Reaper to produce pre-painted Plastic minis - Non-random
- Thread starter Kae'Yoss
- Start date
ShinHakkaider
Adventurer
Kae'Yoss said:
FULL. OF. AWESOME.
I can't wait for this. I usually buy HeroClix stuff for my supers games and them off of the clix bases and glue them onto 30mm bases. Sometimes I repaint them for custom characters.
I bought a few packs of DDM to try them out, but the random nature pretty much was a deal breaker. This sounds like exactly what I'm looking for though. If the sculpts are based off of thier pre-existing sculpts then this should be awesome. I'd totally buy a box of 12 prepainted orcs for $20 - $25. Any higher than that though and I'll have to reconsider.
It would also be nice for when I run adventures (like AOW) I know that could go and buy what monsters are going to be part of the major encounters and have them ready for the game. That might take a while for them to build up thier plastic catalouge but it would still be great.
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ShinHakkaider
Adventurer
thedungeondelver said:
God, what terrible news.
I know that I'm probably going to regret asking this but, why is this terrible news?
Flexor the Mighty!
18/100 Strength!
This sound great. I haven't bought any WOTC minis in a while due to rising cost and a lack of knowing what I am getting. If I can get good figures for a fair price, and I'll pay a bit more for these than I probably would for DDM since I will apparently know what I will be getting for my cash, I'll be all over these. Hopefully they put out some demons, giants, and a few other monsters. I love their metal figs but just can't find the time to paint like I would like to.
Kunimatyu
First Post
thedungeondelver said:
God, what terrible news.
I'm so sorry plastic miniatures came to your house and shot your dog?
More seriously, in the Reaper forms, they've said that this won't affect metal releases, and that their metals, and I quote "have weathered the worst of what plastic prepaints could throw at them."
Thunderfoot
Hero
I would guess no - WotC entered the metal market with the Chainmail line trying to create a point style game and got CRUSHED by Reaper when their sales couldn't keep up. They entered the random pre-painted plastic minis market because there was no one else doing it that way (a very smart move on WotCs part).Gundark said:
But Reaper survives as a niche market modeler, they devote about 92% of their resources to minis, not books, not novels, not T-shirts, etc. so they can keep a large inventory of items on stock (something that WotC, a division of Hasbro, will not allow nor can afford). And unlike WotC Reaper regularly re-scuplts the same figure in the metal line when it starts garnering flagging sales numbers. As a former metal mini modeler, I have several Reaper figs with the same name but very different sculpts.
Usually in the neghborhood of about 40 (sometimes less, sometimes more), of course if your question is due to number of sculpts available, they probably won't "retire" their lines as fast as WotC, which may be the reason that WotC made the current re-casting/re-issue thing known.MerricB said:
Another reason Reaper may be entering the plastic minis market might be du to recent shortages in the metals market. About three years ago Reaper released a news brief that stated their supplier of metals (China I believe) had started to actually use their own resources and were no longer shipping amounts large enough at prices low enough for Reaper to continue to sell their minis at such low prices. Their average price of a mini went up from 2.00 to about 3.25. Plastics may be more readily available and might be easier to recast due to the amounts of new to old material needed during the recycling process (pewter unlike lead needs larger amounts of new slag in order to re-cast). So for Reaper, this could be finincial benificial all the way around. Anyone from Reaper care to comment on this?
As for releasing orcs, undead, ogres and trolls first instead of adventurers, I would assume that Reaper has watched the available market like we all have. Realistically, the amount of available orcs, undead, ogres and trolls at affordable prices are really not that great. Yeah orcs, pretty well covered, but undead is more than skeletons and reaper has a tradition of releaasing large amounts of wraiths, ghosts, ghouls, vampires and mummies, things that have been either rare by distribution or of little focus in the DDM line. Trolls and Ogres are probably on the list due to the aftermarket prices being so high for these figs. And Merric, I would assume that Giants are on their list, why should they quit making them now? (They have always had quite a few on their roster.)
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
DM_Jeff said:*sigh* Now I know where my wife's entire GenCon budget will go.
-DM Jeff
I was just wondering how many I could cram in my suitcase myself
I'm cautiously optimistic. I've always been impressed with the quality of Reapers stuff, and I have metal figs going back as long as they do. I don't collect the WotC stuff, but I do have a couple dozen picked up off of Ebay (mostly Star Wars) and the quality is pretty poor (IMO). No complaints for the $0.50 I spent on each for mooks, but bad enough that I've managed the temptation to spend big bucks on singles to supplement/replace the metal stuff. If Reaper can put out high quality, non-randomized stuff at a reasonable price, I'll be on these in a heartbeat.
green slime
First Post
Interesting news. A bit divided on the issue, but I can afford to fence sit for a whiel.
