WotC Miniatures

[DaveMage]

lol, that is the only thing I don';t like about them too.

and the Secondary market is kinda stupid too. 1.25 for a kobold? they are freaking common. .50 -.75 maybe.

The thing I hate most about the secondary market is that I have to pay shipping to get anything. My local secondary market is virtually nonexistent so if I want anything it's usually e-bay.

It's not really practical to get a 50 cent mini and then pay $2 or $3 shipping.

 

[rgard]

So does the miniature rules drive the sale of WotC minis or are they mostly being bought for use in regular D&D games?

My serious answer to the question...

We use the D&D minis for playing D&D and for the skirmish game. As my kid's characters are all 7th level and below, the only way to really use some of them is in the skirmish game. The party won't be meeting the Aspect of Orcus or Bane any time soon.

I like them pre-painted and I can always touch up any that I want. One other poster mentioned having a boat load of unpainted metal minis; I'm in the same boat.

We've only had one figure break so far...Vadania, her sword arm broke and it was annoying in that she is a rare.

One of my favorite minis is the Bullette (sp?). I bet a metal unpainted version would go for $20+.

My least favorite of the minis are the orcs. I really do prefer GW's LotR orcs and from my collection of metal minis the Ral Partha orcs/great goblins are the best. I guess if I ever get around to it, I'll convert the D&D plastic orcs to gorillas from Planet of the Apes.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[derelictjay]

I don't buy prepainted minis, simple, whether they're plastic, pewter, resin or whatever. So i choose neither as thats the closest to my view.

Oh and I don't mind plastic minis so long as there's a way to paint them. (Still angry with Games Workshop; but I'm always angry with Games Workshop, for putting plastic wings on its balor that resist both primer and paint.)

 

[rgard]

The thing I hate most about the secondary market is that I have to pay shipping to get anything. My local secondary market is virtually nonexistent so if I want anything it's usually e-bay.

It's not really practical to get a 50 cent mini and then pay $2 or $3 shipping.

Yes, I agree that it is annoying to pay shipping for 1 item and the shipping is 2-3 times the cost of the item.

If you really want to cherry pick and get only the minis you want, the best way to deal with this is to find a seller on Ebay who has a boatload of minis up for sale. Don't buy any yourself ahead of time, just buy the ones you want from the current release in one fell swoop from the seller. It minimizes the shipping cost to item ratio.

There are a couple of sellers doing this (not me at this time.) The best ones are the ones who have an Ebay store, the minis are fixed price and you buy them on the spot without having to wait to see if you were out bid.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Patlin]

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.

I feel the same way. I started buying minis for my D&D game, several years ago. By the time the plastic wizard minis had come out, I had decided that half the fun of the minis is painting them. Pre painted plastic doesn't work for me, and I allready have more than enough to play D&D with.

 

[xazil]

Having piles of GW miniatures laying around I held off on DnD ones until Giants of Legend came out. The quality was good enough for me to then invest in them for the types of monsters unique to DnD.

Now if I could only find a use for my horde of Nightwalkers....

 

[Aust Diamondew]

i don't buy minis, it's a waste of money.

I concur. Though my group is considering buying a mini to represent each of their PCs on the battle mat (as opposed to using pieces of paper, dice and a badly burned snoopy cowboy). If they do it I might buy some minis to represent reocurring villains. Though none of the said mini purchasing will necesarily be chainmail minis.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I use them for D&D, even though I'm a dedicated mini painter. I have only bought the packs that contain huge minis, because it's kind of tough to find a decent behir for under $60. I got a few nice things that I didn't otherwise have, like an otyugh, which I use in play. The thing is, sometimes the minis make good "stunt doubles" for other creatures. My FLGS opens boxes until it has enough minis to make a display of all the available minis of a set. It sells off bags of extra random commons, which make really fantastic disposable mooks for when the party has to fight a bunch of random nobodies on the way to the BBEG. The orcs suck, for sure, but whatever...they'll be dead in three minutes anyway.

I don't particularly like the minis because of the poor quality of the casts and paint jobs, but they've been getting better over the last few sets. I'll never give up on my metal, but it's often nice to have plastic versions of the minis that are low priority for my pewter painting.

 

[starkad]

I love the minis.

I hate the random distribution.

Amen.

 

[Gez]

If they sold big boxes that contained full collections of one set (with, frex, one ex of all rares, three of uncos, and eight of all uncos), then I'd buy them without hesitation.