Future of D&D Miniatures

[MerricB]

I would say the number of minis that you bought is quite small (only a hundred or so by the looks of it). If WotC are trying to target that sort of gamer with their DDM's I think that they are going to fail as the sales numbers will just be too low.

So I would say that you are not in their target market for DDM.

Olaf the Stout

Actually, he sort of is - it's just that he's part of a very large group of people who buy only one or two packs from a set. You can make a nice profit from those people.

The point is with DDM is that it caters for quite a large array of people; who it doesn't cater for are those who want to know exactly what they're getting.

Cheers!

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Actually, he sort of is - it's just that he's part of a very large group of people who buy only one or two packs from a set. You can make a nice profit from those people.

The point is with DDM is that it caters for quite a large array of people; who it doesn't cater for are those who want to know exactly what they're getting.

Cheers!

You need a lot of those types of people to equal the type of person that buys the minis by the case though. And the case buyer is more likely to consistently buy a case (or sometimes more) of each set, compared to the casual buyer who may go several sets without buying a single booster.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Nebulous]

i've recently been using McFarlane dragons to great effect. Two were actually representing a titanic fight between a cobalt dragon and a kraken. I didn't have a huge kraken, but the two headed dragon worked well enough. Another i used was an old Dagon mini i picked up years ago at a comic shop that represented a gargantuan kraken carrying a medusa head. Yeah, it scared the pee out of the PCs, rightfully so

 

[MerricB]

You need a lot of those types of people to equal the type of person that buys the minis by the case though. And the case buyer is more likely to consistently buy a case (or sometimes more) of each set, compared to the casual buyer who may go several sets without buying a single booster.

Olaf the Stout

You do - but I'm pretty sure the line did.

Cheers!

 

[Shazman]

At least, it used to. When the line started, you had people that bought minis for the minis game, people that bought minis for the RPG game, and some who bought them for both. When they ruined the minis game with the 2.0 changes and then had to discontinue it, they eliminated a good portion of their customers. The steady increase in price (even if it was just paying more for each mini), and inconsistant quality of the sets seemed to push many of the RPG collectors away as well. Of course, some people probably eventually had most of the minis they wanted and/or they no longer had the disposable income to fuel their mini habit. All things considered, it doesn't look really good for the future of the line. Let's hope they come through with some awesome looking figures at a good value with Lords of Madness to prop it up for a while longer.

 

[jasonbostwick]

Well, if past sets are any indication, we should get some early previews of Lords of Madness when the factory leaks start popping up on taobao.com next month.

 

[WotC_Trevor]

Looking over a few things at the start of this thread, I thought I'd pop in and give my two coppers.

An Essential's line of miniatures that is evergreen and includes a lot of classic monsters wouldn't be really cost effective if we sold it all as one package (like the tile sets will be). But it might be something we could do in theme like packs. The Beholder set is a good example of this I suppose, though it's very specialized and uber rare.

Assuming the beholder pack does well I wouldn't be surprised to see us branch out in similar non-randomized mini packs, some with high rarity like beholders, some with more common usage - like an orc or undead pack. But at this point, that's pure speculation with Beholders being the only non-randomized item on the books.

 

[Dire Bare]

So, here is my latest story. From this thread I learned of the Colossal Red Dragon (obviously, I behind the times when it comes to minis). Cool, I'd like to have that to go along with my gargantuan Black Dragon. So I charge amazon only to discover that it's going for $350 on the secondary markets. YIKES. I could see paying MSRP for ($80 or so), but $350! Sorry, I'll pass.

Check out all of your local toy and hobby stores, not so much for alternate purchases (McFarlane dragons, etc) . . . but for the actual Gargantuan Red Dragon itself!!! There's a decent chance you'll find it at MSRP or possibly even cheaper. It's been a while since I walked into my local HobbyTown USA, but they always seemed to have all the big WotC dragons in stock, long after the speculator crooks on Amazon started asking ridiculous prices.

 

[Dire Bare]

Assuming the beholder pack does well I wouldn't be surprised to see us branch out in similar non-randomized mini packs, some with high rarity like beholders, some with more common usage - like an orc or undead pack. But at this point, that's pure speculation with Beholders being the only non-randomized item on the books.

Trevor, just some feedback from my perspective. While I love the idea of a Huge Orcus and a pack of Beholders . . . . I've had bad luck with the M:tG "limited" releases such as the "From the Vault" series, and I'm not optimistic about my chances of picking up either miniature release at MSRP in the fall.

While I understand that WotC doesn't want to flood the market with too many packs of Beholders that might gather dust on shelves, I hope the limited release doesn't end up meaning "No Beholders for Dire Bare!"

 

[WotC_Trevor]

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?