Getting a full set is unreasonable

[jdrakeh]

Really? Interesting. All the reports I've heard said that they don't mention D&D in the stock holders report.

They rarely do. Stockholder reports aren't just for stockholders. You can find them for public purview at the Hasbro site (the link escape me for the moment).

 

[Treebore]

Plus they often specify in other reports which part of their company made how much money that year. So once you subtract those numbers from those other financial statements you can deduce pretty solid numbers.

 

[Thurbane]

Ive said it before and I'll say it again: random DDM are good for collectables fans, collectable gamers and WotC bottom line - what they aren't good for is for players on pen and paper D&D to build up a set of minis to use in their regular game.

...and yes yes, before the inevitable string of replies starts, there is always the 3rd party market...

 

[WayneLigon]

I buy maybe one case for the fun of seeing what I get, and see if I can get some of the more expensive rares. After that, I shop ebay, iconusa and a few other sites to get the best prices for individual minis. I have no need for a lot of the figures in many of the sets, but a great deal of need for several specific types of figures (Dolgaunts, or Blackscale Lizardfolk, as examples). The price I pay for the individuals I need is far less than the amount I'd pay buying caseloads of boosters trying to get the ones I need.

 

[Imaro]

No viable alternative?

1. Buying metal/plastic minis and painting them. This worked just fine for me until Wizards brought out their plastic minis (and I didn't start buying them until Angelfire/underdark since I didn't like the early sculpts and paint jobs. Six years in the 3e era and a good ten years before that seems plenty viable to me.

2. Buying metal or plastic minis and using them unpainted. It's not visually as appealing but it works just fine. I've seen lots of people do this at conventions, etc. I never liked it much but it works.

3. Counters. Fiery Dragon's creature counters and other cardstock counters are perfectly sufficient for the needs of D&D players. If I hadn't had a large minis collection from the 1e and 2e days, I probably would have gone that route.

4. Nonrepresentational counters. One of the people I play with regularly uses little plastic monkeys and ducks like you would put on the end of a pencil. If no-one gives him a representational mini to use, he's the monkey with a fez. If we don't pull out minis for the bad guys, they're ducks or monkeys. Pennies, glass beads (like you get at a craft store), dimes, and nickles work just fine as long as you have sufficient differentiation to be able to tell the orc warriors from their cheif and from the shaman. Games Workshop's large monster bases are quite good stand-ins for large monsters and cut out 3x3 or 4x4 bits of paper work for huge and gargantuan monsters.

There are plenty of options to maintain the tactical detail of map based D&D combat without using WotC's pre-painted minis. For my part, though, I like the minis.

First off, I was talking about a pre-painted mini alternative...guess I should have been more specific.

Another point I find interesting is that Star Wars saga ed. now lists both "star wars miniatures" and a "battlemat" as necessary(not optional) for play. I personally don't like the direction this seems to be indicating that WotC is taking, especially for gamers new to the hobby.

 

[Kunimatyu]

First off, I was talking about a pre-painted mini alternative...guess I should have been more specific.

Another point I find interesting is that Star Wars saga ed. now lists both "star wars miniatures" and a "battlemat" as necessary(not optional) for play. I personally don't like the direction this seems to be indicating that WotC is taking, especially for gamers new to the hobby.

While I agree with you (to a point), the fact that the market for RPG books appears to be continuing to drop (as it has since sometime in 1990, I believe?) but miniatures purchases have actually increased.

It's not entirely unreasonable to suggest that the D&D minis may be what's keeping the World's Most Popular RPG afloat. Wave of the future and all that...

 

[Steel_Wind]

While I agree with you (to a point), the fact that the market for RPG books appears to be continuing to drop (as it has since sometime in 1990, I believe?) but miniatures purchases have actually increased.

It's not entirely unreasonable to suggest that the D&D minis may be what's keeping the World's Most Popular RPG afloat. Wave of the future and all that...

Indeed. There is no alt.binaries.D&Dminis newsgroup and no torrent for it either.

Nor any expected anytime soon.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Folks seem to be talking about the "switch to 24 Rares" as something that happened recently. Actually, of the last seven sets, five had 24 Rares, one had 23 Rares, and one was a Huge set, throwing things off. That's going back over two years, and even further if you count Aberrations' 23 Rares in there. Further still if you throw in Giants of Legend, another Huge set. So, in summary, every set but the first three have had either 24 Rares (six sets), 23 Rares (two sets) or been a Huge set (two sets, with 29 and 18 Rares).

As to the reason WotC switched to 24 Rares, my guess is that it made it easier for them to develop the "seeded randomness" they use now for cases. (With rare exceptions, there will be twelve different Rares, one or two of each Uncommon, and exactly four of each Common in a case.) WotC made this change, BTW, in response to customer feedback.

For those of you looking forward to other pre-painted miniatures, I sincerely wish you the best. Personally, I couldn't deal with the lack of variety. If that proves to be a drawback for y'all, remember that most of the Rares in any given DDM set can be had on the secondary market for as cheaply -- or nearly so -- as Reaper is selling their large pieces.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Just a note to say that Wizkids started guaranteeing a full set of minis within a factory sealed case. They listened to their customers, and changed their randomization accordingly, and that was a couple of years ago.

Since that would mean that each set could only have 12 rares, I doubt that it will happen. But the cases are otherwise well-balanced, you get exactly 4 of each common and 1.5 of each uncommon, and 12 different rares.

I guess that if they started selling "big cases" with 24 boosters which have perfect distribution, sales would drop off significantly, and they'd have to raise the price yet again.

I heard they changed the plastic they use, but they must have done something else different as well, because the paint jobs are just icky.

That happened 1/2 sets ago (one set was made with two different kinds of plastic, with the new stuff going to Europe)

Folks seem to be talking about the "switch to 24 Rares" as something that happened recently. Actually, of the last seven sets, five had 24 Rares, one had 23 Rares, and one was a Huge set, throwing things off.

The other was a starter set, which also has a different set-up (16 rather than 12 commons, with 1 less rare and 3 less uncommons to make up for it)

The seeding was improved early on, I think starting with Aberrations or the set after.

 

[Jhaelen]

I've finally bought a single booster - I refused to buy any of these for a long time because of the randomness. I've also got a sizable collection of metal minis.

However, I was pleasantly surprised - maybe I got just lucky. Considering the low price of a booster, I got enough usable minis that it was worth it. They also don't look as bad as I thought they would.

I still don't think, I'll buy more than a single booster per set. Being a DM I have a use for pretty much every critter out there, but I am not really interested in duplicates.