Wooden Minis?

[Tinker Gnome]

Anyone here ever use Wooden Miniatures? Are they for sale anywhere? For that matter would there be some reason not to use them?

 

[Ariosto]

I think M.A.R. Barker carved quite a collection for his Tékumel campaigns.

Other than that, I can't think offhand of any reference to wooden miniatures for fantasy games. I'll bet someone somewhere is making laser-cut wooden "flats" for historical gaming, though.

 

[beverson]

Anyone here ever use Wooden Miniatures? Are they for sale anywhere? For that matter would there be some reason not to use them?

Dragonfire Lasercrafts makes wooden tokens, but compared to the cost of printing counters on cardstock they are expensive.

For my 4e game, I use Fiery Dragon's counters and print them on heavy cardstock. I also use Alea Tools conversion material and magnetic markers, but that's just my preference. Lots of folks just print the counters out and use them that way, which is pretty inexpensive.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Anyone here ever use Wooden Miniatures? Are they for sale anywhere? For that matter would there be some reason not to use them?

Unless you're talking about "tokens" as opposed to carved miniatures I'd say that nobody is doing it except - maybe - one or two just for their own use. Unlike metal or plastic you can't mass produce wood miniatures except possibly on a very crude level like simple board game pieces and flat tokens. That would make wood minis very hard to produce, exceptionally time consuming, and therefore stupid expensive. Additionally, thin parts of the figure such as weapons and limbs like extended arms would be very fragile, even if carved in very hard woods - and hard wood would be a definite requirement as soft woods probably just wouldn't accept the level of detail desired.

But there would be every reason to use them as much as any other miniature because polished/varnished hardwood carvings of that nature would be very beautiful, and even painted they'd be COOL just for being so painstakingly handcrafted - each and every one an individual artwork.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Unless you're talking about "tokens" as opposed to carved miniatures I'd say that nobody is doing it except - maybe - one or two just for their own use. Unlike metal or plastic you can't mass produce wood miniatures except possibly on a very crude level like simple board game pieces and flat tokens. That would make wood minis very hard to produce, exceptionally time consuming, and therefore stupid expensive. Additionally, thin parts of the figure such as weapons and limbs like extended arms would be very fragile, even if carved in very hard woods - and hard wood would be a definite requirement as soft woods probably just wouldn't accept the level of detail desired.

But there would be every reason to use them as much as any other miniature because polished/varnished hardwood carvings of that nature would be very beautiful, and even painted they'd be COOL just for being so painstakingly handcrafted - each and every one an individual artwork.

I figued that the time and skill required to make them would be the main problem in making them for the mass market. If I had woodcraft skills that were any good I would make some.

 

[TarionzCousin]

If you find some wooden nautical vehicles, you'll need some iron men to go with them.

 

[Whisper72]

Well, myself, never having caved in for the plasticrack miniatures (once I'd get started, I would spend WAAY too much money on that stuff), I went the cheap way and bought dozens of different kinds of game pieces (pawns in various shapes, sizes and colors, markers, cilinders etc.) from a game specialty store. They are actually replacement parts for all manner of boardgames, but at about 10-15 cents apiece, I bought around two hundred for about 20 euro's.

The nice thing is that I do not require specific tokens per creature, and with the variation in colors, shapes and sizes I can still field quite a diverse group of monsters and (N)PC's.

So in a sense I use wooden miniatures, depending upon your exact definition of the word 'miniature'....