Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AZRogue" data-source="post: 4207935" data-attributes="member: 3963">I've never been big on using miniatures in combat. Even when we actually had some, way back during BECMI and AD&D, we just used them for marching orders. I did use them a bit more during our flirtation with 3E and both liked and disliked certain things.Well, I've decided to take the plunge and use some miniatures for 4E, though ONLY for important (tactically) battles AND for actual dungeon crawls. I intend for simple encounters as well as most urban/wilderness encounters to remain miniature free and will keep my traditional dry-erase board for those. Since my group is all excited and "coming out of DnD retirement" for 4E, I decided to splurge and I bought about 500 miniatures real quick from various miniature retailers online, not including the Dungeons of Dread set (20 kobolds, 6 dire wolves, 2 beholders, 16 goblins, at least one of each Rare and a minimum of 5 of every Uncommon and Common, not counting the 500 or so from previous releases), the Icon dragons, and I also went out and bought 3 each of all the Dungeon Tiles. I figure I'm pretty much set for most dungeon crawls and encounters and will only have to pick up the occasional group of miniatures now and then as the fancy strikes me.So, I'm looking at this heap of stuff on the table--3 large rubbermaid containers overloaded with plastic minis and a huge stack of tiles I have to eventually pop apart--and I realize that I have no real idea what to do with them. I mean, I don't have much practice using these things in actual play and I'm unsure what the best method is. For instance, do I lay my dungeon out completely at the beginning, plopping my tiles down so I don't have to slow down play by looking for them on the fly? I have no idea how hard it's going to be to find a particular corridor or room in the middle of the game but would prefer not to have to dig for it and slow things down. BUT, laying the whole dungeon out before hand seems to take some of the fun of exploring out of the game. Which way is best?Also, what the hell do I do with my minis? I've been considering getting all the minis together that I plan on using and placing them in seperate ziploc bags to help me find them when I need them at the table. I think that could work. It took me about 20 minutes to find the beholders in the piles I have, though, and they're not exactly hard to spot, so I know that I can't start digging for kobolds at the table. Getting the miniatures together before a game is going to have to happen, I think. So far the idea I have is to lay the dungeon out the way I want it and then to take a digital picture of it. I can then edit the photo itself as my dm map AND use the photo to help me lay the dungeon out during play. I'll only take those tiles I need with me. That, combined with the ziploc bagged miniatures (maybe one bag per encounter? not sure) should help me keep a handle on things while still letting me lay the dungeon out as they go. I really don't think I'll like laying the whole thing out for them to see before hand. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/area.gif"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":area:" title="Area    :area:" data-shortname=":area:" /> So my question is this: What methods do you guys use to organize your tiles and miniatures for play so that they remain a game aid and not a time sink? Any tips or tricks will be appreciated as I'm a bit overwhelmed with them all at the moment.</blockquote>

Verification