Future of D&D Miniatures

[kaomera]

Just for gathering info and random speculation - what would people feel about a slightly less rare pack once a year? Like an orc pack one year, an undead pack the next, etc. In my mind this would be alongside the yearly randomly packed release. A lot of us have a crap-ton of minis already, but would you be interested in some of these more mundane packs?

If they look good, and especially if they are thematically linked, I'd buy them. I have a bunch of Orc DDMs, but few of them look particularly good (IMO some are hard to recognize as Orcs) and they in no way look like a unified tribe / gang. They're still fine for marking what is where, but so is any other vaguely-humanoid mini.

 

[Primal]

Trust me, you can. I currently have at least 80 orcs, of at least 20 different poses, and I've sold a lot of my Common minis, including dozens of orcs. A new collector may not have enough -- or may want more -- but -- again, trust me -- if you've been buying by the case since Harbinger, you can have "too many" common monsters.

I don't know how many packs you've purchased, but that afore-mentioned friend of mine has hundreds of minis and even his collection wouldn't cover some of the encounters I typically run. Or maybe he has just been lucky with his purchases, as he doesn't have a lot of the same ones? I don't know. But 80 orcs? I would buy them any time -- as I said, I would have wanted at least 60 orcs a couple of sessions ago, and preferably of at least 6 different poses. My next session will feature 10 zombies, rogues and monks of several different races, gargoyles, direguards and assassin vines. After that, I'll be running a *huge* battle against orcs and goblins, and I'd once again need several dozens of each. At some point of time I know I'll be needing a similar number of lizardfolk (again, preferably of different poses). I like to use a variety of monsters in an adventure, but quite often I also use groups of the same monster -- therefore I'd need at least a couple of each mini, and occasionally a large number of the most common/iconic monsters.

 

[buddhafrog]

Well, the Beholder pack is going to be pretty rare - on par with the From the Vaults from Magic, so you might be disappointed if you're not on the ball this time around. We running that delicate balance of trying to get it into a lot of people's hands while making it a must have/slightly hard to find item.

Just for gathering info and random speculation - what would people feel about a slightly less rare pack once a year? Like an orc pack one year, an undead pack the next, etc. In my mind this would be alongside the yearly randomly packed release. A lot of us have a crap-ton of minis already, but would you be interested in some of these more mundane packs?

ABSOLUTELY. I'm a reborn D&D'er, DM'ing after a 20 year layoff. I've bought a couple hundred mostly cheaper mini's this year all by the single on the 2nd hand market. This indirectly helps WotC. For the amount I spent, if I were to have bought the boosters I would've ended up with so little of what I needed compared to what I ended up getting.

Now that I have most of my essentials filled, I will buy one or two of most new boosters just for the fun factor. However, it just isn't too cost effective to buy the boosters. While I did buy Icingdeath on the 2nd hand market, most specialty minis like the beholders set are just far too costly to be practical. Fun and cool, yes, but unpractical.

However, if WotC put together a yearly theme set, much more common than the beholders, this would certainly be considered by me. If my budget were limited, I would likely buy this set before any booster. For example, an Orc set that presented the Orcs from a single tribe would be awesome, with one leader/sorcerer, one leader/fighter, 1 archer, 1 spy/thief, four grunts. Undead, goblins, drow, elf tribe, city guards, paladin temple knights, etc. I'd probably need the minis, and if not, if they were cool and a collective tribe/group, I'd certainly find a fun way to add it to one of my campaigns.

... side note here, imo the Player Handbook Heroes packs are generally much less usable/interesting and poorer designed than the PC minis of the earlier sets. I haven't seen other people mention this, but do you all agree?

 

[Wayside]

Just for gathering info and random speculation - what would people feel about a slightly less rare pack once a year? Like an orc pack one year, an undead pack the next, etc. In my mind this would be alongside the yearly randomly packed release. A lot of us have a crap-ton of minis already, but would you be interested in some of these more mundane packs?

I've never bought minis of any kind for any game, but I would buy these. Well, not orcs, but zombies, demons, etc.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

... side note here, imo the Player Handbook Heroes packs are generally much less usable/interesting and poorer designed than the PC minis of the earlier sets. I haven't seen other people mention this, but do you all agree?

One of my FLGSs has been trying to sell off their 4Ed minis, so I got a decent look at them.

The PHB ones? NOT impressive at all.

 

[Stormonu]

I was taking a trip down memory lane last night when I (finally) ran across some pictures of the first two sets of (metal) miniatures I ever had. It was the Grenadier 5004 Tome of Spells (2nd version) and the Grenadier 5003 Woodland Adventurer's set. Both sets had about 20 minis in it.

If WotC could present a mixed set of monsters (and possibly heroes) like this, where the monsters are visible, perhaps - and of modern miniature quality prepainted plastic, I'd really love it. I think it would make a great "starter set", as that was essentially what it turned out to be for me.

Now, if I could find the (Revel?) D&D model sets, I'd be in heaven. There were two model sets - one an above ground castle under siege and the second a multi-room dungeon filled with creatures (the dungeon reminded me of the layout in Descent into the Depths, with a big central area and many side caverns. I think it the castle was supposed to represent the upper works of Castle Greyhawk). The two connected to create a pretty big diorama. It had scads of plastic "model" minis and was great as a diorama/play set/mini set.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Trust me, you can. I currently have at least 80 orcs, of at least 20 different poses, and I've sold a lot of my Common minis, including dozens of orcs. A new collector may not have enough -- or may want more -- but -- again, trust me -- if you've been buying by the case since Harbinger, you can have "too many" common monsters.

Oh my yes. Last year I sold over 1000 miniatures for about $2000 and the vast bulk of them were commons of staple monsters like this. I still have about 2000 minis left but still buy the occasional single online. I've been in it since Harbinger and getting rid of those minis really helped get my collection to a manageable size.

As far as theme sets go I would love to see something like smaller packs of Dragonborn, Goliaths and some of the other 'out there' PC races. Call it the 'misfits' and put in a DB, Goliath, Tiefling, Shardmind and Wilden!

 

[Shadowslayer]

Sell em unpainted. Or with one or 2 drybrush steps to bring the details out. Then sell them by the bag.

I was down at the LFGS and I saw bags of Zombies, bags of Clowns and bags of Wolves for the Zombies!! boardgame. 100 of them for 10 bucks. I thought if this company can do that, why can't WOTC do that with bags of 20 or so Kobolds, Orcs, Gnolls etc

That way the guys who like to paint can paint them, and the guys who can't be bothered can use them as is.

Even this way it still beats tokens.

Just thinking outside the box. WOTC has molds for umpteen sets already, why not still use them...just differently.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Alternatively, go to sale of individual minis of their entire line, over the 20 or so sets of them.

How could a store possibly sell such minis? Nobody could afford to stock and keep track of that many units! No store could ever do it.

True. Only one "store" could do that. WotC's online store. One central warehouse ships individual minis in a bundle of arbitrary size upon request. $1 for small/medium - $2 for a large - $3 for a huge. You can't make money at that price? I doubt that highly. Or #1 a common, $1.50-2.50 for UC, 3-5 for rare. Whatever. Don't get greedy - and provided the existing mftring assets can be utilized on a not quite as aggressive scale as done to date? You'll make money.

This does go hard against some primal elements in what has made WotC its fortune: distro through retail and random packaging. But that model only works to a point -- and it appears that point has been reached.

Selling individually binned minis directly to the customer allows WotC to have perfect information over inventory, allows WotC to sell directly and make all profits concerned, and actually leverages the internet directly to WotC's advantage in terms of sales. And you can't pirate miniautres very easily, can you?

You could tie the ability to order directly as a perk to being a DND insider subscriber. That also allows you to leverage that information database as part of your computerized ordering system. My guess is that will get you more than a few subscribers all of a sudden, too.

If collectors complain - remedy that with this simple "free" step: don't sell the cards - just the minis.

What? WotC's distribution and retail partners are going to become upset? Upset WotC is leveraging existing moulds and mftring capability selling a product directly that they can't stock anyways? I doubt that.

Selling direct hasn't hurt Michael Dell.

I expect there are a tens of thousands of hardcore gamers, regardless of versions of the game they play, that can be enticed to part with multiple hindreds of dollars without any difficulty to purchase such a product in that manner.

Something to think about.

 

[Mark]

I would love an themed pack like this. With the obvious caveat, "depending on how it's done".

Don't forget cost. The best way to screw up this concept would be to overprice it and then claim it doesn't work because no one bought it at the high prce point. Piles of orcs (etc.) has been something people have screamed for since day one (check older DDM threads on EN World going back for half a dozen years or more) but if it is overpriced it would be better to not bother rather than to blame the market for a pricing snafu. Currently, I am using Bag O' Zombies (Skeletons, etc.) for tons of undead and SW minis for old school orcs in quantity.

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