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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 5642500" data-attributes="member: 725">Games-Workshop is selling non-random miniatures, has been doing that for ages, but they are pricey. Their new plastic heroes are $13.25 and you still need to cut them out, glue them and paint them. A box of 10 orcs is $29, a box of 5 boar riders is $24.75, 3 trolls are $44.50 and a singe huge/Gigantic Monster Spider is $57.75. A box with 50 miniatures is $105, a starter set is $99 for 70 figures. Sure, companies like Mantic make them cheaper, they make a 15 orc box for $25, but with far fewer possible poses. And their range is still very small. And that is without the assembly and the paintjob.Reaper makes some prepainted minis, Legendary Encounters, but after 4 years their range counts 29 different miniatures. A single medium sized miniature is between $3 and $5.Dwarven Forge is selling sets of 3 for $15, they have 3 sets with Orcs and 4 with skeletons.Fantasy Flight did prepainted 54mm Warzone figures 3-4 in a box for $19.95, that product range lasted for less then a year, but produced more minis then Reaper did with LE in four years. Product failed.Rackham did AT-43 (scifi) and Confrontation (fantasy) in prepainted minis, AT-43 lasted four years and Confrontation lasted three years before Racham went belly up. A single hero was $10, a unit box of 8 was $30, 2 large monsters or one huge was $35. You can pick them now up relatively cheap, but in those 3 years they only released around 5 armies, not even complete, there were a lot of different minis (and that was part of the problem). But still, I think that WotC released more minis in a three year stretch, I suspect that Paizo/Wizkids will do as well. One of the reasons for the failure was the size of the packaging, a gamestores nightmare, especially in Europe where space is often at a premium in stores. I ordered oodles of the stuff when Rackham had a huge sale and had absolute tons of plastic and paper packaging material for relatively very few miniatures. If folks complained about MWDA or DDM packaging, this was way worse! Products failed.Mongoose publishing tried to do a near future/Modern range of prepaints for Battlefield Evolution. A tank $25, a squad of ten $30. The whole range went quickly the way of the dodo. Product failed.Hasbro heroscape did miniature packs at $13 for 3-8 minis, lasted around six years before they ended with the product range. Did 3 starter sets and around 25-30 expansions, whole range is 100-200 different minis. Product failed.Wizkids did Mageknight, lasted for around 5 years, have announced a return almost a year ago, haven't seen anything since. They did MWDA, which lasted around five years, the first four being random packed, the last year you saw what you got. Horror Clix died in two years. HeroClix lasted six years under Wizkids when Topps closed the whole caboodle, a year late Neca resurected HeroClix again. Mostly product failed, as only HeroClix is in production (although by a new company Neca/Wizkids).WotC did DDM and lasted 8 years, did SWM and lasted 6 years, and Dreamblade last for almost a year. All products failed.Sabertooth games (subsidiary of GW at the time) did LotR prepaints, the range didn't last long. Product failed.Privateer Press does Monsterpocalypse, it still does, but I seriously doubt it has a long life. Product success (for now).Paolo Parente is doing Dust prepaints (called premium) available unpainted from FFG. 4-5 infantry is $40, a tank is $50. The starter set with 32 infantry and 2 tanks was $300 (and is now sold out). Product success.Upperdeck did a WoW range which lasted for less then a year. Product failed. You might notice that of the ranges that were produced the last ten years or so relatively few have survived, those that have either have a very small selection or a random packaged. And not to mention, a lot are more expensive then their randomly packed counterparts.Someone mentioned a 30 figure prepainted package, would you be willing to pay $120 for such a product? Battle of Hoth Scenario Pack was $60 for 17 figures, only two of which were new, the rest were already available (and that set is from 3.5 years ago.You have a couple of issues:1.) You need to limit product codes and the amount of space a package takes up. So you need to concentrate a relatively large number of minis in a relatively small space.2.) Pricing, folks won't pay $10 for each single miniature, they might for a few, just not for the whole range. Packaging multiple minis pushes up the price of the package, thus a higher level of entry is required, resulting in less sales.3.) Production costs, while the molds for plastic miniatures aren't cheap $30k should get you a mold for 12-16 models, $100k should get you your 40 figure initial range. But these prices only go down with time. The kicker is that salaries in China are rising quickly so your cheap workforce (I'm hearing salary is three times it was ten years ago) is now getting more expensive by the release with no end in sight. Only longterm solution is a custom designed machine that paints tiny miniatures, not cheap by a long shot.4.) Interest, how do you keep interest fresh in your line. DDM did 21 sets, I bought minis from about half those sets, half of that were enough minis to net me at least 12 from each common, 4 from each uncommon and 1-2 rares each. At a certain point even the addictive personalities (like myself ;-) stop and think that they might have enough and spending another couple of hundred dollars on another batch of minis you won't all use and you already have buckets worth of orcs and skellies and never enough mindflayers. You might have noticed that HeroClix is still doing well, it's tied to the comics market, which is rife with collectors already, I suspect that the majority of HeroClix's success can be laid at the feet of comics collectors worldwide. D&D/Pathfinder miniatures just don't have that kind of audience...I suspect that affordable prepainted plastic non-random miniatures are currently just impossible. If I had a million to spend it wouldn't be on this, HQ plastic minis maybe, but pre-paints not unless I had a million to literally burn.</blockquote>

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