WotC Miniatures
- Thread starter Ogrork the Mighty
- Start date
Cerubus Dark
First Post
lol, that is the only thing I don';t like about them too.DaveMage said:
and the Secondary market is kinda stupid too. 1.25 for a kobold? they are freaking common. .50 -.75 maybe.
Mystery Man
First Post
Hey, I like 'em, I use 'em and I don't care who knows about it! 
Sure look like minis to me
Not only do they look like minis, they are pre-painted to boot. Okay, so the paint jobs might not be that great, but at least they are painted - unlike the 200 or so metal figures I've collected over the last 20 years. Only about 20 of those are painted (yes that's about 1 per year or more like 20 in the 1st year and). So if I buy a couple of boxes of admittedly random figures, I'll have more painted plastic figures than metal ones. And I won't get a hernia from lugging them AND all the books to the next session.
Bigwilly - roleplayer NOT miniatures painter
diaglo said:
Not only do they look like minis, they are pre-painted to boot. Okay, so the paint jobs might not be that great, but at least they are painted - unlike the 200 or so metal figures I've collected over the last 20 years. Only about 20 of those are painted (yes that's about 1 per year or more like 20 in the 1st year and). So if I buy a couple of boxes of admittedly random figures, I'll have more painted plastic figures than metal ones. And I won't get a hernia from lugging them AND all the books to the next session.
Bigwilly - roleplayer NOT miniatures painter
rgard
Adventurer
diaglo said:WotC sells minis?
those pieces of plastic don't count as minis if you are a true wargamer.
and they don't count as minis if you are a roleplayer.
basically they don't count.
Yes, the only true D&D minis are from Grenadier made in 1979-1980! And anybody who plays Risk with plastic pieces as opposed to the true wooden cube pieces isn't really playing Risk!
Rich
Jeff Wilder
First Post
About the random distribution: It's the primary reason why the miniatures are so inexpensive, and it's the primary reason there's some a large selection of different models.
About kobolds on the secondary market: Yes, kobolds are Common figures, but they're Common figures that many DMs want absolute swarms of. Needing 20 or more kobolds for an encounter in D&D isn't particularly unusual. So, since demand is high, kobolds are an expensive Common. It makes perfect sense.
Me, I think the D&D miniatures are the best thing for gaming since 3E itself brought me back to D&D. I love using miniatures in my roleplaying, but I hate the expense of pewter, the weight of pewter, the fragility of pewter, and having to paint pewter. (Words cannot adequately convey how much I hate painting miniatures, despite being pretty good at it.) Before D&D miniatures, I tried pre-painted miniatures from both Dwarven Forge and em-4. In both cases, while the miniatures themselves were beautiful, the range of available figures was very poor and the sets were relatively expensive.
While it's true that the early sets of D&D miniatures suffered from, uh, uneven quality of sculpts and paint-jobs, the quality has steadily increased over the four sets (so far), and the last, Giants of Legend, was exceptional, with paint jobs better than 90 percent of the amateur paint jobs most people do on their pewter.
IME, people that rail against D&D miniatures do so either out of ignorance or as sort of a defensive response: "Must ... not ... become ... addicted ... " I can appreciate the latter, believe me.
About kobolds on the secondary market: Yes, kobolds are Common figures, but they're Common figures that many DMs want absolute swarms of. Needing 20 or more kobolds for an encounter in D&D isn't particularly unusual. So, since demand is high, kobolds are an expensive Common. It makes perfect sense.
Me, I think the D&D miniatures are the best thing for gaming since 3E itself brought me back to D&D. I love using miniatures in my roleplaying, but I hate the expense of pewter, the weight of pewter, the fragility of pewter, and having to paint pewter. (Words cannot adequately convey how much I hate painting miniatures, despite being pretty good at it.) Before D&D miniatures, I tried pre-painted miniatures from both Dwarven Forge and em-4. In both cases, while the miniatures themselves were beautiful, the range of available figures was very poor and the sets were relatively expensive.
While it's true that the early sets of D&D miniatures suffered from, uh, uneven quality of sculpts and paint-jobs, the quality has steadily increased over the four sets (so far), and the last, Giants of Legend, was exceptional, with paint jobs better than 90 percent of the amateur paint jobs most people do on their pewter.
IME, people that rail against D&D miniatures do so either out of ignorance or as sort of a defensive response: "Must ... not ... become ... addicted ... " I can appreciate the latter, believe me.
Davelozzi
Explorer
I agree with Seeker95, the minis are great. For those of you thrashing about regarding the random distribution, you have to realize that without doing it this way it just wouldn't be feasible to keep putting these out. Stores don't have the shelf space to stock everything individually and any of the harder to find monsters wouldn't sell enough to make them worth making, or keeping in stock. Look at the evidence -- try to find some of the uncommon beasties in metal at your local store.
For the money that I've paid on D&D minis, I've gotten my money's worth far more than I ever did buying metal minis that I had to paint. In the past year or so, I've acquired a substantial collection of perfectly servicable minis that add greatly to my game, and I haven't had to spend lots of money on paint or waste four years painting them all. We only play every 3-4 weeks, but there's no way I could keep up with painting minis all the minis needed for the campaign.
And of course, the metal minis made by other companies are still out there, for when you really need the exact right figure for a PC or an important monster that you haven't yet received in one of the packs.
For the money that I've paid on D&D minis, I've gotten my money's worth far more than I ever did buying metal minis that I had to paint. In the past year or so, I've acquired a substantial collection of perfectly servicable minis that add greatly to my game, and I haven't had to spend lots of money on paint or waste four years painting them all. We only play every 3-4 weeks, but there's no way I could keep up with painting minis all the minis needed for the campaign.
And of course, the metal minis made by other companies are still out there, for when you really need the exact right figure for a PC or an important monster that you haven't yet received in one of the packs.
wedgeski
Adventurer
Unsurprisingly the 'I use them in my regular game' crowd (myself included) is winning out. I now have a sufficiently large collection that I can find a reasonable approximation and/or the exact thing I'm looking for in *most* encounters, and in other cases I can build entire encounters around figures I would otherwise have no use for. Much better than coins or bits of paper on a battlemat. Even if they're not an exact fit, they're still preferable (it's a dwarf, that's good enough). Then, if you're willing to pay (slightly) over the odds for singles, you can build exactly the collection you need for your next adventure. Even that small premium seems a small price to pay when you can pull out the exact monster/NPC you've just described and drop it on the grid. There's no question my players appreciate it.
Painting wise, they're not going to set the world alight (mostly), but when the primary motivator is utility, it doesn't matter. Wizards have scored a big critical hit with these as far as I'm concerned.
Painting wise, they're not going to set the world alight (mostly), but when the primary motivator is utility, it doesn't matter. Wizards have scored a big critical hit with these as far as I'm concerned.
