D&D General Time for some good minis! WotC releasing "The Classic Collection"

[Paul Farquhar]

Thanks to Baldur's Gate CRPG I expect ankhegs to be lime green.

 

[ad_hoc]

Something I glossed over the first time 'round - has there been a plastic cockatrice mini for D&D before this set? I don't recall ever having seen one, and I love the little evil chickens.

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Gallery of Pre-Painted Plastic Miniatures Images and Pictures for Roleplaying Games like Dungeons and Dragons, D&D and Pathfinder

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[jgsugden]

As the old saying goes: random, cheap, prepainted - choose two...

That has always been an oversimplification. They charge prices to maximize profits. If they feel they can lose 20% of their customers but raise profits by 80% per sale with a higher price point, they'll do it. Right now, they're trying to sell to a specific customer base and a lot of those customers already have a solid collection. They're better off going for the higher price point and accepting fewer customers.... from a short term profit perspective.

They're already starting to fight against 3D color printing. It is only a matter of time before people will start to look at home printing entire encounters to build their collection. When that happens, to compete, they'll release cheaper sets without randomization and try to win out qith quality versus the at home print limitations. It is just a matter of time.

 

[teitan]

I will pay about the same amount for the Otherworld versions.

 

[teitan]

That has always been an oversimplification. They charge prices to maximize profits. If they feel they can lose 20% of their customers but raise profits by 80% per sale with a higher price point, they'll do it. Right now, they're trying to sell to a specific customer base and a lot of those customers already have a solid collection. They're better off going for the higher price point and accepting fewer customers.... from a short term profit perspective.

They're already starting to fight against 3D color printing. It is only a matter of time before people will start to look at home printing entire encounters to build their collection. When that happens, to compete, they'll release cheaper sets without randomization and try to win out qith quality versus the at home print limitations. It is just a matter of time.

Plus the prices aren't across the board for all their minis. Some are by brand. Prepainted pathfinder individual larger minis are less expensive than D&D and so are the unpainted minis like the bigger dragons, usually by about half. They charge a premium for the D&D brand. Tiamat is 350 painted... 300 unpainted. They seem to overvalue their product in some cases and just about right in others but the overvalues is way overvalue like the Frameworks and the large D&D dragons.

 

[teitan]

Recall that we used to get DDM boosters with 8 miniatures for less than $10. Yes, it has been 20 years, but according to the consumer price index we've only seen a ~60% total inflation over that period ... meaning it would be fair to see a similar product for $16.

Some of the price increases come in changes in petroleum costs, labor costs, etc... The paint on these minis is a little better. And you get more of the larger figures here than you would on an Archfiends booster. But does all of that add up to $84 in excess price increase?

It seems more likely that they're comfortable selling much fewer miniatures at much higher prices.

I think someone is going to find a way to mass produce RPG miniatures that are prepainted and cost efficient. When they do, if they can get a foothold and start to provide real compeititon, we'll see how the prices change.

I just bought a bunch of old WOTC minis to compare and the plastic is cheaper, the paint apps are far fewer, usually three to four colors with low detail. The Wizkids minis... I am loathe to admit, are getting a lot better and the blind boxes are a fair deal. The painting appears to be tampographed so higher detailed than hand factory painted.

 

[Andvari]

I have several Wizkids minis. They have nice sculpts and are all pre-assembled. They're made of a soft plastic, so should be pretty difficult to break as well. Only real minus is that some of their weapons can be rather bendy due to the malleable plastic, but that can be fixed.

Also I was quite disappointed when I bought one of their basilisks and the miniature turned out to be absolutely tiny for some reason.

 

[el-remmen]

Also I was quite disappointed when I bought one of their basilisks and the miniature turned out to be absolutely tiny for some reason.

Right? I ended up using them as basilisk babies!

 

[tetrasodium]

If they're charging $100.00 for 8 minis from A-C, the letter D is going to cost about $300.00 all by itself, unless they split it into multiple collections. Demons, devils, dragons, dinosaurs, displacer beasts....

Johnathan

Almost certainly multiple collections I bet. Making the molds for minis is a fairly expensive process so it gives an excuse to chunk it around collection. If there were 3 more a/b monsters it wouyld probably be the A-B set

 

[beta-ray]

I don't really collect or use minis so it is out of my price range, but they do look pretty cool to me…