Randomized Mini's or Not?

[Glyfair]

Which means that there isn't enough money in the idea to make it worth the investment.

I know that, you know that & several companies know that, a lot of the "hate collectible minis" crowd don't and won't.

Packs are simple, singles for fill aren't really. Heck, even in game stores/comic shops they sell the packs, but in my experience only a percentage of these sell them individually for fill.

And there is a good reason for that. Doing so would take up a lot of space (even MtG singles can usually be fit in binders and a single shelf, for the entire line since the beginning). It would take a lot of time for the employees to open, stock & price. That doesn't include the management time to assess how they are doing and adjusting prices. I doubt even the busier stores would do enough business to make it worth while.

 

[Wombat]

The whole collecting frenzy probably feeds sales more than it hurts them.

I loath the whole concept of random "collectible" minis, but if they didn't have that random aspect they'd probably have to drop the price, so in the end WotC (and much more importantly Hasbro) is probably overjoyed with this version.

 

[Glyfair]

I loath the whole concept of random "collectible" minis, but if they didn't have that random aspect they'd probably have to drop the price, so in the end WotC (and much more importantly Hasbro) is probably overjoyed with this version.

"Drop the price?" You do mean raise the price don't you?

Being random keeps overhead down, making them cheaper, not more expensive.

 

[jgbrowning]

Dislike them collectable = probably helps WotC.

joe b.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

The FLGS near me actually has a book with the plastic mini cards in it. The minis themselves are stocked off the floor. You can buy commons, uncommons and rares. Point to the card, pull it out of the book, and they bring you your mini!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Being random keeps overhead down, making them cheaper, not more expensive

I don't know about that but I do know this- those old Grenadier packs sold pretty well on a pretty similar concept as the CMGs- while several of the minis in the big yellow boxes were available seperately, some were available only in the box sets.

 

[3catcircus]

I despise them, but I' m addicted to them - stupid plastic crack...

The only thing they are good for is if you want to quickly build up an orc horde, buy a few packs from each set, since those are the *only* minis guaranteed to be in a pack. Who decided to make those stupid catfolk common?

I would be willing to pay a few bucks more if I knew exactly what I was getting. As to rarity, WotC should have made their rarity based upon their RPG rarity, similar to the way the older edition monster manuals indicated rarity, instead of basing their rarity on how powerful they would be for the DDM game.

 

[3catcircus]

"Drop the price?" You do mean raise the price don't you?

Being random keeps overhead down, making them cheaper, not more expensive.

How, exactly does this keep the overhead down? Except for the Chicomm slave labor having to sort them differently, it shouldn't cost more at all since the plastic pellets used in injection molding don't care what shape they get molded into.

 

[Glyfair]

How, exactly does this keep the overhead down?

First, it costs money to store product that doesn't move immediately. The more variations you have, the more things that are sitting in warehouses waiting for someone to move. Businesses don't want a lot of product sitting around in storage.

Let's look at Wardrums. If you sell them individually that's 60 more things for a business to track. Inventory is more time consuming. Wemic barbarian isn't selling? That's storage you are paying for. Every time inventory comes around you have 60 things to count, instead of one thing).

Distributors have to deal with the problem even more. With a single unit keeping track is easy. Out of Wardrums? Order more. With 60 you have more work involved. Out of Chimera? We need to order more. Sand Giants sitting on the shelf? Maybe we should be discounting these, they are taking up space. That's 60 things they have to watch so they can manage the inventory. With boosters they have one. The same thing applies to stores as well, just on a different scale.

With D&D miniatures you have at most 12 things to deal with (less because many sets can't be reordered). If it was individual miniatures they would need to keep track of over 500 figures. Avoiding those costs saves money and that gets passed on. How else do you think they manage to sell painted miniatures for slightly over $1 per figure?

 

[DaveStebbins]

I also maximize my return by looking closely at each set before purchasing anything.

If a set has great rares, I'll pre-order a couple of cases which, even including shipping, drops the cost from $13 per booster to something like $8.50. If a set has hit-or-miss rares, I won't pre-order any and will only buy a few boosters from my FLGS. In both cases, I'll fill in the commons and uncommons I want by ordering through the secondary market online.

As much as I would prefer it weren't so, and would love to be able to buy DDM in non-random singles, I have enough of an economic and manufacturing background to know that Merric's Law of Miniatures is absolutely true, "Large variety of pre-painted figures, cheap prices, non-random packaging: choose any two."

-Dave