fed up with mini randomness...back to counters? (teeny-tiny rant)

[Droogie]

Ok, so I pop open a new pack of Giants of Legend and I'm thrilled to get a frost giant. I look at the bottom and it turns out he's rare.

Okay, so I guess I can forget about having an encounter with more than one frost giant. Sure, maybe I can trade for one or buy one online. But why does preparing my game have to be so much work? Why must I now pay 20 bucks for a piece of plastic? I was excited that WotC could supply me with dozens of cheap minis - just not the ones I need.

Someone needs to start a competing product line. Someone needs to mass produce monsters and cannon-fodder creatures the same way they make army men. They don't even need to be painted.

"Bag o' Undead"

"Box o' Goblins"

"The Incredible Pouch of Vicious, Giant, Man-eating Rats"

"Assorted Giants". $3.99 a bucket.

I wanna pick up a copy of Fiery Dragon's digital counter collection. Is it out yet? The website says August, but I didn't see it on sale.

 

[jester47]

I have found that counters are the best way to go. Even if it is just a square that you cut out of index card that says "Giant" on it. Minis are nice, but if you are just keeping track of tactics, all you need is a set of tacttiles, some dry erase markers, scissors and some index cards. Minis are too expensive unless you are using army men.

Aaron.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Someone needs to start a competing product line. Someone needs to mass produce monsters and cannon-fodder creatures the same way they make army men. They don't even need to be painted.

Why do you suppose nobody's done it yet?

I like D&D miniatures, but I have a similar issue: I don't understand why nobody has produced full-color monster cards yet. 5" by 7" glossy cardstock, illustration on the front, stats on the back. I'd buy them in a second. I've considered making them myself, but the expense in the absense of mass-production is prohibitive.


Jeff

P.S. Since your solo Frost Giant won't be doing you any good, I'll be happy to give you 10 or 12 Common minis of your choice for it.

 

[The Goblin King]

Minis are nice but I have come to the conclusion that they are not worth it to me. I'm sure the cost:fun ratio is way better for others but I just can't keep up with any mini game for very long. After this last time I swore off minis for a while and all collectable games forever.

 

[niolo]

A long time ago TSR produced 3x5 cards with 4/c illo on one side and stats on the other. I still have some of them... That would be a good idea. Plot points, side-treks, magic items, PCs all on a 3x5 card to be filed in a box and used as quick reference. I tried to compile my own "box o DM goodness" but alas never finished.

 

[RustyHalo]

I have a pile of inexpensive counters that I bought online @ www.dragonscalecounters.com. I've been using them for more than a year. They are full-color; and because they are made of durable plastic, you can use wet-erase markers to number them. The little art on them mirrors the illustrations in the Monster Manual. I have a whole knot of gnolls, orcs, undead, kuo-toa, sahuagin, vermin, and other stuff. They have gargantuan-sized dragons too, for example. They were produced 3.0 compliant, so some of the sizes for large critters are not updated for 3.5 (if that matters to you).

I highly recommend them. They are having a sale right now. You can get their mega-pack (300 counters!) for $20.00 delivered.

While stopping in at my FLGS this week, I saw a bag of 100 3d zombies for $10.00. I guess they were initially designed for the game "Zombies" but would work just fine for d20 tabletop. The advantage of the flat counters, however, is that you can NUMBER them individually.

Hope this helps!

 

[GrayIguana]

First a kudos to your icon. Clint rocks.

Second, I agree on the disappointment area. I've bought two "Giants" packs and one dragon-eye pack. I've got a couple things that I like, but quite a few things that I would never use. I'm also a little leary about dropping much more money on something that I'm not sure I will be happy about. If I get another Warforged Titan or "dude with a shell on his back", or "Blue", I'll scream. Then again I really would like a cloud giant.

Ditto on the mass produced commons. Ever try to look into who makes those army men? Not much info except for made in Taiwan or China.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Call me an iconoclast or a heretic, but once I have the stats, I don't care if I have the particular mini in question.

That is, were I in your position, once I had the stats for 1 frost giant, I would have no problem zeroxing the stats to have a multiple frost giant encounter.

As for what I would use as the mini for the other frost giants...all those lead and pewter giant minis ("giant minis"- OXYMORON ALERT!!!) I have been collecting over the years.

 

[Ry]

I can't even figure this 1" = 5 foot square mini thing out. I find that even with my dining room table, my players were running off from each other, or we'd have to redraw the whole map, very often, and I often couldn't get a whole dungeon level onto the chessex map (I've got the 3 by 4 footer).

Our solution? We got a 1/2" dowel and a 1" dowel, and we sliced them into about a hundred little pieces. This gave us minis that are 5'=1/2", and everything seems to fit. I'd love to be using minis and counters, but I just find the scale issues are far easier to handle when we shrink it down. I just need to learn how to paint with a really fine brush, so I can at least make little faces or something on the little pieces of wood (currently they're just numbered).

Has anybody out there tried this, or had any luck with buying counter collections and modifying the PDF printing size to get smaller minis?

 

[Conaill]

if you want a "Bag o' Undead", or "Box o' Goblins"... just buy single D&D minis online! There's *plenty* of commons that go for anywhere from 50 cents to a quarter or even less per mini. In fact, thanks to the D&D minis (and thus thanks in a large part to their randomised nature), there has *never* before been so such a wide selection of single, extremely cheap, prepainted minis.

Don't like the randomness? Don't buy the random packs then! Buy the cheap singles. And don't complain the rares and some of the uncommons are too expensive to buy as singles... nobody's *forcing* you to buy them. Whether you use them for roleplaying or for the minis game, you're still better *with* the D&D minis available than without.