[Minis] Where can I buy cheap plastic miniatures?

[Grapeshot]

I was reading the other thread and saw where "Plastic Mini's" were mentioned. Can I purchase these online? I'm looking for counters, cheap mini's (non lead).

Thanks :O)

 

[Dirigible]

See if you can get your hands on the old HeroQuest board game.

Plastic orcs, gobbos, a variety of undead, chaos warriors, cardboard and plastic furniture...mmmm.

Failing that, you can probably find Games Workshop's plastic regiment boxes. Unfortunatly, they're so expensive you'll need to sell both your sister's kidneys.

 

[Eternalknight]

HeroQuest would be the best bet. You can quite often pick them up at garage sales for cheap.

 

[frankthedm]

www.pjcc.com has mageknights and heroclix at good prices most of the time.

cardhaus has them as well but prices more like a comic shop.

 

[Speaks With Stone]

eBay often has good deals on Mage Knight, Chainmail or Warhammer plastic minis.

You could also use the Steve Jackson counters - paper cut outs that require no painting. I think I saw Amazon had these for sale a while back.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Failing that, you can probably find Games Workshop's plastic regiment boxes. Unfortunatly, they're so expensive you'll need to sell both your sister's kidneys.

Actually, I've found that the GW plastic regiment box sets are some of the least expensive miniatures around. Per miniature that is. (They work out to between $1 and $1.50 per mini depending on which set where you order them from). The only difficulty with them is that you get 18-20 miniatures of the same kind. Not too much of a problem with orcs, zombies, skeletons, and zombies. However, if you wanted dwarf miniatures, you might not need that many for PCs. And if you wanted to spend $20 and just have a bunch of generic figures for "bad guys" you're out of luck. But they're great if you like miniatures.

Being a fan of buying, assembling, painting, and using miniatures, I was suspicious about counters, however, I won a copy of Sword and Sorcery's Counter Collection I: The Usual Suspects and have gotten a lot of use out of it. It's great for when you don't have quite the right miniature for the job or for DMing at a con where you don't want to drive 14 hours with three cases of miniatures or risk having them stolen while you're using the toilet. And even when most everything is represented by miniatures, I found the horse and cart counters to be very helpful because you could put a character mini on top of a horse counter to represent the mounted character. Most people don't have mounted and unmounted minis for their character.

Another option for representation is dice minions. Buy a bunch of d12s and some plastic miniatures bases. (In the various sizes you'll want to use commonly). Then glue the d12s to the bases with the numbers 1-12 facing up. That makes it easy to keep track of which orc is orc #1. The bases also keep them from being confused with the dice that somehow always manage to end up in the middle of the battlemat or from being knocked over (at which point you end up asking "was that #1 or #3?). Having several sets of dice minions in different colors makes it easier to represent different kinds of villains. (The red ones are the orcs, and the green ones are the gnolls).

 

[Ghostmoon]

Hello,

You have several options open to you:

Check out the nice range of figures put out by Fortress Figures. These are cheap, well done, and fit nicely on the grid.

Link: http://www.fortressfigures.com/

em-4 puts out some nicely done plastic orcs and dwarves. I am in the US and ordered from the UK with no problems.

Link: http://www.em4miniatures.com/acatalog/Copy of Fantasy.html

American Science & Surplus has some loose plastic figures from TSR's old Dragon Strike (I think) board game.

Link: http://www.sciplus.com/category.cfm?subsection=1&category=1

Twilight Creations puts out a game called Zombies!!!, but also put out a bag of 100 zombies (off white and glowing) rubbery plastic miniatures for $9.99.

Link: http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/

Hope this helps,
Ghostmoon

 

[Bloodsparrow]

I seem to recall seeing a "Bag O' Zombies" (I'm not kidding) at the WotC store here in Orange, CA.

You might want to do a search for that. They were grey, about "army men" size, there were a lot of them, and the bag was like $5. I believe it was a refill for a zombie related board game.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Another factor in favor of the GW plastics is that they can be posed and otherwise modified very easily. Because they are a collection of bits and pieces you can use pieces from different sets together. For example when I needed a hunchback I combined the legs of a zombie, the torso of a night goblin, the head of a chaos warrior (the one sans helmet), and the arms of an Empire swordsman, adding a zombie slung over his shoulder for fun. I also like the ability to shove a box of pieces at my players and tell them to make their mini.

The Mordeim set of miniatures even includes a frame of backpacks, lanterns, books, and other adventuring gear.

The Auld Grump

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Delete Multiple Postings (For some reason my browser didn't take me to the finished posting...)