DDM Line Axed

[MatthewJHanson]

I'm sad to see them go. I too think that the death of the skirmish game lead to the slow death of the line. I remember when they announced they were getting rid of it, they said that few people bought the minis only for skirmish, so they did not think it would be a big deal.

While I bought minis for roleplaying and skirmish both, I bought more when they had the skirmish game. Back then I bought boosters, because anything could end up in a new band. Now I just by singles of the minis I need for the adventure I'm running.

Now that it's axed though, I tempted to by a couple of cases of the recent sets before the prices go up.

 

[shadzar]

I hope Peter Lee stil has a job.

He was moved to board games I think, so he might be designing game pieces or old-school unpainted plastic minis to go in board games.

I stopped buying DDM long ago when 4th edition was the model and the game was killed. The random method got old for me with Mage Knight and for D&D it wasnt helpful since the most needed minis were often rares as a money grab to force people to buy more boosters and have tons of crap you had no real use for for RPGs and only slight use for the skirmish game.

I didnt even know they were still around until I saw the behold set, but I also wouldn't pay that kind of price for 4 plastic minis. I only paid about $20 each for the big Mage Knight dragons, and they were a lot better looking (well Venomous Shadow Dragon is licking its own butt, but still...) and just as usable for D&D.

Maybe they will move to more "army men" type of miniature line where you get the old gray plastic bag of orcs of the right size, so you can buy what you need without the cost of them being painted and you can do a simple paintjob yourself if you need for the mass monsters.

Many other games do fine selling those type of miniatures for them and people love them, and with the board games division they will likely need them so moving that direction isnt really that far of a stretch.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Here was what I secretly wished for: Essential X - Y Number of X minis
For example, Essential Elementals - 5 different Elemental minis.

(a) Would you have been willing to pay 3x as much for your minis? WotC used the random booster pack model in order to make the line viable. Non-randomized miniature lines with the same breadth of selection as WotC's lose a lot of money because of the "dead figs" that get produced without sufficient demand.

In order for the line to exist, the customers have to pay for those costs.

(b) They actually made your elemental set.

(c) There was (and is) a robust singles market for the miniatures. It's ridiculously easy to find large lots of cheaply priced orc miniatures. (For example.)

WotC, because of their slavish devotion to producing DDM as a Magic the Gathering style game lost a chance to capture my money.

There are several reasons I've not purchased singles on-line
1. I had access to a huge collection at one point and had no need to purchase singles at that time.
2. Since that time, we've been playing Mage and I've had no need for them.
3. I've been holding out hope for Legendary Encounters - Sadly this seems like a lost cause at this point. I purchased several from their first wave released many moons ago

So, in short, there was absolutely no way that WotC actually could have "captured your money".

 

[Votan]

I somewhat find this dubious - why not just buy singles then?

Transaction costs. If you don't have a seller with a wide selection locally then you have to go to places like eBay or on-line retailers to pick out the minatures you want. My online merchant experiences have been mixed, I have been impressed with Amazon but smaller vendors have been a tad trickier.

 

[Herschel]

I love my DDM. Heck, they and the the skirmish game brought me back as a D&D customer and got me together with (directly or indirectly) the people I game with these days outside of the group I run for my son and his friends. Yes, I have a few thousand already but this last set was mighty nice. The re-based Heroscape minis were also something I picked up a few of. This will save me cash though, a decent chunk of it.

I guess this means I can finish my re-organizing project and not worry about expansion. My sterilite "shoe"-sized "Demonic" and "Hellish/Aspects" boxes have absolutely no more room and I already had to split "skeletal" from the rest of my undead for space reasons as well as my human "Soldiers" vs. Elf/Dwarf varieties.

Still, I would have loved more Genasi, Deva, Genasi, Shardmind, Genasi and even get a few Wilden minis. Plus, more mounted minis. Maybe we'll get a set of dragon-riding minis. That would rock mightily.

 

[Herschel]

Transaction costs.

Are only an issue if you want to buy a couple of minis, especially commons. In that case, you're even smaller than a small fry and you've entered the "Convenience Store Zone" of pricing. But if you buy a decent number oif figures from a good seller (like Auggies or any number of others) the transaction cost is pretty reasonable.

 

[Herschel]

3. I've been holding out hope for Legendary Encounters

I'm sorry, but that was a pipe dream. The chance of a company producing a robust, varied, large line and distribute it in a manner and at a cost for a gamer to get exactly what they want, when they want it at a cheap price is less than getting struck by lightning TWICE while winning the lottery.

 

[shadzar]

Are only an issue if you want to buy a couple of minis, especially commons. In that case, you're even smaller than a small fry and you've entered the "Convenience Store Zone" of pricing. But if you buy a decent number oif figures from a good seller (like Auggies or any number of others) the transaction cost is pretty reasonable.

The problem being detailed also said online retailer, who, likewise as local store may not, have a large enough selection of what you want so buying in bulk to save costs are viable when the bulk amount would be things you dont want, or they dont have enough of what you do want to be able to buy in bulk, so have to buy form multiple places.

When HeroScape got a bit big, people were selling repainted MageKnight for amounts that would make the new paint job actually lose money, but the prices were good for HeroScape players for minis and they were on average $1 max for any and some of the uniques/rares were even 25 cents, just so people could get rid of them repainted or not taking the los to reclaim space in their homes or storage.

When older DDM minis can achieve those prices across the board and the supply is high enough and demand low enough, then maybe online retailers will have enough for most people left looking to get them in bulk as was done for MageKnight, but the demand for D&D minis wont be that low ever, and with new minis coming out, the matching scale(this wa always questionable but i digress) will keep older ones at a premium on the secondary markets and the supply will remain low except for the minis nobody ever wanted anyway. Those that were in every booster for the set, and only barely useful for the skirmish game to begin with....

Also people still play the game itself in places, which means for the game, the minis are still bought on secondary markets which makes two competing consumer basis to get them as well which cuts the supply down to make the ones most people might need as mising from being able to get enough in bulk to make it worth it for some.

Thankfully I got lucky with some on eBay and have a good deal of things I like, but many minis are still not affordable at the secondary market collection piece prices.

Speaking of, anyone want a sealed set of Mage Knight Alpha Rebellion, or about 100 DDM goblin adepts?*

(*This is not an ad, but a joke to express the point of how a large supply doesnt provide the variety of enough things people would want.)

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

(a) Would you have been willing to pay 3x as much for your minis? WotC used the random booster pack model in order to make the line viable. Non-randomized miniature lines with the same breadth of selection as WotC's lose a lot of money because of the "dead figs" that get produced without sufficient demand.

Yes, I'll pay for quality.

So, in short, there was absolutely no way that WotC actually could have "captured your money".

Absolutely WotC can capture my money. As I said in my first post, I purchased three of the four dragon minis they produced. I love them (and I laid out a good bit of change to get the Colossal Red Dragon). If they produced a Green Dragon (to complete the set), I'd probably break down and buy the White Dragon to have all 5 Chromatics.

The Gigantic Dragon line was an excellent product. Multiple high quality, iconic, miniatures. I considered buying Orcus, but ultimately decided against it. I did not like the model (the reason I've not purchased the Gigantic White Dragon) and feel that Orcus doesn't offers nearly the mileage in game as the dragons. I'm still considering the beholder package (again, not nearly as common as Dragons are, but they do show up more then Orcus).

The theme here is that I knew what I was (or wasn't) buying. You can sell me orcs even if I don't know precisely what every orc in the box looks like. I know I'm getting orcs. Same for Undead, Elves, Abberations, etc. You can sell me on random minis if they have a strong theme tying them together.

Can I buy from the secondary market. Sure. I haven't though. Why? Several reasons:

• Previous access to a large collection (though this is no longer the case)
• Hoping for Legendary Encounters to get it's act together
• Shipping cost if I'm not buying in bulk
• Not knowing what secondary sites are reputable

 

[Oryan77]

Agreed. Between Troll & Toad and RPG Locker, I have managed to acquire a nice little collection without purchasing any random packs. The cost of many of the commons and uncommons is very reasonable.

Thanks for mentioning my store (RPG Locker). I PMed you about giving you a 10% discount for the mention.

Does anyone know how the metal minis lines like Reaper have been in business for so long? Don't they still come out with new miniatures? Do that many more people still buy metal minis over plastic painted ones?

Well, I saw this coming. I'm still not sure why they canceled the skirmish game but kept the minis line going. It seemed like a lot of people still played the skirmish game. From a singles seller perspective, it sure did seem like a lot less minis were selling once the skirmish game was gone. I won't pretend to know what goes on with WotC's business side of the minis line, but it seemed to be doing very well right up until they canceled skirmishing.

I wonder if this means it will be harder to supply these minis to gamers. I'd imagine D&D will still get new player that would like to use actual D&D minis for their game. It can be hard to keep out of production minis in stock as it is.