How do you organize large quantities of minis

[Asmor]

Last night I reorganized my minis. They're now in a 7-drawer organizer (not all the drawers are used for minis). Each drawer has a general theme, and within each drawer specific groups of monsters are sandwich-bagged together. Here's what I ended up doing (the bulleted lists are the bags in the drawers, also have loose minis that didn't fit a theme):

Drawer 1: PCs & Uniques
Primarily human, elven, dwarf, gnome and halfling minis which are interesting and/or that I only have one or two of, making them good for PCs and also for unique characters who I want to be recognizable.
*Halfling
*Dwarves
*At some point I'll probably go and bag the rest of them into general themes, i.e. armored, casters, etc.

Drawer 2: Mooks
Human minis which I have lots of copies of, bagged by theme.
*Archers
*Guards
*Bandits
*Cultists

Drawer 3: Adversaries
Primarily-evil humanoids and other minis uniquely suited for adversaries.
*Undead
*Drow
*Goblins
*Kobolds
*Orcs
*Gnolls
*"Saurian" (lizard-like people, e.g. lizard men, medusae, draconians, dragonspawn...)
*Demons & Devils

Drawer 4: Animals, Elementals & Constructs
Like the name says... The stuff in here is all "neutrally-aligned." No bags, it's all loose.

I'm curious how others have organized their minis for ease of access during a game.

 

[Herschel]

I'm in the midst of this project myself. I'm using the Sterilite "Shoe Boxes" for broad groups with ziplock sandwich bags for sub groups inside the larger boxes. My generic, melee "Soldiers" box is still packed full. Archers and Spellcasters in another shoe box, Kobolds, Tieflings and Cultists in another (Needed a spot for Tielfings because the "PHB2" race box is full of the rest of teh non-human/elf/dwarf/eladrin PC minis). It's working okay so far, but I need a second shoe box for the "skeletal" undead because I have way more undead than a box full.

 

[Perram]

I keep them in several $3 single layer tackle boxes, about as big as a standard RPG book each, if quite a bit thicker. These boxes are kept on my two bottom most shelves on the RPG bookshelf in my game room.

Each tackle box represnt a theme: 'PC/NPC - Humans', 'PC/NPC - Demihumans', 'Orcs', 'Undead', 'Animals', etc... and I use the compartments inside the tackleboxes to further break them down into things like 'Fighters' 'Wizards' 'Rogues' 'Archers'.

I try to keep each one labled on the side, and they are clear so you can see into them without having to open them up. Makes finding a particular mini a breeze.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Oddly, I'm also in the midst of inventorying and re-classifying my 2500+ minis collection. Is it something in the air?

I use THESE. I have about 40 categories (e.g., "Weapon-and-Shield Warriors," "Arcane Casters," "Dwarves," and so on), so I have four of these.

I use colored plastic slide-out bins, 14 or 15 of them, for my Large-based minis.

My Huge-based minis sit on shelves that circle my game room, and my Gargantuan- and Colossal-based minis have their own shelf, up high and out of the way.

Going the card-house route was the smartest choice I ever made, in terms of storage. I can have a suitable mini for pretty much any encounter in 10 seconds, and I can have a specific mini in 30 seconds.

I also use an Excel spreadsheet to track my inventory (including things like what's stored where). I'm just now wanting to learn how to link an image to a cell, so I can click on, say, "Cleric of Order" and have the image of that mini show up in the worksheet.

 

[Barcode]

I have at least one of every D&D mini produced to date, and just outgrew my organization system.

I used bead cases from Michael's or AC Moore to contain them, and had about 10 full when I made my recent switch.

I had originally:

PC cases - one big section for each 3e class. Fighters were by far the largest. Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Gnomes and Half-Orcs got their own sections.

One section for particularly eeevil looking humanoid villains. One section for guards, one for mooks.

Monster cases section sizes allocated as needed - One for each: Drow, Orcs, Goblins. Undead, Lycanthropes, Animals (dire and summoned), Elementals. Fiends

Purple miscellaneous, Greenish Miscellaneous, Reddish Miscellaneous

Ziploc bags with dupes of commons for: Guards, Thugs and Mooks; Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, etc...

Problem was, some sections were getting simply huge, and you can imagine the difficulties of finding a mini in the "green miscellaneous" section, especially if you don't know exactly what you are looking for.

New system:

2 Separate containers for each set (from Target) - I have the sets enumerated in a big Word doc with photos from the galleries pasted in. I can flip through to find the mini I want, then find it easily in the container. Haven't indexed/printed them yet, but I'm on the way.

 

[Agamon]

Open-topped cardboard bin trays. I divide out sections for each type, mark on the front the contents of each section and store on the bookshelf over the books. My shelf holds 8X2 boxes, and is the exact same depth, which is the prefect amount for my minis. My large and bigger dragons/giants are on display on a smaller shelf.

 

[avin]

I have small boxes from cross stitch which I have stolen from my wife. All categorized by things like: demons, undead, player stuff, gnolls, orcs, goblins, kobolds...

The Large and Huge are mixed up in plastic boxes. Except the dragons.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I do the same as Jeff, but I have four much larger plastic drawers for the over sized minis. They are all on an excel sheet, but I hardly use it... I pretty much know what and where everything is

Sorry for the mess

 

[Ktulu]

I place groups in Ziploc bags, and then group them together in sterilite drawers.

Drawer 1 Humans:

• Heavy Armored
• Wizard
• Cleric
• Rogue/Rangers
• Rabble (pirates, barbarians, etc)
• Townfolk
• Asian
• Other - Always have an other bag for the really weird stuff.

Drawer 2 - Good Races

• Dragonborn
• Elf (in a large bag, with small bags for Armored, Arcane, Divine, etc..)
• Dwarf (also in large bag with sub-divisions)
• Halfling/Gnome - not enough or different enough to warrant separate bags
• Tiefling
• Genasi
• Goliath
• Shifter

Drawer 3: Heroic Level Humanoids

• Orcs/half Orcs (again, larger bag with sub-divisions)
• Lizard Folk
• Goblin (sub-divided into bugbear, hobgoblin, goblin)
• Kobolds

Drawer 4: Paragon Level Humanoids

• Drow (sub-divisions)
• Troglodyte
• Yuan-ti
• Gith (both Yanki and Zerai)

Drawer 5: Giants

• Includes Trolls, giants, Primordials, Ogres, etc.. all separated by type.

Drawer 6: Dragons

• Dragons, separated by color.
• Drakes
• Dragonspawn

Drawer 7: Undead

• Ghoul
• Skeleton
• Spirits (any insubstantial)
• Intelligent (liches/vampires)
• Zombie
• Other

Drawer 8: Constructs

• Warforged
• Golems
• Animated Objects

Drawer 9: Mounts/Familiars

• Familiars
• Mounted Minis
• Mounts (non mounted, but used as, i.e. giant eagles).

Drawer 10: Animals, Magical Beasts, Vermin

• Magical Beasts (organized by type)
• Animals (organized by type; wolf, cat, etc..)
• Vermin (organized by type; spiders, flying)

Drawer 11: Aberrations & Other

• Mind Flayers
• Oozes
• General Aberrants (chuul, etc..)
• Other - This includes stuff non-existant in 4e, or something that really didn't have a home (ophidians, Hextor, etc..)

Drawer 12: Planar Creatures

• Astral Creatures - Angels, Devils, Astral constructs
• Elemental - Demons, elementals
• Feywild/fey - centaur, dryads, etc..
• Shadowfell - Shadar-Kai, shadow creatures...

There's probably a few other distinctions, but that's what I recall without looking at them.

 

[weem]

I just bought a house and will be dealing with this soon as well (I don't have a lot of minis at the moment, but I will have more and will keep some there for some friends as well).

I have a room in the house that is strictly dedicated to D&D so it will have books, minis etc in there. I was thinking of doing something like mach1 has set up, but we'll see. I'm wondering how well a big tool box would work (the big red ones) as I know someone with one they don't want... I should take a closer look at it I guess.