Clueless...Educate Me About D&D Miniatures.

[Ulric]

I've been playing D&D since the basic blue book, but I know next to nothing about the miniatures and the miniatures game--some of the threads here have gotten me interested. So, you young whippersnappers...educate me. I've got a few questions:

1) How tall are they? I know that some of the miniatures are bigger...a bugbear is bigger than a human fighter, right? But how tall are most of them? An inch and a half...two inches tall?

2) I've been looking on websites. "Booster packs" are 10 or 12 bucks...and "Huge" packs are 18 or 19. What is a "Huge" pack? Does that mean more miniatures in the pack, or miniatures that are bigger in size (for my elderly eyes )?

3) NOTE REALLY A QUESTION. Any other info or general comments...i.e. FAQ type stuff...or "what I wish I knew before I got into miniatures" type comments are appreciated.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I've only just got into them myself so I can't really tell you to much. I can answer question number 2 for you though. A Huge booster is a booster from a set that has huge size miniatures in it. You get 1 huge mini in each booster. So far there have only been 2 Huge sets (out of 9 or 10), Giants of Legend and War of the Dragon Queen. The other minis in the booster are the same size as the minis in other boosters though.

Olaf the Stout

 

[EyeontheMountain]

A medium sized creature mini is about an inch tall.
Small about 1/2 that so really small.
Large are about 3 inches tall, most ofthem.

And there are variations among the different size catagories depending on the monster. Most of the humanoid monsters (orcs, hobgolbins) and such are far far bulkier than the average human or elf.

And the Red Dragon Miniature is great for making characters feel really really small. Taht thing is huge.

The last posters answered #2 .

As for #3 I would think about what you wnatthem for. If you intend to use the smae creature minatures as the encounter, excpet to buy a lot of boosters and never have enough. Ebay has a lot of sets and common packs of the same creature which may be the better way to go. If you jsut wnat enough to run combats (like me) then I would jsut get one of each set out there, or at msot two and you will get an interesting selection.

 

[Nightfall]

Olaf and Eye did a nice job but I will also chime in, Huges are pretty darn big, but the Colossal Red is like a MONSTER. I mean it dwarfs some models I have. You pit that against a normal non D&D mini, they will still be looking up.

 

[Starglim]

I've been playing D&D since the blue box, but I know next to nothing about the miniatures and the miniatures game--some of the threads here have gotten me interested. So, you young whippersnappers...educate me. I've got a few questions:

1) How tall are they? I know that some of the miniatures are bigger...a bugbear is bigger than a human fighter, right? But how tall are most of them? An inch and a half...two inches tall?

2) I've been looking on websites. "Booster packs" are 10 or 12 bucks...and "Huge" packs are 18 or 19. What is a "Huge" pack? Does that mean more miniatures in the pack, or miniatures that are bigger in size (for my elderly eyes )?

3) NOTE REALLY A QUESTION. Any other info or general comments...i.e. FAQ type stuff...or "what I wish I knew before I got into miniatures" type comments are appreciated.

1) In theory they are scaled to 1 inch = 5 feet, so human fighter miniatures should be a bit over an inch tall. I suspect they're sculpted a bit oversize.

2) As others have answered, a Huge pack has one Huge size miniature (a creature that's Huge size in 3.5 stats, 3-6 inches tall on a 2 1/2-inch base) and 8 Small to Medium miniatures. A booster pack has 8 standard size (Small to Large) miniatures.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

1) How tall are they? I know that some of the miniatures are bigger...a bugbear is bigger than a human fighter, right? But how tall are most of them? An inch and a half...two inches tall?

I just measured some of the LG human types. They're about 1 1/4" tall. Note that there are some differences in scale (as not every human is the same size), and figures have been getting a big taller overall.

2) I've been looking on websites. "Booster packs" are 10 or 12 bucks...and "Huge" packs are 18 or 19. What is a "Huge" pack? Does that mean more miniatures in the pack, or miniatures that are bigger in size (for my elderly eyes )?[/QUOTE]

The old huge boosters (the Giants of Legend Set) had 9 figures (the regular 8 figures and one huge one), while the new huge boosters (from War of the Dragon Queen) has only 8 figures total (7 normal ones and 1 huge).

Usually, the boosters contain figures of sizes small - large, with the occasional tiny figure thrown in. Smaller minis aren't made (would be quite a hassle I think). Huges are only available in those huge packs, and larger critters as Icons (no boosters, just a single miniature - so far we have gargantuan Blue and Black dragons, as well as a colossal Red)

3) NOTE REALLY A QUESTION. Any other info or general comments...i.e. FAQ type stuff...or "what I wish I knew before I got into miniatures" type comments are appreciated.

Note the secondary market!

Yes, Wizards sells them in boosters, where you can't choose what minis you get. No, they probably won't sell them separately in blisters, or do any theme packs beyond the Basic Game.

That doesn't mean that you can't get those figures from somewhere, though! There's several online shops (as well as some local gaming stores) that sell those minis as singles. And eBay has tons of figures for sale, many of which are from some very reputable eBay Stores. Rares will be a bit more expensive (and some of those really cool figures like Beholders will fetch quite a price), but you can get commons and uncommons quite cheap.

Commons start at 40 cents and might go up to 1 dollar, and uncomons are probably somewhere between 75 cents and 2 dollars. Of course, you have to pay shipping on top of that (and some demand outrageous shipping costs).

If you're located in the US, the number one eBay store is Auggie's, to be found at

http://stores.ebay.com/Auggies-Games-n-Movies

He charges a flat $3.50 for shipping, and commons start at 29 cents.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Oh, if you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask.

You might also want to visit the Wizards boards for the minis forums. The idiot count is slightly larger there than here, but once you've loaded the ignore list, it's okay there - same as here. You can ask rules questions there and get official answers from the DDM rules guru, Guy Fullerton.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

Also, Paizo sells minis in theme-packs. Like dwarves, where it's six individual minis (one of each), but they're all dwarves. I picked up a few of those, a few goblinoids, etc.

And yes. The colossal great red wyrm is gruesome. It is a CR26 after all.

By the way, a point that hasn't been brought up:

The stat cards include both stats for the D&D minis game as well as the stats for 3.X D&D, including page/book references. So, handy little cheatsheets.

 

[Echohawk]

I see no one has yet pointed out the most dangerous aspect of the D&D minis: Collecting them can be very addictive. I'm quite surprised there isn't some legal requirement to print an appropriate (mental) health warning on each booster...

 

[Sir Elton]

They are mostly useless.