Reaper to produce pre-painted Plastic minis - Non-random

[Kae'Yoss]

Yeah, hey, a fighter with a sword that's bent into a "U" that I can't unbend? Yeah give me more of those!

Hot water, cold water, problem solved!

Because plastic prepainted minis are nearly impossible to strip and repaint - at least ddm minis are. I threw simple green at them, alcohol, and my editor used oven cleaner. Nothing doing.

You're not supposed to strip and repaint them. They have perfectly good minis for that. The announcement seemed to imply that the plastic minis would be inspird by their existing catalog of metal minis. So if you want to paint, get the metal mini, if you want a quick mini, get the prepainted plastic one.

Because all Hasborg needs to do is twitch their little finger and change marketing tactics slightly and suddenly Reaper is stuck with a bunch of miniatures and a manufacturing process that they can't get rid of.

So you say that Hasbro could abandon their product line (with all the manufactoring baggage they also have) and would take the market with them? Suddenly, noone would want prepainted plastic minis any more?

And what would they switch to? Metal? Jelly?

If Reaper is "successful" and does pull a significant number of DDM fans away, a slight adjustment by the multibillion-dollar megacorp behind WotC is all that's required to put an end to the argument ("Sell them non-random, get these guys off our backs.") and suddenly Reaper's audience leaves.

This assumes that the Wizards minis would be better than the Reaper minis, or a lot cheaper, or that those who will buy Reaper's minis will return to Wizards just because they made them non-random. I'm not sure about that.

And Wizards would have to be willing to change into non-random to begin with.

It WILL detract from the metal minis. How can spending the bank on a new manufacturing and painting process not detract from metal minis?

Maybe because they will make money they wouldn't have made with their metal minis? There's people who don't share your love for painting and minis made of metal. They won't buy Reaper's metal minis (they haven't bought Wizards' metal minis). Some of them will give Reaper money if they get painted plastic in return.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Because plastic prepainted miniatures look like junk. Yeah, hey, a fighter with a sword that's bent into a "U" that I can't unbend? Yeah give me more of those!

Because plastic prepainted minis are nearly impossible to strip and repaint - at least ddm minis are. I threw simple green at them, alcohol, and my editor used oven cleaner. Nothing doing.

Because all Hasborg needs to do is twitch their little finger and change marketing tactics slightly and suddenly Reaper is stuck with a bunch of miniatures and a manufacturing process that they can't get rid of. When the LEGEND OF FIVE RINGS license went away, or the EXALTED license went away, big deal! They had a few metal molds in Texas they didn't need to use any more. If Reaper is "successful" and does pull a significant number of DDM fans away, a slight adjustment by the multibillion-dollar megacorp behind WotC is all that's required to put an end to the argument ("Sell them non-random, get these guys off our backs.") and suddenly Reaper's audience leaves. If Reaper is unsuccessful? Then they've shot themselves in the foot at the word "go".

It WILL detract from the metal minis. How can spending the bank on a new manufacturing and painting process not detract from metal minis? The money that would have (should have) been spent on the metal minis side of the house is now being put into plastic prepaints. I don't buy it for a second that this won't negatively impact the alloy minis. Not one second.

I see this beginning the end of either the Dark Heaven "RPG" line of minis. Maybe not now, and of course Reaper won't spin it that way. They'll pitch it that if you want a highly detailed character mini, buy one of their wonderful WarLord minis. If you want bulk monsters, then buy the pre-painted plastic ones!

This is just...I just can't see any good coming out of this whatsoever, I'm sorry.

Ok that's fair. I understand your concerns I really do.
For me though I honestly just don't have the time or patience to paint minis as much as I used to. I'm trying to assemble a warband for Warmachine right now and it's taken me 4 days to do the pinning / assembly on 2 warjacks. With a full time job, me studying for the GMAT, a 5 year old at home and a wife who also works full time and is on the tail end of completing her second masters degree there's just not a lot of time to paint up as many mini's as I used to and I like Reaper's Dark Heaven line.

So I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I for one though will be buying thier plastic prepainted mini's. The only thing that would prohibit this would be an obscene price point.

 

[diaglo]

This is great news. I love reaper!

ditto.

 

[Nebulous]

Damn. It sounds great. I'm not sure what the price will be like though, but knowing me like i know me, i'll buy them no matter what if they look great, and add them to my piles of other underused plastic minis

 

[Kae'Yoss]

On a sidenote: Alderac has something on their side about a Legend of the Five Rings Boardgame. I wonder whether it will feature prepainted plastic figures, too. (I just went on their side to look who was doing their minis right now - I had this vision of a L5R tabletop/wargame with prepainted plastic minis and rules for Skirmishes AND mass battles. If they did that I'd abandon DDM in a second)

 

[Zaukrie]

So, will the LGS buy these? Can they survive without the LGS buying them, and only sell them on-line?

I know the LGS in the Twin Cities have walls full of minis. Many of them have dust on them from being there for so long.

I think the biggest risk here is that many LGS won't want to tie up their very sparse cash in inventory that doesn't turn very fast. I said risk, not certainty. I wonder how the distribution will go.

 

[Lockridge]

For anyone concerned about price, don't forget that non random ebay minis are not only expensive for so called rares but you also have to pay for shipping and wait a week or more.
I use the term "so called rares" because WOTC chooses which minis to make rare - not because they should be rare (like an old baseball card that, when released, was common).

I'm in and can hardly wait for Reaper to start these. For the reasons above, I am willing to pay more (within reason). Reaper also does great work.

It will be interesting to see if Ryan Dancy(?) was actually right or was just full of marketing BS when he said random is better for the consumer. Random distribution has an addictive quality that marketers love.

If this fails I hope the reason is more than just because people are foolish enough to prefer the "official" product over the kind of quality that Reaper has been producing for years.

 

[Janaxstrus]

If they release 40 a year (which was mentioned previously as what they do for metal), they'll be less then 25% as many as DDM. Which means they won't be "large selection".

I can't imagine they will be "ebay orc" cheap either. But we'll see in another 4 or so months I guess.

 

[Contrarian]

While this is good news, I am concerned about the releasing on non-random minis from a economic standpoint. I'm no economist, however I heard a pretty convincing arguement (Ryan Dancy was it?) as to why it was a bad idea finacially for to do WotC doing non-random minis.Wonder if the same is true for Reaper.

WOTC (and TSR before them) never figured out how to make money from non-randomized metal miniatures, either, but Reaper's obviously figured that one out.

WOTC is the market-leader for roleplaying, and I'd be inclined to listen them when they talk about the roleplaying market. The miniatures market? Not so much.

 

[jdrakeh]

Been thinking about this and I think the best that will come of it is that, unlike the DDM minis, Reaper minis are always sculpted to scale. That is, it's not just the base that is to scale, but the actual physical dimensions of the minis themselves (I'm sick about the physcial scale of DDM minis not being consistent from one model to another).