War Drums- Too Many Humanoids!

[Glyfair]

They certainly have. Indeed, in the very early days, they planned on making two "War Party" sets. However, the response from retailers and distributors was extremely poor, and they were scrapped.

I think that was part of it. I also think part was that the DDM game was a lot more successful than they expected it could be (probably at the upper end of "hopes").

Of course, that keeps the basic fact the same. It was a lot more economical for them to deliver the miniatures by this method than by another.

In fact, look at the prices for the two figures that aren't being done by the "random booster" method. I think very few will argue that those are higher priced than they are "worth" (at least from a play perspective, collectibility is another issue).

 

[MerricB]

You've made this comment on past occasions and it always makes me wonder why you say this. While it is true that humanoids can be advanced with character classes (as many monsters can), goblinoids, orcs, and other races primarily remain as low-level threats. And halflingss, elves, and dwarves tend not to be creatures that players are going to fight at all. Humans, of course, tend to be the exception.

I agree that halflings, elves and dwarves don't appear that often as opponents. (They're correspondingly less represented in DDM, although elves and dwarves tend to appear more often due to the alignment structure that you mention).

However, once you compare humanoids in general (orcs, goblins, humans especially) to any other type of monster, they tend to outweigh the use of those monsters significantly. (The exceptions, ogres, giants and lesser undead, are also pretty common in DDM).

At higher levels, what tends to happen is that the range of monsters multiplies dramatically. At low levels, orcs and goblins are popular opponents. But what at higher levels? I suspect that the variation is much, much more at these levels. Some campaigns concentrate on giants, some on aberrations, some on outsiders, etc. Some just use any old monster that comes along.

The result of this is that a common ground of monster selection is no longer held. Of course, there will be some convergence on the monsters in the original Monster Manual, but variation is much greater.

Look too at the numbers encountered. One behir. Ten goblins...

There are certainly some figures in DDM that should be more common than they presently are. (My poster boy for this is the bearded devil; I expect it to be redone as an uncommon in Blood War) Certainly, Hill Giants and Ogres are much more common now than they used to be.

Does the DDM alignment structure distort the reckoning? Certainly it does. Then too, DDM also caters for people who buy only a handful of packs. Three or four packs of War Drums should net a group human, dwarf, elf and halfling miniatures for their PCs.

One interesting factor that I've noticed over the past 18 months as I've been DMing RPGA adventures: Humans make up a great number of encounters in Living Greyhawk and Mark of Heroes.

Cheers!

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I love the fact that I can have armies now. I really do. I don't play the miniatures game. I'm just a DM. But with 30 Ibixians, I caused one of those "whoa" moments you usually only get with a horrific large metal miniature by plunking them all down on the board at once. Could I use more of the classic D&D monsters? Yep. But all the same, I have a lot more minis now thanks to plastic than I ever did. No complaints here.

 

[Agent Oracle]

Hmm... let's see, What's the average cost per mini?
Lets see... $13.00 per booster, each booster has 8 figures...

$1.62 /mini.

A starter has more figs, but also has rulebooks and stuff which skew the price upwards, let's just assume 1.62 a pop.

Now, according to the backing on my good 'ole MM, there are over 500 fearsome foes... so at $1.62 per unit, a fully represented monster manual would cost $810.00 or more.

 

[megamania]

You might be surprised at how quickly plastic wears out injection molds. Having worked in the molding industry for over 15 years, I can guarantee that these molds, after the end of the production run for their set, are nearly scrap (if they aren't, then WotC is paying way too much in material costs for the molds). Since these molds are most likely EDM machined, they're also very expensive to create, even in China. It is very common to explore re-use of mold and the refurbish costs would have been factored in to any decisions WotC made.

-Dave
BSIE 1989
PE 1999

I also work at a plastics factory. Believe it or not, many plastics create an acid that wears down molds. Most NEED to be stainless steel to avoid this which is extremely expensive.

Something I have yet to see mentioned is the "desire to buy" factor. If they creat five sets of nothing but dragons and powerful and popular creatures then why buy the next five sets after this? By mixing it up, there is something in each set for everyone and they all buy the next ten sets instead of five.

Fair? I've seen and bought into worse.

WoTC is doing an EXCELLENT job in my mind of the marketing of the figures and making the decisions of which creatures to use. Some paint jobs have opertunities for improvement but what the heck.








and that said- when does the Darksun themed set come out?

 

[DaveStebbins]

Something I have yet to see mentioned is the "desire to buy" factor. If they creat five sets of nothing but dragons and powerful and popular creatures then why buy the next five sets after this? By mixing it up, there is something in each set for everyone and they all buy the next ten sets instead of five.

Fair? I've seen and bought into worse.

WoTC is doing an EXCELLENT job in my mind of the marketing of the figures and making the decisions of which creatures to use. Some paint jobs have opertunities for improvement but what the heck.

Exactly. While the random packaging may not be optimal for many peoples' tastes, they have done an excellent job sustaining the line and maintaining interest set after set. With the existance of a healthy secondary market, buyers can make what they want of each set.

I only purchased three boosters of wardrums because I wasn't impressed with a large number of the rares. I filled in what I wanted for commons and uncommons through the secondary market. On the other hand, I'll probably end up purchasing three cases of War of the Dragon Queen because I am largely very happy with the huges. The only reason I'm waiting to decide what to pre-order is because we've only seen previews of two of the commons so far.

-Dave