Why the D&D Miniature Line Failed...

[Felon]

As easy as it was to get minis through secondary sources--at good prices, with flat-rate shipping--I have trouble buying the notion that randomization was a major part of the problem. In fact, it probably made the whole thing viable. Too bad that party's over. What a shame.

Now? I ain't buying three minis for eleven bucks, regardless of how they look. I'll take a random pull off a slot machine over a pull off one that's rigged to always come up with three lemons.

Hey, whatever happened to those non-randomized Reaper plastics? Did they sell like hotcakes? Are they super-expensive?

 

[Ulrick]

As others have said: randomization

I held off buying the miniatures until the War of the Dragon Queen line came out. I was going to run the Red Hand of Doom. I thought it'd be neat to have some miniatures that would match up with the creatures encountered in the module.

So after about spending $100 over the course of a summer I stopped. Those damn things are too addictive. I have to admit, WotC had good marketing to make them randomized. The definitely got some money out of me because I was looking for that one rare mini that would be perfect for the module.

I might as well have bought the rares on ebay rather than spending all that money having a bunch of mediocrely painted minis that I'll never use.

 

[Vegepygmy]

You guys do realize the non-random aspect WILL increase the price significantly of the miniatures right?

Yes. And like anything else, if the price is too high, I won't buy them for that reason.

If you want to reframe the issue as price, I can summarize my feelings this way: I found the price too high for a randomized box of miniatures, so I didn't buy them. If they had cost less, I'd have bought more.

 

[Remathilis]

Hey, whatever happened to those non-randomized Reaper plastics? Did they sell like hotcakes? Are they super-expensive?

Short answer: Dead on Arrival.

Longer Answer: They had no niche. Reaper fans tend to paint their minis, and they were much more expensive than most DDM singles (1 skeleton, $1.99. Elf Archer $4.50. Compare that to a decent DDM dealer, where skeletons are $0.50 and an elf archer is $2.00). They also suffered some distribution problems (not a lot of stores carried them) and there was concerns over the paint jobs (some were as poor as some DDM paints, not good when you're playing 2-3 times as much per figure).

There hasn't been a new figure since May 2008, which tells me they didn't sell well enough to justify continuing the license.

 

[Pramas]

Indeed, CMG players ceased to be the primary market as people buying more minis for use with D&D (the roleplaying game) began to outnumber them.

I don't think the CMG players were ever the primary market. I think the success the D&D minis had was due to the roleplayers. After a bunch of sets came out, the RPG players had big enough collections that they stopped buying a case of each new set on release. Hence WotC's announced format change.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

The DDM line didn't fail. It morphed, to take advantage of a perceived influx of new players due to 4E.

Now the DDM skirmish game failed, and it failed for a number of reasons:

Poor balance in usability among figures, poor quality control with regard to painting and sculpts, the "capture" of the DDM skirmish community by WotC, and (IMO the biggest reason) a reboot of the rules, which promised to fix game-play by cleaning up rules and vastly improve balance among pieces, and accomplished neither of those. DDM 2.0 was a mess to start with, and every "fix" or piece of errata issued seemingly made more of a mess. Even people who enthusiastically liked the basic rules changes of 2.0 were eventually worn down by the ongoing changes.

Some of that was getting better when WotC discontinued support of the game, but some of it was pretty hopeless.

But I gotta tell you, the Farmer, the Prisoner, and the Tavern Brawler were among the most popular Common figures I saw, and I collected from the beginning. People were clamoring for more townsfolk figures, not fewer.

 

[Glyfair]

Once you start throwing pig farmers and prisoners into the mix as common figures... well, it pretty much says it's over.

You seem to be missing the fact that fans were crying out for the farmer and prisoner type miniatures. In fact, people were crying out for those in Mage Kngiht as well (but not as loudly).

It was the roleplayers who were asking for them, not the skirmish gamers. Given the RPG market bought the majority of the figures (according to WotC themselves), it made sense to include them.

Sure, every used monster in the MM were asked for. There were issues with many of them WotC didn't overcome because of the skirmish game (such as lack of water for the water-exclusive creatures). They managed to find a way for the bystanders to be used in the game (and some of the "dungeon dressing"). Size was an issue for others (the ones larger than huge never solf very well). Some we may never know why they didn't appear.

If we take the list, exclude the ones larger than huge (a money loser), ones that were water exclusive and the huges (there were a limited number of huge sets, and the DDM buyers were dragon-happy forcing a large percentage of them to be dragons) and we can figure out why they didn't appear.

 

[doctorhook]

So, who all is pumped for the new DDM format for Spring '09? High-quality minis? Woohoo!

 

[Echohawk]

Sure, every used monster in the MM were asked for.

Except perhaps an elder black pudding. Does anyone really want a Gargantuan sized mini of a "roundish blob of inky black goo"...?

 

[Darrell]

I have to agree with the camp that's saying the skirmish game was what failed, not the minis themselves. When DDM first came out, I tried the skirmish game. It was an interesting novelty for a "some of the players can't make it; what do we do now?" game night, but we quickly lost interest in it.

As far as the minis themselves, I recently sold mine off (I'm playing B/X D&D now - don't need minis), and had no trouble finding a buyer (who was buying them for RPG use), so the market for the minis themselves is apparently still there.