D&D Minis: What's missing most?

[johnsemlak]

Has anyone mentioned more giants? I rememberl ooking around for fire giants and e-bay and seeing that the leader was selling for less than the standard figure. Odd.

Getting in on this late in the game...

Giants and giant types are the biggest hole in my mini collection I want to fill. Ogres, trolls, fire giants, hill giants, etc. They're very difficult to buy as singles.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

What with the uncommon trolls, skullcrusher ogres, and now half-ogre barbarians, I think the lesser giants category is pretty much covered.

I agree that the greater giants (frost, fire, etc.) are still too expensive and/or too difficult to acquire.

 

[skinnydwarf]

I had the same problem. I went to www.popularcollections.com and bought common minis in bulk. Common minis are extraordinarily cheap. Uncommons are still a good deal. Rares can be expensive although still cheaper than buying an entire box of minis you don't really want.

Tzarevitch

Wow. Just, wow. Awesome prices. Thanks for pointing me there!

 

[johnsemlak]

What with the uncommon trolls, skullcrusher ogres, and now half-ogre barbarians, I think the lesser giants category is pretty much covered.

I agree that the greater giants (frost, fire, etc.) are still too expensive and/or too difficult to acquire.

Yes there have been several ogres in previous packs but those are difficult tofind now, and I've missed out on all prvevious ogres. Plus, I'd like to get a bunch of them. I hope to get the half ogre barbarian (is that large, or medium btw?)

 

[Glyfair]

Hence, if the game requires miniatures, then it is WotC's responsibility to provide them.

Indeed, if you look at the history of D&D and miniatures, you'll see that the publisher has rarely provided the miniatures for D&D. In the beginning when D&D was a miniatures game, they didn't provide them. Even when the Battlesystem was being pushed, they weren't providing them. Even when there were D&D miniatures available, they were usually (always?) licensed to another company.

The current system allows them to produce the widest variety of D&D miniatures, for the best price. Without the current system, you probably wouldn't see half the more obscure or niche miniatures that they have. How long do you think it would have taken to see Eberron specific miniatures under the classic miniatures system?

As for providing easily available character miniatures for D&D - why should WotC delve into that market? There are already multiple quality publishers who cater to that market, and many do an outstanding job. WotC is focusing on marketing miniatures using their strengths, creating miniatures that tie into their Intellectual Property that others can't deal in.

At the same time, they've created a very playable miniatures game that helps to sell the miniatures as well. They have two markets buying the same miniatures. This also helps create a secondary market, which helps the RPG players more than the miniature players.

 

[Green Knight]

Giants and giant types are the biggest hole in my mini collection I want to fill. Ogres, trolls, fire giants, hill giants, etc. They're very difficult to buy as singles.

Huge Red Dragons are what I want to get my hands on. Four or five would be fantastic. I'd be willing to DM a campaign just for the express purpose of getting to the adventure where I can use those dragons at last. The look on the faces of the players as I start putting down one Huge Red Dragon figure after another would be MORE then enough pay-off.

Though you gotta be careful. I can imagine a player with a heart condition having a coronary after seeing that arrayed against his PC.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Wardrums doesn't have 8 large uncommons (AFAIK), but instead has a guaranteed commander in every booster.

Doesn't have to be instead. They did away with the large uncommon slot in Underdark, so chances are that we'll have 8 or so large uncommons in Wardrums. The only thing that changes is that we have 8 uncommon commanders, which make up one of the uncommon slots (in Underdark, all the uncommon commanders were in the same slot, too, but there were not enough to fill it out).

So wardrums might have 8 large uncommons, one or two of them a commander (meybe even more of them), which are together with the medium (and small) commanders in one slot, and the other slots are made up by the other uncommons - from tiny to large.

I do need a Troll;

Like the uncommon Troll Slasher from Angelfire?

I don't need a half teifling/half dragon rougue, I need a halfling rogue.

You mean the common Halfling Sneak from Underdark?

In this, the selection of figures is geared towards the mini game, we need an edition geared towards the roleplay game. Keep it random, just change the flavor of minis to fit a campaign.

The figures are geared towards the minis game, and they keep improving that.

The community said they wanted a troll that is easier to get than the Harbinger Troll, they gave us an uncommon Troll. Now, DDM players don't care about whether they get a troll or another large uncommon, this was done for us.

They also gave us an uncommon Ogre, they gave us a common drow (for those who wanted more drow), along with several other drow (one being a mounted mini). We got the Balor, the Iron Golem and Stone Giant (the last core Golems/Giants we needed). They gave us the Copper Dragon (last core True Dragon we missed), we got a new Troglodyte (or rather two, one which is common and looks just like your average Trog looks like, the other an uncommon commander that is something non-standard), we got the Half-Orc Paladin (to have another half-orc in a non-traditional role), we got the Duergar Champion (more Duergar). We got the Satyr, and while we didn't get a Dryad, we got the Nentyar Hunter, which will suffice in a pinch. We got elementals - large and uncommon! We cot a couple of female spellcasters (Wizard Tactician and Earth Shugenja), We got our first Swarm, and a common spider, too. We got a couple of minis that can be used as non-combatants. We got one mounted figure in each set.

Generally, they fill the gaps in the outsider section, with several new archons, an eladrin, more devils and demons, more slaadi, genies.

In one of the next sets, after they got clear plastic to work, we'll get several figures that were held up due to this, like the Gelatinous Cuge, probably the large Water Elemental (and we'll probably get another Fire Elemental, too)

I do think that they try their best to please the roleplayers.

I think you mean this
4 PCs and 12 monsters (including a Black Dragon) and.......is there an echo in here?

May I add that the Black Dragon rocks?

Am I the only one here that's wanted a Digester since D&D Minis first came out?

Nope. It's in the core rules, so I want it. (I might make an exception for that phasm unless they can do something with it)

How am I supposed to provide 4-6 players with a reasonable representation of their party and a normal set of foes to fight?

Well, the Basic Game makes a passable attempt: (Half) Arcanist, Human Fighter, Halfling Rogue, Dwarf Cleric. Of course, they could be used for other classes, and in some cases, races. The enemies (orcs, kobolds, a dragon, assorted other monsters) is also a nice selection.

It all depends on the party, of course. If you want to account for every possible character you could create in D&D, you have to look not only in DDM, but also in all other mini lines out there, and even then, many characters will lack a perfect representation.

Or there is the option of the Basic Game and throwing out the board and directions and all of the rest of the game and paying all that money just for the minis inside the box.

And the dice. They may not be the prettiest dice out there, or the most expensive (I picked up one set of d20 system dice recently, for 1€), but they are good to teach newcomers the dice. "Roll a d20 - that's the orange one"). And those boards aren't bad, either. Good for mapping out dungeons.

Because you're not the market WoTC is targeting. You're (RPG player) a secondary market. The primary market is the people collecting them for collecting sake. When that changes, perhaps their market goals will change.

Roleplayers make up a sizable part of the buyers here. They don't dedicate as much effort exclusively to roleplayers because there is no need to: Roleplayers want nice sculpts, but so do the collectors and DDM players. Roleplayers want a nice selection of minis, but the others also want varied sets. Then, there's the DDM game, which roleplayers don't care about - they just want nice figures, they don't care about the stats.

I guess I just don't take it for a given that D&D requires minis to be playable.

I agree. D&D might be highly recommended to be played with a battlegrid, but that doesn't mean miniatures - you can just use the grid provided in the DMG and use pieces of paper, or poker chips, or beer caps, or anything else. Figures from board games.

I still maintain that any creature that is in the MM should have a mini available...yes, even the Digester, the arrowhawk and their ilk.

Same as me. I want complete Monster Manual coverage as fast as possible. They can take their time with different versions of the same monster (small, medium, large, huge, gargantuan, colossal monstrous spider, dragons in all sizes and colours), and of course everything larger than huge will be really problematic (though we will receive one gargantuan and one colossal mini each year starting next year), huge ones will not be as frequent as the rest, and everything smaller than tiny will be really hard to do.

But the rest should receive preferred handling. Until we have all that there is in the MM, core monsters should make up a sizable part of the sets.

In Underdark, I counted 18 newcomers, not counting those who could work as proxies or those we had but in early sets.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The hydra! I'm painting up one now for my Shackled City Game as a cyrohydra (blue and lighter blue scales).

Wish there was one already in the set.

And I love the little map bits from Piazo but would love some 3-D versions.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The hydra!...Wish there was one already in the set.

They won't do a hydra any time soon I'd wager: They're huge, so it has to be in a huge set, and the next huge set already has a Huge Aspect of Tiamat, which you could pass off as a Draconic Hydra.

 

[Belen]

A box with a whole bunch of obscure monsters/races and maybe one/two figures they could use to make up an average adventuring party.

You can buy the D&D Basic Game and get 4 heroes and some normal low-level monsters, plus a medium black dragon for $20. This is a much better buy than the DDM starter set if you play RPGs.