What're your opinions of the new D&D Miniatures line so far?

Green Knight · Mar 30, 2003

My opinion's improved a whole lot since then. Let me take it point by point.

1. Pre-Painted. - I expected MageKnight/HeroClix style paint jobs. Even at their best, they don't look all that great. I'm not that great of a painter, but I can do a better job than that on average. However, after looking at the above pics, especially the last 10, I think it's safe to say that the paint jobs will be superior to the WizKids stuff. Certainly better than what I can do. Yeah, there're dogs in there. Every line has them, but they're in the minority. The majority of what I saw had pretty nice paint jobs. So in that regard, at least, I'm relieved. My opinion may change once I see pictures of them in better lighting, and when I actually hold some in my hand, but so far so good. Whoever they have painting these miniatures appears to be able to stay within the lines, unlike the person who painted the HeroClix miniatures.

Then there's the fact that Mike McVey is Art Supervisor (I think that's his job title, I'm not sure. Coule be Art Director). So I take it he's heading up the painting? That also makes me extra confident that the paint jobs will look nice. For those of you who've seen his work on Games Workshop miniatures, you know what I'm talking about. Not that I expect any of these miniatures to be up to the standards of, say, Prince Tyrion or any other Warhammer Fantasy miniature he's painted, but the PC miniatures and the rarer creatures, which'll undoubtedly have better paint jobs then the monsters, will probably look very nice.

2. Plastic. - Point of Contention #2, for me. One of the reasons I stopped collecting HeroClix pretty much as soon as I started was because I didn't like the plastic the miniatures were made of. Polyvinyl, I think it's called. What can I say? I'm a perfectionist. So being a perfectionist, I don't like it when I open a booster of miniatures only to find a SHIELD Agent with his rifle bent. And of course, you can't bend it back. Once it's like that it's stuck.

I figured that WoTC would probably end up using the same plastic. I was HOPING for polystyrene, which I believe is what Games Workshop uses for its plastic miniatures, but I wasn't holding my breath. Then I read the following 2 posts in the Chainmail forum on the WoTC boards. I leave it up to you to judge the veracity of the posters. We'll know eventually if they're telling the truth or not. Personally, I see no reason not to believe them.

Crassus
Member # 104184
posted March 26, 2003 10:33 PM

My roomate went to Gamma. He owns a game shop in Costa Mesa, CA. He said the miniatures are hard polystyrine not polyvinyle unlike wizkids figs. Yes boys and girls they are hard plastic, prepainted, and random. I still dont like ramdom minatures.

(***Edited out the rest of the post which was unrelated to the above.***)

Caine
Member # 5652
posted March 27, 2003 06:24 AM

I didn't want to say it because it was purely speculation but I believed it would be Poly-styrene from the start why?

Because I work for NOVA Chemicals the company that makes plastic for Hasbro and many other companies (the styrene that goes in McDonald's cups and such as well)

Polystyrene is one of their biggest products so I would think that is what they'd be made of. I talked to a customer service associate of NOVA and she said yes if Hasbro made something plastic it would be NOVA plastic.
She also said there is no way I could get a free sample yet, not until there is an official release date so don't get your hopes up that I can get anyone a free sample. But there is a department here that gets Hasbro and Milton Bradly toys as samples all the time (In one guy's office he has GI JOE figures and Battle Ship games and all sorts of cool stuff)

So there you go. Reason #2 why I've gone from puking my guts out at the idea of this miniature line to getting hopeful about it. For those of you who own both WizKids miniatures and Games Workshop plastics, compare the two. The difference is pretty startling. For one, my Space Marine Sergeants' chainsword is a LOT tougher than that SHIELD Agents' rifle, and wouldn't bend in the box the way the rifle did. And to my untrained eye, the GW plastics (The more recent ones, anyway) look a lot more detailed than the WizKids miniatures. In my uneducated opinion, I think more detailed miniatures can be made with polystyrene than can be made with polyvinyl. Not as good as pewter, but certainly good enough. And of course they'll be a lot cheaper than pewter figs.

Also, another plus side to plastic figures. If you look closely at a female warrior mini in one of the first few pics, you'll notice that she's posed as if she's wielding a two-handed weapon, but she's not actually holding anything. I'm just making a big assumption, here (And you know what they say when you "assume"), but this could mean that some of the minis will come unarmed. So you may be free to arm some of these however you like. So while there may be some gluing involved (Which means some won't be playable "straight out of the box"), it's a LOT easier to glue plastic to plastic then it is to glue pewter to pewter. And of course, gluing plastic weapons onto plastic miniatures won't take anywhere NEAR as long as it'd take to glue arms and other limbs onto a pewter miniature.

3. Random. - I still don't care for this, but after looking at things objectively, it isn't so bad.

For one, the miniatures are cheap. I found out the other day that Expansion Packs will cost $9.99 and you'll get 8 miniatures per pack (4 Commons, 3 Uncommons, and 1 Rare). That's about $1.25 per miniature. So for the same price of a standard Chainmail figure you can get 3 of these and have some change left over.

Second, WoTC may have a point about the Secondary Market. If you're a DM and you need 5 or 6 orcs, then yes, it's insane to buy Expansion Pack after Expansion Pack after Expansion Pack trying to get the necesserary number of orcs. However, if your game store is anything like mine, then that's not a problem.

At mine the store owner has a box full of common HeroClix figures that you can buy for either .25 or .50 cents, not sure which. I suspect the store owner will do the same for this. So if I'm DMing a game and I need a pack of orcs, I can just buy the loose ones the store owner will undoubtedly have (As orcs will obviously be Commons). Not only will I be able to get the exact miniatures I want, but I'll be able to get them cheaper than their normal $1.25 price. So does anyone else's store do that sort of thing with the WizKids minis?

And of course, if you're a DM, you can simply buy a bunch of Expansion Packs, see what monsters you get, and just plan an encounter around whatever you get.

Third, you really don't need this line to supply PC miniatures, so randomness in this case isn't a factor. Just buy a Reaper miniature for your character. That's what I intend to do. Get a bunch of these for monsters and other NPC's, and buy a Reaper figure for my PC which I can then paint however I want. Of course, that's not to say that the PC minis' won't still be useful. For those who luck out on getting a PC miniature in an Expansion Pack which you like, paintjob and all, then just use that. But point is, WoTC isn't the only option for PC miniatures (The same goes for the less common monsters like Mind Flayers and Balors. Reaper seems to be on a demon kick these days, putting out monsters that easily pass for Baatezu and Tanar'ri).

So anyway, after seeing some new stuff on this line in the past week, I'm now hopeful about the line. So what's your opinion of it?

WayneLigon · Mar 30, 2003

Green Knight said:
1. Pre-Painted. - I expected MageKnight/HeroClix style paint jobs. Even at their best, they don't look all that great.

At mine the store owner has a box full of common HeroClix figures that you can buy for either .25 or .50 cents, not sure which. I

Yeah, if that's the paint job we'll be seeing, I'll certainly be picking these up. I see a lot of unpainted figures in the background, though, so I hope hope hope these are not just special paint jobs done for the trade show.

I plan to buy them seperately as well. Most of the ones I will need lots of anyways should be the cheap ones (like skeletons and orcs).

NiTessine · Mar 30, 2003

I am interested in these new miniatures, and will certainly buy the starting set, as well as a couple of boosters... and once I figure out what sort of paint they have been dunked in, also a couple of liters of the appropriate paint stripping agent.

By the way... How on earth did you manage to locate such a gross picture? No, nevermind, I don't want to know.

SamuraiY · Mar 30, 2003

Once you find the appropriate substance, will you post it? I actually like painting minis.

Bagpuss · Mar 30, 2003

If it gets released outside of the USA that will do me. It's near impossible to find a range of fantasy figures (other than Games Workshop's) a round here.

NiTessine · Mar 30, 2003

SamuraiY said:
Once you find the appropriate substance, will you post it? I actually like painting minis.

Sure. I hear HeroClix and MageKnights are best stripped with acetone, but it also dissolves the base they come with. The base is hard plastic, and if these are of similar stuff, it might also dissolve the miniature. Oven cleaners, brake fluids and pine sol are the usual assortment of stuff I'd use for a miniature painted with GW stuff, but these might very well be covered with something completely different.

Olive · Mar 30, 2003

i'm into them... although i did hear a suggestion that the painted minis we saw in those pics are hand painted promos, not machine painted production figs, so the paint job may not be as good...

megamania · Mar 31, 2003

Just like 3.5

Once it's out I'll check it out and go from there.

Gospog · Mar 31, 2003

I really, REALLY like the elementals.
Nice and simple, nice and big!

I like to paint, so the paintjobs are not a big issue for me.

That being said, the paintjobs pictured above look great. We'll see how the actual boxed minis look.

Looking forward to seeing these.

Foundry of Decay · Mar 31, 2003

I'm both impressed and unimpressed. However I'm more impressed than I am unimpressed

So let the confusion begin.

I like the look of some of the figures, though I'm willing to bet that they are *not* hard plastics, since hard plastics are die cast, and the casts themselves are more expensive than most people's cars to produce.

Also, there was a press release somewhere that stated they were going with the same company to produce these, that does the production of the physical Mage Knight and Heroclix figures, thus I'm betting they will be the 'wonky wubbers' that the MK stuff is.

The paint jobs unimpressed me wholly, but then again I have been painting for years, enjoy painting, and am completely biased towards hand painted miniatures, so my opinion shouldn't really count here. While its a bit of a pain to use oven cleaner to strip the figures, its not *too* bad. Also, if it's just a figure I don't actually feel like painting, I'll leave it as is, or just do a few washes over it to make the details stand out.

I'd LOVE it if they released unpainted sets as well.

The figures themselves really surprised me. They look pretty decent for the most part, however I *hate* the fact that they are going with the GW version of hands and feet, meaning a fist will be as big as the figures head now. That wizard with the black eyes looks great, but once my eyes hit those huge, walnut cracker, man-hands I was pretty turned off.

Also, I'm curious as to what in the name of Jimmy the Goat that big dog thing with the horns is in some of those pictures.. The head is.. MASSIVE.. How does this thing propel itself along on just two legs without toppling over as soon as gravity hits that big coconut?

The Centaur's paint job is abysmal, and it's hard to see if the thing has any detail at all. I hope.. and PRAY that they make a decent Centaur, like the Chainmail one was. Heck, I'd like a few various Centaurs if they could help it, but I'm really hoping this one looks nothing like those silly things that GW released some time back. Centaurs seem to be a crap shoot in the miniatures market, and before the Chainmail one was released, the last good ones I found were waaaaaaaaaayyy back from the mid 80's or late 70's, with very well proportioned and correct looking forms (No wonky legs there, or messed up humanoid to equine ratio in body sizes).

That Mialee figure is.. *ahem* likely to get chilly on some nights, but I rather like the unpainted one's detail. The troll looks terribly good too, though the picture is pretty bad, and the Owlbear actually looks fearsome.. The Chainmail one looked so bloody silly I didn't bother buying it. This one looks like it *wants* to hurt you gravely.

Anyhoo, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I hope Wizards does better at advertizing this line than it did with Chainmail. Have feature promos and perhaps some 'teasers' in the months before release.

Lastly, while I wasn't too hyped on the 'randomized' logistics of this set up, I have to say that it seems the folks doing this line of figures weren't as out of their minds as I thought they might have been. I like the fact that you will be guaranteed to get a rare in each box/set, as well as uncommons. That I can live with. I was scared that they would go with the 'completely randomized', meaning that you'd have to buy 40 boxes to get a chance in hell at getting a rare figure.

Maybe it won't be as bad as I thought it would be.

What're your opinions of the new D&D Miniatures line so far?

Green Knight

First Post

WayneLigon

Adventurer

NiTessine

Explorer

SamuraiY

First Post

Bagpuss

Legend

NiTessine

Explorer

Olive

Explorer

megamania

Hero

Gospog

First Post

Foundry of Decay

First Post

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