Did Prepainted Minis Get You Into Minis?

[carmachu]

With the ease of prepainted minis, and their initial low price back in the day... (something like $7.99?), there were a lot of buy ins.

Did anyone find themselves going to unpainted metal figs after a while?

I've always mixed and matched. I have thousands of unpainted figs scattered in boxes and enjoyed the ease of use of the prepainted figs.

Never stopped with the unpainted ones though because I enjoy painting them, and there are a lot of new companies out there keep doing awesome stuff.

Judging by the DM's collection the early ones were better painted. Mid to late prepainted minis totall suck monkey you know whats in terms of painting. Its like no effort.

I've always used unpainted minis then painted them up:whether I did it or had someone do it for me for money. I've been using (unpainted) minis for both wargaming and roleplaying for many years.

Prepainted are a bit easier, but your very limited to whats out there. Our DM turns to me for much more unique minis for a variety of things that prepainted dont have and cant handle. Too many awesome minis in the inpainted line not to.

There's nothing in prepainted that can compare to this:

Ultraforge Plaguedemon

among other things.

 

[carmachu]

Blue Table Painting

I haven't used 'em myself and they ain't cheap.

But I use their gallery for inspiration on my own minis.

I HAVE used them and they are great. They can do anything you want, and fit things in a budget.

Well worth it.

 

[El Mahdi]

Thank for the links NewJeffCT and JoeGKushner.

Sorry for the temporary thread de-rail.

Carry on.

 

[Stormtower]

Yes, indeed.

I was short of funds and time earlier in life, so never got into painting lead or pewter. The low price and easy access to DDM got me started putting representative minis on the table (before that, I used glass beads and semiprecious rocks affixed to foamcore tabs). I love DDM and have over 3,200 plastic minis from the line - I am an obsessive completist and have at least one of every model released from DDM - but still over time I grew dissatisfied by the limited number of PC models in particular.

That lead me into discussions with a friend, who introduced me to Reaper minis and I was off to the races. I find that painting puts me in a light alpha state, very calm and timeless. I can paint and paint, and then I find two or three hours have passed and all the tension is gone from my limbs.

My finished pieces are not award-winning, but they look good and I am improving my techniques as I go. I've had to learn to let them be "less than perfect" but I think my paintjobs stack up nicely against the prepainted stuff from DDM.

So, in short, DDM is entirely responsible for my entry into the more traditional metals/paints mini hobby.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Like so many others I started buying and using miniatures; some 25 years ago. Like so many others' my painting skills leave a lot to be desired. There's a host of half-painted or unpainted minis lying around and collecting dust.

Minitaure usage in my games was sporadically at best. Using unpainted minis to represent characters and monsters is not a hit, using painted ones only marginally better, because of the low number of them.

Things changed with the advent of WotC's prepainted minis. With maybe 200 minis in my collection I can use them for a lot of situations without straining credibility too much ("Ooh, this ... thing is a what?"). For our 3rd edition games we used minis for maybe 50-60% of the encounters, in 4e I have yet to see an encounter without minis.

 

[Nebulous]

We played without minis for years and years, and i finally started using little plastic medieval soldiers (sans a base, we used clay to pin them to the battle board), and then we upgraded to a Lego Jar-Jar Binks as the villain. Every villain. In every game. I got so sick of Jar Jar (and the ensuing jokes) that i finally went on Ebay and bought about 200 metal minis that came in two cushioned crates.

And that started my addiction.

Since then i've purchased hundreds and hundreds of metal and plastic minis, and i like them both. I much prefer metal minis for characters, and i'm a fairly good painter, not great though. Recently i've enjoyed making my own monsters and plopping them on the board, which is satisfying in its own way, although i don't think the players really care.

 

[frankthedm]

I must revise my statement. I did get my start with minis from plastics, not discount bin metal minis. I now believe my mini hoarding habit is a subconscious attempt to recollect these long lost games from my early childhood . At least i still have the Forest of Doom's green dragon.

 

[Herschel]

Got the red box in about 1980 and dabbled a little with my cousin and sister in D&D but didn't get to play much until college. Didn't start using minis yet, although I had seen some Grenadier and Ral Partha ones. It was much later in college before I started painting.

DDM got me in to the skirmish game when I bought a few packs and went to trade though and was a main catalyst in getting me to make my first trip to Gen Con.

 

[diaglo]

No, we used minis before there was any pre-painted.

this. since 1971 for me.

 

[Wombat]

Nope.

My first minis were from Jack Scruby's Toy Soldier Factory (Cambria, CA) in 1972. And they were still made with lead.

I never liked the pre-painted ones. Often they were poorly painted, and often with strange colour choices. I'll stick to painting my own, when & if I need them.