yes, I'd love that as well, particularly if they were customizable as some people have already suggested here for plastic minis. Have an art program that allows you to construct your own figures, sized to print on one inch grids, something along the lines of the image attached (art from David Gervias, who kindly allows his work to be used for non-profit entertainment). For now there is Counter Collection Digitial, but that only has faces, I believe.

Then you could have a orc body with a particular armor, attach any one of numerous orc faces, and choose which weapons you wanted, etc. If Fiery Dragon could release something like that, or another publisher, I'd be a happy camper.

Pinotage

You might want to check out Campaign Cartographer with the Character Artist add-on. There's a bit of a learning curve, but I was using it to churn out my own counters before I started collecting minis.

 

[Droogie]

If they're as good quality as WotC's, and no more than 20% more expensive (the price of non-randomness), I'd buy them.

Ditto. I would gladly pay a little extra for decent, pre-painted plastic minis that were non-random.

 

[JVisgaitis]

How about this one that I thought of? But, have a two stage process of finishing to give those folks who do not want to paint a finished, painted mini, and those of us who want to paint our own can get them unpainted, just for a slightly cheaper price?

That would definitely be something to consider. If we would go that route, it would probably make a lot more sense to release the unpainted minis in metal as opposed to plastic. I'm sure if people could get minitures that they would be able to paint themselves they would prefer metal to plastic. I'll definitely take a hard look at that option and it would make a lot of sense.

As to those people who have requested options, we'll probably release miniatures with as much diversity as possible. Obviously we can't do every possible combination. If we can't get your particular combination, we'll probably release weapon packs and you could customize the miniatures yourself.

 

[scourger]

I voted "no" becuase I'm not using minis right now. I still love them, but I think I need to confine their use to my player characters. Otherwise, it's just too much to buy, assemble, paint, and store minis for the limited use I get when I DM. Even plastic minis have purchase and storage costs. I'm doing much better with 3D counters of my own devise using my scanner and Counter Collection Digital.

 

[pogre]

That would definitely be something to consider. If we would go that route, it would probably make a lot more sense to release the unpainted minis in metal as opposed to plastic. I'm sure if people could get minitures that they would be able to paint themselves they would prefer metal to plastic. I'll definitely take a hard look at that option and it would make a lot of sense.

As to those people who have requested options, we'll probably release miniatures with as much diversity as possible. Obviously we can't do every possible combination. If we can't get your particular combination, we'll probably release weapon packs and you could customize the miniatures yourself.

I would prefer metal for sure. I know I'm not the target market here, but for some of your cooler sculpts I would pay premium mini prices. $5.00 for a standard 30 mm sized human - scaled up for monsters. Somewhere in between GW and Reaper. I bought a couple of the Wizkids metal figures, but I think I was the only one You might ask them what their experience was on this and why they quit. I think the answer will be - they just did not sell.

A couple of companies have tried this and it has not worked out for them. Check out Dwarven Forge's pre-painted minis for example.

There is a reason WOTC sells them in random packs. They originally promised to sell a few non-random packs (they even had a prototype orc warband package), but backed off the position rapidly when their marketing people said "no."

 

[Li Shenron]

That would definitely be something to consider. If we would go that route, it would probably make a lot more sense to release the unpainted minis in metal as opposed to plastic. I'm sure if people could get minitures that they would be able to paint themselves they would prefer metal to plastic. I'll definitely take a hard look at that option and it would make a lot of sense.

Isn't it possible for someone to repaint pre-painted plastic minis if they don'e like the color pattern? I thought I heard someone did that with WotC minis... I'm just wondering if it might be more a hassle for your company to diversify production between painted and unpainted, but maybe it's not a big issue at all.

If you do the unpainted ones in metal, I guess then it definitely has a strong diversification, and you need to assemble two quite different production lines. It can be a hard effort, but perhaps you can later drop one of the two if the other turns out to be more profitable.

I really have no idea how these things work nor how is the market situation. But I think that your original idea (non-assembable, pre-painted, non-random plastic) possibly has no equal yet? I might have seen some unpainted ones (pretty awful, with horribly big heads), but I don't remember painted ones.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Isn't it possible for someone to repaint pre-painted plastic minis if they don'e like the color pattern? I thought I heard someone did that with WotC minis... I'm just wondering if it might be more a hassle for your company to diversify production between painted and unpainted, but maybe it's not a big issue at all.

If you do the unpainted ones in metal, I guess then it definitely has a strong diversification, and you need to assemble two quite different production lines. It can be a hard effort, but perhaps you can later drop one of the two if the other turns out to be more profitable.

I really have no idea how these things work nor how is the market situation. But I think that your original idea (non-assembable, pre-painted, non-random plastic) possibly has no equal yet? I might have seen some unpainted ones (pretty awful, with horribly big heads), but I don't remember painted ones.

You can strip the paint off of plastic minis, but the possibility of damaging the mini while stripping the paint is much greater than with metal/pewter. I forgot the exact method of stripping plastic, though. Since my daughter was born almost 2 years ago, my method of mini-painting has been to commission somebody else to do it for me!

But, non random minis does have an appeal to me.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Isn't it possible for someone to repaint pre-painted plastic minis if they don'e like the color pattern? I thought I heard someone did that with WotC minis... I'm just wondering if it might be more a hassle for your company to diversify production between painted and unpainted, but maybe it's not a big issue at all.

It is indeed possible to strip the paint off of WotC minis. You can also, on certain minis, paint right over the exsisting paint job (this is my preferred method). Unfortunately some minis have so much paint on them that they simply cannot be repainted again. www.maxminis.com has some excellent links and hints for stripping paint off of minis.

 

[Li Shenron]

You can also, on certain minis, paint right over the exsisting paint job (this is my preferred method).

Yeah, that's what I was thinking about, just for curiosity.