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

[Kunimatyu]

On a bit of a side tangent, there is a practical limit on how many critters are worth having on the battlefield at any one time. Eight is a good practical limit for kicking off most encounters. Far better to throw the initial handful and then have more show up in later rounds as reserves, in which case they can be pulled from the dead pile.

Indeed. Also, fighting multiple copies of a certain monster isn't always that fun or even playable -- five horned devils may sound like a fun encounter, but I defy you to actually keep track of every option those devils have access to. Most complex monsters simply aren't worth using with more than a pair, which also cuts down on needed miniatures. Personally, I try to get one copy of any large rare monster I really like, and then use blank GW bases to represent additional iterations of that same monster.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

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.

Err, the number is closer to 140 new miniatures a year, not including boxed sets. February saw ten releases, and some of those were multipacks....

The Auld Grump

 

[bowbe]

Indeed. Also, fighting multiple copies of a certain monster isn't always that fun or even playable -- five horned devils may sound like a fun encounter, but I defy you to actually keep track of every option those devils have access to. Most complex monsters simply aren't worth using with more than a pair, which also cuts down on needed miniatures. Personally, I try to get one copy of any large rare monster I really like, and then use blank GW bases to represent additional iterations of that same monster.

Defied!

I'm soo going to run that encounter the weekend after next. The party is a juiced up bunch of selfish 20th+ level characters. It should be fun! I probably have enough painted metal reaper figs to fill the bill too. I go big tho. I have 3 of their fire giants and 3-4 frost giants from them or varous sundry other companies. I've got like 4 fire elementals and 6 or more different painted trolls and as many different painted ogres. It's all good and its great when all that stuff is laid out on the table. The players Love that stuff even if they say they dont dig mini's. When you have your tiles, or terrain laid out, the figs in place and a big buncha buncha large enemies on the table, they dig it. Its better than pennies, poker chips and bottle caps. We had a titan in one ofour games a few weeks back, so I used a conan model from Mcfarlan's toy franchise to use as a stand in. Perfect.

I'm a huge HUGE fan of Reaper. Their sculpts kick butt and their company does too! Ron Hawkins the head of their Fantasy line is hands down the coolest guy in the RPG industry. Yes cooler than Monte... tho not cooler than Sue... but Sue isn't a guy.

I wish them the best of luck, because I totally need 100 more orcs to flesh out my 25 or so metal ones into a full blown horde of destruction. I need more gnolls, kobods, goblins and hobgoblins too.

I despise the WOTC kobolds. Crappy little lizard men. Most of their orc figs are equally crap-tastic. Their bugbears are WAY too small and look like early 80's wolverine dressed in not so glamorous paint. Their hobgoblins...awful. To their credit, WOTC stuff has gotten better.


Case

 

[ColonelHardisson]

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.

You should have added "...if you're a fan of metal minis or like to strip and repaint minis yourself" at the end of your post. I'm not and I don't. I see nothing but good coming from this...depending on the price. I want sets of cheap minis that I don't have to search over Hell and half of Georgia to obtain the ones I want.

 

[Glyfair]

Since I am confident I'll be as happy with their plastic line as I have been with their metal, I'm in for the ride. Plus I am sure their price point will be "competitive". The people at Reaper aren't stupid.

I agree they'll be competitive, but many here might not consider them so. I believe those who expect $1.00-$1.50 per mini are going to be disappointed.

If you think your copyright is violated, you have to sit down with your lawyer and point out all the critical points of similiarity between your creation and that of the infringing party and put all that in your cease-and-desist. It's really in the hands of whoever presides over your case to decide whether or not your case holds water.

Exactly. I doubt it's worth the time of WotC to worry about a "shades of gray" case from Reaper. That's especially true if they want to avoid creating bad feelings in some of their fan base.

If you took 3 minutes to visit their website, you can do a search of their entire mini catalog and see what they have, and they don't limit the search criteria to names and catalog numbers. They have checkboxes for type, gender, number of legs, weapon uses, monster type, etc, IIRC.

I doubt very many know they want to search for a "Bathalian" when they want a Mind Flayer, or "Stone Lurker" when they want a Roper unless they've seen the figure before. They might expect that an "Eye Beast" is a Beholder, a "Dung Beast" is an Otyugh if they see the name, but might not guess that when searching. Still, a few will be obvious (such as the "Cloak Fiend."

 

[jdrakeh]

Your hobby isn't dying, but it -is- changing. Will you change with it?

Change is anathema to many old school gaming fans. Such folks are simply unaccepting of the possibility that something postive may come from change. If anything is slowly killing our hobby, it't that kind of "line in the sand" closed-minded group think.

 

[Felon]

So, what exactly are you saying then? You claimed a 3rd party company couldn't make cloakers, mind flayers and glabrezu, and I pointed out that Reaper has, indeed, done just that without any sort of official license to do so. Would it help if they were able to market these minis under their "official" names? Probably, a little. But probably not enough to justify the expense of such a licensing deal.

Bingo! OK, good, right there, hold on for a sec!!!

See, I was pondering whether the language of the SRD obviated the need to strike any kind of licensing deal. Thanks to the SRD, you can use a cloaker in a D20 book without negotiation. My question was, does the same hold true for a cloaker mini?

That's all.

 

[Felon]

Indeed. Also, fighting multiple copies of a certain monster isn't always that fun or even playable -- five horned devils may sound like a fun encounter, but I defy you to actually keep track of every option those devils have access to. Most complex monsters simply aren't worth using with more than a pair, which also cuts down on needed miniatures.

True. Heck, fighting large groups of identical simple monsters isn't really worth it either. Fighting an army of orcs may sound cool, but either that party will have AoE attacks that will annihlate them in short order, or the battle quickly degenerates into a dull slog of dice-rolling.

 

[Felon]

Defied!

I'm soo going to run that encounter the weekend after next. The party is a juiced up bunch of selfish 20th+ level characters. It should be fun! I probably have enough painted metal reaper figs to fill the bill too. I go big tho. I have 3 of their fire giants and 3-4 frost giants from them or varous sundry other companies. I've got like 4 fire elementals and 6 or more different painted trolls and as many different painted ogres. It's all good and its great when all that stuff is laid out on the table.

Note that we were specifically talking about fighting large groups of identical opponents. Sounds like you're lining up a nice menagrie there.

 

[Glyfair]

See, I was pondering whether the language of the SRD obviated the need to strike any kind of licensing deal. Thanks to the SRD, you can use a cloaker in a D20 book without negotiation. My question was, does the same hold true for a cloaker mini?

I remember some discussion early in the d20 period that the figure can match any description in the SRD. If it's a monster created for D&D than, any elements of a WotC/TSR picture you copy that aren't mentioned in the SRD is treading on very questionable ground.

I think this is less of an issue now, though. IIRC, at that time almost no descriptions were in the SRD. I think that's been corrected.