Upcoming Changes to D&D Minis Line

[pawsplay]

From WOTC Forums

Interesting development. I'm not too surprised that the PH Minis line didn't have much traction.

Because half the minis of them are ugly, or because your parties aren't composed mainly of female dragonborn rogues? Just curious.

Frankly, the D&D minis have gotten too expensive. Also, some of the choices for visible minis were just bizarre. I'm still scratching my head over a My Little Ponycorn, or a mounted warrior guy who is destined to have a warped, wobbly sword, or the thing from Little Shop of Horrors. Don't get me wrong, I like evil plants, but I just don't see that as being a top seller.

I'm betting... they're changing the minis scale to make them Heroscape sized. A lot of other figures have gotten a little bigger, including HeroClix. Bigger figures means better detail for not much money, and they were planning on overcharging by the figure anyway. You might as well make them into very small action figures that look cool. That's my wild speculation for this thread.

 

[Nai_Calus]

By 2020 the minis will be six inches tall. I've got the old Cleric of Corellon Larethian mini and a couple of the PHH minis from the DMG2 WWGD last year, and they're huge next to him. I fear the idea of bigger minis, heh.

Whatever model they go to, I still want a danged male Eladrin with a sword in one hand and nothing in the other. And no, the Bralani from a few sets back does not work in either appearance or price, since he gets brought up every time.

 

[jasonbostwick]

Because half the minis of them are ugly, or because your parties aren't composed mainly of female dragonborn rogues? Just curious.

It was a real shame because some minis that were pretty cool concepts (Warforged Artificer comes to mind) ended up looking like blobby wrecks.

 

[Erik Mona]

I'm not sure I'd be sad to see the minis get a little larger. I _would_ like slightly larger, slightly better painted, cool-looking monsters. Yeah, it would suck that they don't match the 1000+ _metal_ minis I've had for years, to say nothing of the hundreds and hundreds of D&D minis, but I could forgive a lot with a REALLY sweet rust monster or even iconic character like Lord Soth or something sitting on my comptuer. There would be TONS of problems with this, not least of which would be having to shift to something other than a 5-foot square base (to say nothing of fans freaking out like there is no tomorrow), but the minis would look cool and it's one way to get around the fact that most of the core customers for this sort of thing pretty much have all the miniatures they need, anyway.

--Erik

 

[S'mon]

Re larger minis - it has occurred to me previously that the game would work better with 1 square/minis base = 1 yard, so you could have corridors 3 squares/minis wide. This would be both more realistic (and a return to 1e's advice that 3 men can fight side by side in a 10' corridor) and allow for somewhat larger minis, though for the sake of bacwards compatibility I'd like them to not look too ridiculous beside 1:60/1"=5' minis. It would also allow for large-weapon-fighters (eg chain fighter) that would logically need more space to fight, to be mounted on a 2" base, with their threat area being adjacent squares. Such weapons would then become balanced against regular-sized weapons.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hmmm...the hobby has already shifted once from 25mm minis to 28mm as the new norm. If minis get much bigger and not only will they look silly side by side with the older ones, most battlemats will be obsolete.

 

[S'mon]

Hmmm...the hobby has already shifted once from 25mm minis to 28mm as the new norm. If minis get much bigger and not only will they look silly side by side with the older ones, most battlemats will be obsolete.

Hmm, on the battlemats I have, at 1"=5', ten foot long beds and ten foot wide thrones are endemic! Most would be a lot more plausible at 1" = 3' or maybe 4'.

1"=4' would have the advantage of keeping most existing 30mm figures useable; most of the mediums are tending to ca 7' tall anyway as it is.

 

[S'mon]

Hmmm...the hobby has already shifted once from 25mm minis to 28mm as the new norm.

Even back in the early-mid '80s, the only genuine 25mm/1:76 fantasy figures I ever saw were from a very few marginal manufacturers like Prince August's cast-your-own-lead-figures moulds. Citadel/Games Workshop figs were always at least 28mm, trending to 30mm+ by the mid-late '80s.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Most of my Grenadier, Heritage and Ral Parthas from the '70s were 25mm, and continued that way well into the '80s. The DDM minis, Heartbreakers, Iron Wind, and Reapers that followed were largely 28mm, as I recall. I believe the Rackham (Confrontation) minis were as well.

I never got many of the GW minis, though I do have some of their Minotaurs.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I agree minis are getting too expensive, and I really have enough. In the last coupld of months, I bought a good amount to fill out my collection (mostly sizes as I only have about 150 of them) but also looking for good character representations and some larges and huges (of which I had very few).

Generally, when a monster is actually what it is supposed to be, we goggle in awe. Mostly the first qestion is, "Who is the guy with the hammer this time?"


Or "Uh, oh, there is the green guy(always ued for the leader of a group) let's get him first."