Which Miniatures company is best suited to take over the D&D pre-painted mini line?

[cyderak]

Which Miniatures company do you think would be suitable to pick up where WOTC left off with the mass produced, yet afforable pre-painted plastic miniatures?


I think the best candidates would be:
http://privateerpress.com/
or
http://enigmaminiatures.com/en/news.html

I'm still on the fence whether or not randomization is a good idea.
Randomized and Non-Randomized both have their merits.

 

[francisca]

I'd say a company which already has a relationship with the producer of the minis in China, as that would allow them to get them in production and for sale before the memory fades and/or buyers move on to other alternatives.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Wizkids would be the only one I would bet on only because they have extensive delaings with the market to begin with.

As a matter of fact, Privateer Press just changed their marketing on their already random prepainted line Monsterocolypse.

 

[darjr]

Last I heard mage knight was getting a relaunch ala dominion.

 

[Mark CMG]

Seems more like something Mongoose might try.

 

[Dausuul]

Which Miniatures company do you think would be suitable to pick up where WOTC left off with the mass produced, yet afforable pre-painted plastic miniatures?

I suspect the answer is "none." I don't think the DDM approach is viable any more, due to a mix of buyer fatigue, rising oil prices, Chinese inflation, and the collapse of the skirmish game. Otherwise WotC wouldn't have canceled it in the first place.

I would expect prepainted plastics in future to look more like Reaper's "Legendary Encounters" line--a small selection of middling-expensive minis in non-random packaging.

 

[Stormonu]

Hasbro, with the entire DDM line repurposed for some other game/toy not directly related to D&D (say, heroscape).

I also believe Privateer Press could come up with a decent line - I'm just getting into Monsterpocalypse, and its a pretty good game (though random moster boosters is pretty silly).

 

[francisca]

I suspect the answer is "none." I don't think the DDM approach is viable any more, due to a mix of buyer fatigue, rising oil prices, Chinese inflation, and the collapse of the skirmish game. Otherwise WotC wouldn't have canceled it in the first place.

Not disagreeing here, but I wanted to point out this sounds like an early/mid game power structure right out of the Illuminati card game.

Hasbro, with the entire DDM line repurposed for some other game/toy not directly related to D&D (say, heroscape).

HeroScape has been discontinued, last I heard.

 

[Cergorach]

I seriously doubt that PP would have the capacity and the only other company that has extensive expertience with dealing in prepainted miniatures is WizKids, almost everyone else went bust. The question becomes why would such companies do DDM? Isn't the market pretty flooded already with DDM? Isn't that the reason why WotC stopped with producing the miniatures in the first place, why would anyone be foolish enough to pick up such an expensive license to such an expensive productline when WotC has already poisoned the well?

Legendary Encounters sounded like fun almost three years ago, availability overseas has been lacking and there's only 25 different miniatures.

WizKids was going to start with MageKnight, that might be your best bet, they might survive on their own IP and CMG. There's also going to be a LotR CMG, that might be useful as well.

Rackham went belly up last year, but you might pick up a couple of cheap sets to use some as monsters/NPCs.

Dwarven forge is expensive and has only a few sets of prepainted miniature (skeletons and lizardmen).

There's a few odd miniature manufacturers that offer prepainted versions of their products, but those are usually only direct order companies.

You might have to buy your miniatures in plastic/metal/resin and get someone to paint them. Your best bet there is hunt up your local GW store and get one of the talented young painters to paint up some of your unpainted miniatures, might not be as cheap as some of the commons on ebay, but you have options ;-)

But what would you seriously want that WotC didn't release in the previous DDM sets? There's a seriously big secondary market, and if some of it dries up I'm sure WotC will fill in the hole with a DDM release, only non-collectable (as in the Beholder set).

 

[cyderak]

If they put out a set like the beholder set, I would hope they do a better job.

Making a set of flourescent colored beholders had to be one of their more inane ideas yet.

The molds for making the minis are already there, sitting in some chinese factory.

Fire em up and manufacture a small release of Non-randomized minis with common sense paint schemes and price them to make a modest amount of money and if need be, raise the price on the following runs.