[news] Chainmail is back

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Aye, the only winner may be Reaper. Though the cost is questionable- Confrontation figures are really nice however. They are becoming more availiable in US even as we speak.

The only downside to Reaper, IMHO, is their lack of access to WOTC's proprietary monsters. Reaper has done a few work-arounds (see the "Eye Orb", for example), but for the most part I find them better for PC types than monster types. That was a benefit of Chainmail 1, and I was hoping it would be a benefit of Chainmail 2.

I also liked that fact that not all the Chainmail 1 minis were flat sculpts (most of Reapers are). Yeah, assembly's a pain, but the final results are usually worth it.

I'm not knocking Reaper -- they'll get most of my business if this is the final result of CM2. But I was hoping that there's at least be a parallel, non-random pewter line for CM2, for those of us who like to paint and primarily use the minis for our D&D games.

 

[megamania]

"Well, Wizards successfully destroyed any hope of artistry in their miniatures department. At least in my eyes they have.

* Quality: You cannot, even with the most crafty and skilled of artists doing both concept and carving, get quality out of something they use to make rubber flooring out of. There will be an obvious lack of quality in both detail, and pose (If you want truly wonderful poses, you HAVE to do them in seperate pieces because of the molding process).

* Pre painting:

Even if these things had the best quality possible (Which would be about low to mid quality judging by the material used to make them), It would actually take less time to paind the bloody things than to sit there trying to get the paint off, even with brake fluid.

* Random happy joy happy you-buy-now!: One of the most horridly money grabbing, greasy fisted tactics in today's market.

Reaper wins out again. While they don't produce all of the stuff in 3e, they at least try to cover the basics as best as they can, and I commend them for that. I'm sure Wizards would have seen sales like this if they had supported Chainmail in the first place, and not unceremoniously dumped it like this. Where else could you have found a FEMALE gnoll.. I guess those days are over.

So that looming goliath of marketing was always lurking in the background.

So, if these alleged business plans are true, then.. Well.. Thanks Wizards. I guess I can no longer expect to get official miniatures for D&D anymore. "

......easy does it.........

I buy Hero clix regulary....check out the poses. They are better than the pewter. Why? They do the glueing for you.

Don't like the paint job- repaint it. Paint over the existing paint.

Market....they need to make money to do this. It sucks but that is reality

Reaper wins again. Reaper has ALWAYS won. Until recently they didn't have rules for their games...just stories (I may be wrong there- sorry if so) They produce minitures for other game systems without making it look EXACTLY like the person/creature depicted there. Avoids the licencing issues. They have some truely cool new figures coming out with their Warlord series. Includes creatures that can easily be modified in a Displacer Beast. Look around...there are other companies that make great figures.

I use Confrontation for werewolves, and 40K for some elite sioliers and special monsters. Just look around. The figure is NOT the game. It is a tool to aid the visualzation of the game. Play the game...

 

[Glyfair]

[ Until recently they didn't have rules for their games...just stories (I may be wrong there- sorry if so)

Actually, they've had a wargame for quite a while (Dark Heaven: Apocolypse). I own a copy, although I've actually never played it. I'm not much of a wargamer. Except for the various "Clix" games, I've only played Dragon Pass.

David A. Blizzard

 

[Voneth]

From the recent announcement:
Dungeons & Dragons Miniature Game launches this fall. Each figure will come with D&D and miniature game stats on their card. The rulebook will have both Skirmish level and large scale battle rules and will ship about a week or so after the first boosters. This game will be randomly packed pre-painted plastic miniatures.

I just realized this. The news bit says random. It doesn't say anything about collectable.

To me that could be a big difference. And what could that difference mean?

We are all aware that in a collectable game, certain pieces are rare on purpose to increase their value to the collector and as a game balance issue since these rare figs are more powerful.

If we are talking about just random figs, that's a whole different thing. What that means is that instead of a employee spending twice as much time on the clock making sure each box has 3 figs of Bob in pose 1 and Sam in pose 2, the employee's job is just to make sure that there are 3 Bobs and 2 Sams in every box. The poses are irrelevent and the employee spends more time stuffing more boxes than Q.A. on the figs themselves.

Now due to what work was done on a certain day and where those particular boxes went from the werehouse, you will get some regional distribution that will make certain poses harder to find, but in the nation overall, the total number of each fig will be the same compared to others.

Hmmm. If the randomness is more a time mangement issue compared to making the game collectable on purpose, then we might have something here.

 

[Ranger REG]

I've been playing DnD for 20 years, most of my figs are older, 25mm, I will not pick up any 30mm stuff. I have some 28mm reaper stuff, not that bad next to the 25mm stuff.

Been playing D&D for about 15 years and up until this time have no need for minis*, but willing to buy 30mm.

* I'm a cheap SOB that uses flat 2-dimensional tokens.

 

[ced1106]

are mage knight and hero clicks randomly bought? or do you know what you're getting? how about the new battletech?

Yep. Random.

OTOH, Random miniature game packs work, since you can hold sealed box tournaments to level the $$$ playing field. With RPGs, this can't be the case. It's the story first, miniatures last.

The quality of WizKids prepainted miniatures can be very good. I'd look at the DC HeroClix for examples. MageKnight Minions and Sinister reach the "one foot away" qualify of miniatures. I'll also add that quite a few plastic mini's are assembled.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^