In Place of Chainmail?

[herald]

God knows, I want cheaper figs.

I'd take plast figs painedlike Mage Knight figs if I could get them. The quality of those figs really picked up once they started making the unlimited edition.

I just want them to the right scale and a little less quirky. I could do with out female figs that look like stripers with weapons.

 

[mmadsen]

Amusing observation:

Now that I'm painting my Lord of the Rings figures, I've discovered one advantage of lead/pewter figures over hard-plastic figures: plastic figures blow away when you try to spray-prime them.

 

[mmadsen]

On the subject of plastic minis, someone - I believe on this thread - had mentioned some details on the molding/casting process. The jist of it was that it gets kind of expensive to make the molds, so the cheaper plastic minis aren't as cost-effective. My question is; are there other (cheaper) methods of making the mold and/or minis? If so, what are the drawbacks of those methods?

My understanding is that the molds for plastic minis are more expensive, but the individual minis are less expensive. Thus, if you have a small run, you want to do the figures in lead/pewter. If you have a large run, you probably want to do the figures in plastic -- assuming you can sell a lot of the same plastic figure at a decent price.

I'm quite happy with Games Workshop's hard-plastic Lord of the Rings figures. I just have to be careful not to blow them away with spray primer.

 

[kenjib]

assuming you can sell a lot of the same plastic figure at a decent price.

It looks like they can run a whole bunch of them on a sheet with one mold. Like at the ATS site how the figures are all connected together when you first get them, so you'd be able to come up with a bunch of variations on a theme with one mold -- i.e. run off a sheet of 20 different orcs at a time. No?

 

[Kesh]

I thought the assumption was that they were going to come back with some kind of Chainmail II that would appeal to a broader audience.

Essentially, they've said Chainmail is being 'rebranded' as more of a D&D Minis game. Something that's still a streamlined skirmish game, but is more compatible with D&D right out of the box and uses the D&D name for better brand recognition.

Beyond that, it's pure speculation. Plastic or pewter, collectible or not, mass rules... none of it is known yet. All we know for sure is that it will be "backwards compatible" with Chainmail, so your figures will still be useful in the new game.

 

[CRG]

Amusing observation:

Now that I'm painting my Lord of the Rings figures, I've discovered one advantage of lead/pewter figures over hard-plastic figures: plastic figures blow away when you try to spray-prime them.

Heh. This is why when I plunder games, I never play the game again. I have this routine where I take the bottom of the box and top of the box and construct some sort of area in which I can spray the figures. I lay them in the lid (for example) and give them a spray on one side (BEFORE putting them on their bases). Then I flip them like chicken-on-the-barbie and spray the other side. Complex figures might get a few quick coats and about 3 flips. When I'm done, the inside lid of the box is basically coated in primer with little non-primer spaces underneath the figs.

Now anything written on the box is unusuable. And the box (lid and/or base) off-gasses like mad.

But hey, I was never going to play BattleMasters anyway....or any of the others...

 

[mmadsen]

Now anything written on the box is unusuable.

Since I'm always ordering something on-line, and I'm always getting deliveries, I just use those leftover boxes. It seems appropriate to spray-prime my figures in the box the spray-primer came in.

 

[Ds Da Man]

You can also glue and cut after the prime.

 

[Zaruthustran]

A plea and recommendation to Hasbro

Wow, all those niches of plastic minis (napoleonics, zulus, etc.) leads me to believe that it would be economically viable to make plastic D&D figs, despite the reported high initial cost of molds. I really hope someone from Hasbro reads this thread. I mean, Hasbro makes Axis & Allies; it's ideally equipped to produce mass quantities of cheap plastic minis.

When I was a kid there was a burst in popularity of small plastic vietnam war and WWII figures. These guys were slightly smaller than Grenadier lead miniatures, and certainly much thinner than a cartoony GW fig. But they were cheap, incredibly detailed, and came in a million poses (including Dead Guy poses). It'd be great if Hasbro released D&D figs in that style and scale.

Also, thanks to Wizkids, it looks like it's getting easier to mass-paint or mass-color little figs. The paint job doesn't compare to hand-painted quality when you hold the figures 4" in front of your nose, but when the figs are on the table you can't tell that one fig was painted by a machine in 3 seconds while the other fig took a skilled gamer 4 hours (not counting cleaning, priming, assembling, pinning, and basing).

And that, I think, is the key. Hardcore fantasy miniature hobbyists are going to play GW games, and that's that. They want all the crazy conversions, they want to paint eyeballs and individual eyelashes, they want to spend tons of time. The D&D gamer, I think, just wants something cheap and quick that looks like his PC.

True story: I've got some buddies here at work who are into board games. At lunch, we play Settlers of Cattan or a turn of Samurai Swords. So, when I got Chainmail and a few faction boxed sets, I talked it up and they were all eager to play. But we never played, because it took me 3 months to assemble and paint all the figs and by that time everyone had lost interest (in fact, I still have to paint Naresh. Sigh.)

Lesson: Chainmail 2 should be playable out of the box. No assembly required, no trips to specialty hobby paint stores required, no long hours spent learning how to paint required, no getting uptight when other players pick up your pieces and might mess up your paint job required.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Unfair technological advantage?

PS: is it just me, or does the second-to-last viking on the top row of Viking Set Group 2 have a somewhat unfair technological advantage?

(Orion Viking blurb 1/3 way down the page)
http://www.atstoysoldiers.axxs.net/index.html