Never bought 'em and never will.
The practice of offering random product in boxes is a revulsion to me. I know enough people (kids, adults, myself
) who bought into this type of marketing ploy and have lots of product that doesn't get used any more. The product was out of date because of rules changes or the increase in the arms race with newer related product (read collectable card games). I don't know if this will be the case with DnD minatures because they might always be useful during a DnD game.
Hopwever, some people on these boards have pointed out that there is an increase in quality with newer releases of the minis. I see this as comparable to the increase of the arms race with the CCG's. No one wants to use old out of date stuff when they can get new "better" stuff.
Will the miniatures produced now be compatible with 3.75 or 4.0 DnD? How will the monster illustrations change? Will the scale change? Same old cycle - new rules changes with all new product to support them. Seems to be a good business model for Wizards so far and that's great for them.
But I refuse to buy into it any more...for now. As long as I can find gamers that will play 3.0 I am okay.
And that's the rate limiting factor. It's no fun to just play with yourself. Heck, I hope I can game with people in the future who will also be interested in playing 2nd, 1st, basic, or 0th edition DnD campaigns because I have a good deal of rules for those systems also. But I will not buy 3.5 products and related miniatures if I can find gamers who will play 3.0 without miniatures.
Instead, I make my own counters. I go into MS Word and make a table with squares of the appropriate size for a battlemat (which is a large scale piece of graph paper that is laminated so dry erase can be used). Typed into the table squares are the names of the monsters I need (like Kobold 1...infinity) or actual names of monsters (like T'Gorahz). Print it out on cardstock and cut em out. Leave some squares blank.
Got 9 orcs with their Orc shaman Blargnog along? Pull out Orc squares #1-9 (keep track of them with the stats of Orcs #1-9 as listed in your module) and on a blank square write "Blargnog" if you haven't printed out a Blorgnog square already. The card stock is pretty durable for this kind of use and easily separated into tupperware type containers for ease of storage.
Mr. Lobo
) and I may get the occasional box for a random sample, but for $26.00 for two boxes, I'm in the same territory for rulebooks, and that ain't healthy for the minis makers.
