Chiming in on the D&D minis (merged with "anyone buying the new Mini's?")

buzz

Adventurer
Chiming in on the D&D minis

I finally got a chance to see the new minis this past weekend (a guy in my Saturday game bought a truckload of them). For anyone who cares, I wanted to offer this little criticism:

I can't tell any of them apart.

Yes, I do wear glasses, and no, I'm not color-blind. :D

Color, though, is definitely thre issue. All the minis are fashioned out of black plastic, so any bits on a given mini that need to be black are, I'm assuming, simply areas that are left unpainted, e.g., all the bases. Other than black, I noticed that almost all of the minis use the same shades of dark brown and silver. E.g., the brown of the commoner's tunic is the same brown of the bugbear's fur which is the same brown of anything that's supposed to be leather. Other colors seem to be pretty rare.

Ergo, once my friend had deployed all of the minis he bought, I found myself looking out at an indistinct sea of black, brown, and silver. And all colors seem to have a very dark cast to them, possibly from the black plastic on which they're painted.

I dunno. I had no problem with the quality of the plastic or the paint job or the casts, but the lack of any distinct colors put me off. No matter what each mini was supposed to be, they pretty much all looked the same to me. Sort of like a sea of little green army men. If I were going to use them, I'd at the least have to paint the bases different colors.

Anyway, has anyone else noticed this?

For now, I'm thinking I'll stick with counters from Firey Dragon (mounted on mini bases to give them some heft).
 
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buzz said:
I can't tell any of them apart.

For now, I'm thyink I'm going to stick with counters from Firey Dragon (mounted on mini bases to give them some heft).

Agreed completely.

Minis look Ok....just ok.

Have not gotten the Fiery Dragon stuff yet, but am
ear-marking money for them soon. :)
 

To be honest I always use the Warhammer figures and from what I have seen of the D&D ones I'm not tempted to change. Whilst not bad they remind me too much of the plastic soldiers I had as a kid.
 


I was tempted to get some, but decided not to on principle. Aside from supporting the very nice (and cheaper) counters from FDP, the more I read of 3.5, the more I don't like this "minis are a must" direction the rules are going, so I won't support it.
 

Psion said:
I don't like this "minis are a must" direction the rules are going, so I won't support it.

Agreed. I run a message-based game, where turn-based combat is downplayed and minis are somewhat less than useless. I did buy a couple of kuo-toan minis, though (my FLGS opens packs and sells individual minis), to see how they'd hold up in a saltwater aquarium. :D
 

For the record, I have no issues with 3.5's emphasis on minis. I found the revised combat chapter a lot clearer than the original, and it has had no effect on my group's decisions to use minis or not. My friends' incredible fetishes for minis, Dwarven Forge, and MageKnight are a much bigger factor. :)

I also hate to be a griper; I generally don't like it when people rip on products in the forums. Still, I was really interested in the D&D minis as a pre-painted alternative, since I don't paint much. Actually seeing them, however, has cooled my interest. If I have to look out over a sea of black and brown, I'm never going to be able to tell who's who.
 

I don't see a color problem. There's blues, reds, silver on weapons, whites at various points, other colors... in other words, I have no problem at all telling them apart. I have a starter set and two expansion packs to get a fair number of figures to use at the gaming shop, where the counters I prefer to use might be lost or picked up, and I generally like what I see. I'll probably shop for individual things I need from this point on.
 

And now an unpopular opinion...

As a DM who wants to spend his time working on his game and not painting minis, these are great. I dropped over a hundred bucks on them this weekend, and I'm satisfied with what I got. I've even traded some minis with another guy at the store, that was a lot of fun. Yes, they aren't super high quality and in some cases are low quality. But when I want to drop a bunch of orcs on my PCs, now I have tons of them - not counters, not pennies or dice, not unpainted or half-painted metal minis, but orcs.

Thumbs up for the plastic minis.
 

Psion said:
I was tempted to get some, but decided not to on principle. Aside from supporting the very nice (and cheaper) counters from FDP, the more I read of 3.5, the more I don't like this "minis are a must" direction the rules are going, so I won't support it.

Preach it, preach it!

Put away your battleboards! Put away your minis! Accept the abstract and get away from miniatures gaming! :D

Okay, okay, I know I am extreme on this one, but, as I have said before, I got into D&D to get away from miniatures gaming. Let my brother field his armies of Seven Years War and American Civil War troops; I shall deal with mental images and stories of individual heroes! ;)
 

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