BOYCOTT of Wotc miniatures

[pogre]

Dude, eight pre-painted minis- even randomized- for $13 is not a ripoff at all. Consider what you'd get in pewter for $13- prolly around four minis, no paint job.

4 minis that you want! Or buy a "rare" you want and offer someone $8 to $10 to paint it and you will really have a better deal

If the paint job has improved on the latest batch it is worth the price hike at some level. Better paint job = higher labor costs. However, I am fairly confident the $9.99 was just an introductory price to get the ball rolling.

BTW - there is lots of historical precedence in the minis field for a 30% rate hike. GW and Foundry spring to mind...

 

[Bagpuss]

With the production of mass-produced items, there comes a time when proucing the next mini costs more on the average (per-unit) than the next to last mini.

Surely that's called inflation and as far as I'm aware its not running at 30%, even in China.

 

[MerricB]

4 minis that you want! Or buy a "rare" you want and offer someone $8 to $10 to paint it and you will really have a better deal

The trick, as always, is to work out how many of the D&D Miniatures you want, and purchase figures based on that. I've got over 300 of the blasted things, and I can still find 5-6 figures in a Harbinger pack that I am happy to see more of... thus, it's worth my money.

The 'hidden' cost of metal miniatures - that of painting them - is something that to me is quite high; I've had Chainmail miniatures for over two years, and I've never gotten around to painting them. I've owned an unpainted bugbear for over fifteen years, and it's still not painted!

Cheers!

 

[trentonjoe]

The trick, as always, is to work out how many of the D&D Miniatures you want, and purchase figures based on that. I've got over 300 of the blasted things, and I can still find 5-6 figures in a Harbinger pack that I am happy to see more of... thus, it's worth my money.

The 'hidden' cost of metal miniatures - that of painting them - is something that to me is quite high; I've had Chainmail miniatures for over two years, and I've never gotten around to painting them. I've owned an unpainted bugbear for over fifteen years, and it's still not painted!

Cheers!

I agree with this 100%. I JUST glued an owl bear together that I bought in August. Its chance of getting painted is, uh, slim.

I sold a bunch off my old, unpainted miniatures on ebay so I could make room for the new little platic guys because I knew they where NEVER going to be painted.

 

[Felix]

Sluggo: Right on. I just get somewhat suspicious of posters who start threads with subjects that are very likely to have multiple pages, whose topic is anti-something, whose author doesn't post once after 4 pages, and whose post count is low... You can understand how that can be typical of trollish thread authors, eh? Not that this is, but it does possess those characteristics. Glad you posted.

Bagpuss: "Decreasing marginal returns to scale". The profit gained from each additional unit increases up until a tipping point where the additional revenue gained from production equals the cost to produce the next unit. Production after that tipping point actually loses the company potential profit, as each additional item costs more than revenue it generates. WotC might not have known exactly where that tipping point would be and produced more than is efficient for their first runs of minis... inflation is a whole other bag, baby.

 

[John Crichton]

Well, your mileage could vary. I could easily have missed a lot of sites. That warning said, I purchased my cases from the same place as someone else in this thread:

Gameoutfitter - If your buying a case of harbinger & dragonseye, the current prices are fairly good ($6.06 down to $5.75 a pack). However, if you want to just get a bunch of those 16 piece starter packs, I couldn't find a better price than amazon's $8.

Harbinger Only (Amazon) - Starter Packs ($0.50 a fig)
Harbinger & Dragonseye (Gameoutfitter) - Dragoneye/Harbinger Sale ($0.71875 a fig at largest bulk)
Archfiends (Gameoutfitter) - Archfiends Pre-Order ($0.7325 a fig at largest bulk)

For singles, your going to have to crunch the math on your specific order. It's rather tricky, really. For my order, I compared three sites which had different deals over each other, then calculated exactly how much ordering all the same figs from sites would cost individually. Then I had to see if I could save MORE than shipping costs by buying specific figs from one store and specific figs from another.

Also, you can go with http://www.iconusa.com/online/D&D_index.htm, they have served me well a few times and they just started offering singles. I like gameoutfitter a bit more but it is another option.

I would also stay away from buying the starters in bulk because you are missing out on a rare as there is only one per box as opposed to 2 boosters where you get the same amount of figures but more rares in the end (2 vs 1).

 

[KB9JMQ]

I think you don't understand the concept of a collectable game then. Harbinger has stopped production, and are already becoming harder to buy, unopenned Harbinger boxes are therefore likely to go up in price in the not too distant future once Wizards have emptied there warehouse (much like what has happened with unopened Magic booster of earlier sets). Same thing will happen with Dragoneye.

Perhaps you ment to say Retail Recommend Price.

Is the end of production thing confirmed ? How will new players begin? Since the Starter kits are made up of Harbinger Minis does this mean there will be a seperate kit to get the die, tiles, rules, counters, etc or will they have starter kits with archfiends or giants in them ?

Seems like if they already stopped making Harbinger then they have all the new players they are going to get which doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Creamsteak]

New start kits released after the Giants set, I'd bet. Just a guess though... 3-4 sets of minis before new starters makes some degree of sense.

 

[Bagpuss]

I believe its been confirmed that Harbinger is no longer in production, however I think I've also seen that the mix of figures for Starters will be remaining in production. Which sort of made wonder if the Starters arn't made from exactly the same mix of figures they have in the boosters.

 

[John Crichton]

Many WotC folks have already stated that their warehouses are full of Harbinger minis and starters. They are just not making any more, assumably because Dragoneye is still how, Archfiends is on the way and Giants of Legend will eat up even more space. They are saying that their supplies of Harbinger should last for some time. I don't have time to scrounge for links but a search of the WotC boards (and here, I believe) should get you what I said.