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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheSword" data-source="post: 8105311" data-attributes="member: 6879661">Let’s be honest it all depends on budget, time available and how much it pains you to have a stand-in mini rather than an exact equivalent.For most monsters I don’t think you can beat the preprinted plastic minis. Firstly they are durable so don’t need to be stored with precision, you can just put them in a box. Secondly time constraints mean I would never be able to paint the volumes of monsters needed. The Pathfinder minis line are better painted than the D&D minis and I’ve found in general the older D&D sets are better than the newer ones, that have some really weird scales.For special cases, legendary creatures, BBEG etc it can be really good to exercise your painting muscles and do a number. I’m not a great painter but I’ve had a lot of fun doing some bigger pieces that I’ll get a real kick out of putting on the table. Though I can never paint the full range.Regarding the actual collection, in the early days I used to buy by the box which while kinda exciting, is hugely wasteful. Luckily I paired down my collection about 3 or 4 years ago and found a buyer for a lot of duplications and less used items (like three Tiamats) and so I recouped a fair bit of money.As I went on and started really building my collection I set myself a budget and I would look through whatever sets were released that month to pick the models I liked the look of and thought I would most use.Now I am even more selective much exclusively buy for specific modules, unless I’m trying to complete a set... for instance at least one of each type of devil.When it comes to PCs I don’t think you can beat reaper for price and quality. The Nolzurs minis are really good quality and so are the Gale Force Nine minis (though these do stretch the budget). Having a painted mini for a PC is a really nice touch. We usually encourage players to use a nice home painted mini from our collection - the other DM in our group has collected a beautifully painted set of painted metal reaper minis over the years. Or they buy one and one of the painters in the group will do it for them.For instance in preparation for my Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign I bought a plastic toy Cerberus that I based and repainted, a similar cyclops, and a huge boar for about £20 off amazon. I then bought some Nolzurs death dogs for a particular locations. I dug a GW hydra out of my GW collection and painted that up as well as a couple of Perry miniature hoplites. It all then goes into the pot for next time.Regarding terrain I keep it simple. I bought an A3 colour printer and a laminator for about £100. I copy transfer PDF or jpeg battlemats to word and print them at a scale of 18 squares by 12 squares (just under 1 inch per 5ft) I find for a small random encounter you can use one A3 page, lay two together for a larger encounter. Truly epic fights can have 4. Though this is rare. Laminating helps them stay flat, means you can draw on them in dry erase and means they last. I trim the white border from the printer off so they line up and the lamination almost never splits. I’ve had many for 10+ years. I’m up to about 200 A3 maps now meaning I can do most biomes of random encounter.Paizo battlemaps are perfect for this because you can snapshot in Adobe the 18 x 12 or 18 x 24 section you want, actually allowing multiple map types from a single 26 x 24 battlemap. Again I make these specifically for adventures but save ones that could be used again. Paizo sell these for pdf very reasonably on their website.Sorry for such a long post. I really enjoy this aspect of the hobby though. Good luck. It really is satisfying after a couple of years of gathering stuff and it doesn’t take long to build a neat collection... then you just have to work out where to store it! I get get a kick out when my DM says “have you got five giant weasels” and I say “of course”.[ATTACH=full]127249[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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