Non-random D&D Miniatures

[Pbartender]

Because those companies have used and many still use the same molds literally for years and decades... [and other stuff]

Yeah... that makes sense.

 

[thalmin]

They also have a larger customer base.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Of course they produce more commons than rares. Do you really believe the frequency of a figure is imaginary? There's only one rare in a pack (excluding huge packs), and only one of a given rare in a case. When you buy a case, you're almost guaranteed four of every common and two of every uncommon. You will never find more than one of a rare.

1.5 uncommons really (either 1 or 2)

So what reason do they have not to produce lots of the rares? Rares are typically more detailed sculpts, painted in more steps, and often in more pieces than commons or uncommons. They are more expensive to produce. They're the kind of miniature you should expect to pay $10-$20 for unpainted, unassembled, unmounted.

Also, there's some interchange between the figures: There are some figures that are more elaborate than their rarity would justify. Sometimes, it's a border case (too elaborate for common but not quite enough for uncommon), or a rare that is too difficult even for rares. They do them anyway, and do some sompler stuff in the same set to balance it out. If you have 24 rares with an average 20 "work steps" each (be it sculpting, painting, assembling, whatever), you can make an awesome rare with 30 if another two only get 15 (or 5 only get 18 or whatever). Since all rares are made equally often (same goes for the other rarities), you can do that.

The cards are certainly not what forces the price and distribution of DDM.

Surely not. Cards and stats may cause some costs (mainly for development - the paper should not cost much at all, and neither does printing and cutting), but I think they're more than made up for by that part of the market that buys solely for skirmish (It's probably not the majority - a minority even - but it's there). So if they did away with the stats and the secondary game, they might sell less figures than before.

That is NOT the way to out-GW GW.

As far as I know, they think they can't compete with Games Workshop, so they're not trying.

Until they do (or GW prices themselves out the market) get used to seeing a wall full of Warhammer.

As I said: They probably can't. GW's dominance on the market is one reason, another is the different cost structure in plastic minis. They can't afford to make some blisters of troops that only sell a couple of times. They need to sell huge amounts of them.

But once you can sell huge amounts, you can sell them for a very low price ($1.88 MSRP right now, though if you buy by the case, you can get them for something like 1.30 each, maybe less)

And that would be fine by me. I'd be fine with a pack of nine non-random orcs, goblins, kobolds, town guards or whatever-have-you in three or four different poses for $10 or so.

Right now, 8 figures have a MSRP of $15. 9 Would be like 17. 9 Random figures, mind you. Non-random would be $20 or more.

 

[thalmin]

Right now, 8 figures have a MSRP of $15. 9 Would be like 17. 9 Random figures, mind you. Non-random would be $20 or more.

Non-random might not have to be more expensive if they are all like commons. $15 for 8 includes the higher priced rares and uncommons. By "like commons" I mean same simplicity of sculpt and paint.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

And that attitude is part of the problem with why they won't make non-random packs. By calling them "collectable," and assigning rarity, they artificially inflate the value. And I seriously doubt that they limit the production run of "rares" vs. "commons." If I am running an injection mold factory, I'm offering a better price if my customer wants more rather than less for any given production run. There is no reason to *not* produce lots of any given mini, regardless of "rarity."

I'm guessing the biggest espense *isn't* the plastic. It *isn't* the painting labor. It is the time and effort to stat the stupid things and print the cards. You could easily eliminate the cards and the costs for a non-random set would probably be equal to the costs for a random set with cards, if not less.

Want to play DDM? Go online and get the stats and print them out before play. In fact, if eliminating cards reduced costs, they could probably charge the price differential for access to the stats online, which would also allow them to get a true accounting of how many people buy the minis vs. how many of them use them in DDM.

I really can't see how you can think that it would cost more to stat the creatures and print the cards.

The roleplaying stat work is already done so it doesn't cost anything for them to do that. If you think that it costs $0.02 for them to produce the acual mini (I highly doubt this is correct if you include the cost of developing the sculpt and making the mould) I can't see how you think it would cost much more than that to make the card.

As for the cost of statting the mini for the skirmish game. Even if it cost thousands of dollars in development costs, the fact that they produce thousands and thousands of each mini in a set makes the development cost per mini rather small.

Olaf the Stout

 

[3catcircus]

I really can't see how you can think that it would cost more to stat the creatures and print the cards.

The roleplaying stat work is already done so it doesn't cost anything for them to do that. If you think that it costs $0.02 for them to produce the acual mini (I highly doubt this is correct if you include the cost of developing the sculpt and making the mould) I can't see how you think it would cost much more than that to make the card.

As for the cost of statting the mini for the skirmish game. Even if it cost thousands of dollars in development costs, the fact that they produce thousands and thousands of each mini in a set makes the development cost per mini rather small.

Olaf the Stout

The labor costs for a US-based game developer/designer-type to create the stats for the skirmish game and/or the rpg stats are far greater than labor costs for someone in China to paint a mini.

As to costs of the minis - I don't think it costs 2 cents per mini, but, for the assumptions I made, it probably costs 2 cents per part, with the average mini made up of 2 or more parts. I'm not in the injection molding business, so I'm hoping someone who is could vet the accuracy of the estimator I linked to.

For the following assumptions, that estimator I linked to indicates that total costs are 7 cents per part, with tooling costs (i.e. the molds) being 4 cents per part:

1. A lower commodity material (styrene, propylene, etc.)
2. A run of 50,000 cycles.
3. 16 cavities per mold.
4. Highly complex pieces (due to the detailed nature of a miniature's features)
5. 1 in. x 1 in. x 28 mm tall.

As to development costs/NRE costs - yes, once the stats have been generated, they can be printed thousands of times. However, the same can be said for the minis - once developed, the molds can be used for thousands of cycles.

I guess then that the questions are as follows:

1. What are the development cost of the sculpts vs. the rpg/skirmish stats?

2. What are the recurrent costs to actually produce each mini (Which that estimator indicates is 7 cents per part.) Assume 3 parts per mini = 21 cents per mini. Assume that secondary operations (painting the minis) costs 1.1x the bast cost, per that second link I cited, and you come up with 23.1 cents per mini. Are these accurate assumptions and estimations?

3. What are the packaging costs?

4. What are the transportation costs?

5. What are the import duties?

Finally - look at what and where the costs can be cut. I think the areas are the following:

1. Eliminate stats and stat cards.
2. Eliminate the plastic packaging for each mini (and the plastic goes away for stat cards since they don't exist.)
3. Eliminate the checklist of minis in each box.
4. Reuse molds and sculpts where possible.

How much will this save? Is it enough to offset the supposed inability to make a profit from non-random packages?

There are certainly other potential savings. Use J-I-T shipping and eliminate distribution costs by selling directly to retailers. If I know that I will be placing an order for x cases of minis each week, as well as x number of books, then Amazon.com-esque shipping methods can be used.

You could easily have a parallel product line. No-frills non-random, and then random packs for skirmish use.

More importantly, I'm not asking for a box of 10 orcs with the exact same pose. Whether the mini has a spear or a bow, a shield or not, makes no difference. I just want to buy a single box of orcs instead of 7 boxes to get the exact same 10 orcs.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The labor costs for a US-based game developer/designer-type to create the stats for the skirmish game and/or the rpg stats are far greater than labor costs for someone in China to paint a mini.

As to costs of the minis - I don't think it costs 2 cents per mini, but, for the assumptions I made, it probably costs 2 cents per part, with the average mini made up of 2 or more parts. I'm not in the injection molding business, so I'm hoping someone who is could vet the accuracy of the estimator I linked to.

For the following assumptions, that estimator I linked to indicates that total costs are 7 cents per part, with tooling costs (i.e. the molds) being 4 cents per part:

1. A lower commodity material (styrene, propylene, etc.)
2. A run of 50,000 cycles.
3. 16 cavities per mold.
4. Highly complex pieces (due to the detailed nature of a miniature's features)
5. 1 in. x 1 in. x 28 mm tall.

As to development costs/NRE costs - yes, once the stats have been generated, they can be printed thousands of times. However, the same can be said for the minis - once developed, the molds can be used for thousands of cycles.

I guess then that the questions are as follows:

1. What are the development cost of the sculpts vs. the rpg/skirmish stats?

2. What are the recurrent costs to actually produce each mini (Which that estimator indicates is 7 cents per part.) Assume 3 parts per mini = 21 cents per mini. Assume that secondary operations (painting the minis) costs 1.1x the bast cost, per that second link I cited, and you come up with 23.1 cents per mini. Are these accurate assumptions and estimations?

3. What are the packaging costs?

4. What are the transportation costs?

5. What are the import duties?

Finally - look at what and where the costs can be cut. I think the areas are the following:

1. Eliminate stats and stat cards.
2. Eliminate the plastic packaging for each mini (and the plastic goes away for stat cards since they don't exist.)
3. Eliminate the checklist of minis in each box.
4. Reuse molds and sculpts where possible.

How much will this save? Is it enough to offset the supposed inability to make a profit from non-random packages?

There are certainly other potential savings. Use J-I-T shipping and eliminate distribution costs by selling directly to retailers. If I know that I will be placing an order for x cases of minis each week, as well as x number of books, then Amazon.com-esque shipping methods can be used.

You could easily have a parallel product line. No-frills non-random, and then random packs for skirmish use.

More importantly, I'm not asking for a box of 10 orcs with the exact same pose. Whether the mini has a spear or a bow, a shield or not, makes no difference. I just want to buy a single box of orcs instead of 7 boxes to get the exact same 10 orcs.

The one major economic factor that you are failing to take into consideration is opportunity cost.

Yes, you may be able to make savings by cutting out a lot of the things that you suggested. However this will definitely have the effect of losing the skirmish crowd (since you are no longer producing stats for them), losing some of the collectable crowd, since the minis no longer come in individual bags it would be less attractive to some people who only want mint (i.e. bagged) minis. You may also lose some people who want multiple poses or sculpts of a monster, since once they have enough minis in one particular pose, they won't buy any more.

What you have to weigh up is are you gaining more by making this move. You may end up selling more minis but making less profit. You could also end up selling less minis and making even less profit. I think that many of you are underestimating the amount of people that get the D&D minis for the skirmish game and not just for RPG purposes. It is bigger than you think. It may also be a growth area (I don't know if it is or it isn't but I'm sure that WotC does).

It is also worth considering that WotC aren't doing this just purely for short-term profit. It may be part of a long-term strategy to get a foothold into the miniature wargaming industry. If this is the case then they may be willing to sacrifice short-term profits (by producing no-frills, non-random minis for example) in order to achieve their goal.

The situation may not be as simple as many people think.

Olaf the Stout

 

[megamania]

The situation may not be as simple as many people think.

Olaf the Stout

It never is. Especially in a hobby market driven by collectors. At a moments notice, something new may come out and sales will drop considerably. Why? Because hobby markets are fickle and based on fads and current interests. WoTC was very smart to create the game to appeal to both gamers (a built in audience) and war gamers. Very smart.

 

[Agamon]

It never is. Especially in a hobby market driven by collectors. At a moments notice, something new may come out and sales will drop considerably. Why? Because hobby markets are fickle and based on fads and current interests. WoTC was very smart to create the game to appeal to both gamers (a built in audience) and war gamers. Very smart.

Making it collectable wasn't dumb, either, even though that vexes some of the non-collectors.

 

[Thurbane]

I saw my first ever bag of plastic knights (ala plastic soldiers) in a toy store the other day...if they'd been remotely the right scale I would have snatched them up! In fact, there appeared to be two different bags from two different manufacturers... Not that this has any particular bearing on this debate, just thought it worthy of mentioning...