WOTC plastic minis deserve to be in metal!

[MortalPlague]

Indeed, the specific grade of plastic is chosen for durability and safety concerns...

You're becoming a regular poster hereabouts! Nice to hear the official word on the matter.

Also, I really like what I'm seeing from the new line. I'll definitely be picking up a case or two!

 

[Jhaelen]

As someone who has been recently getting a few BattleTech metal minis... I detest metal with a passion. A complete pain to assemble, paint and transport.

Well, I don't 'hate' metal minis, but they're just so impracticable compared to (robust) plastic minis.

Especially the assembled metal minis are basically not transportable and hence unusable for their intended purpose: being used at a gaming table.

The only thing they're imho good for: being put in a display case.

 

[pukunui]

Poor paint jobs with low-quality paints can eat up the detail on miniatures very quickly. I believe this is another problem with the WotC minis.

I was going to chime in to say this. I reckon WotC's minis can have pretty good detail, it's just that all too often they get too much paint slopped on them. For instance, I've got two Antares Draco figs from the Star Wars Minis line. One has a nice thin coat of paint on his face and you can see all his facial features and such, the other has such a thick coat of paint on the face that he's got no nose or mouth ... :/

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I wonder if someone in the secondary minis market could make a "Castle Ravenloft Replacement pack" with the painted versions of all the minis in the box (with suitable replacements for the Dragonborn and/or Ranger)

I guess it would be prohibitively expensive, but the idea is fun, eh?

 

[Dausuul]

I was going to chime in to say this. I reckon WotC's minis can have pretty good detail, it's just that all too often they get too much paint slopped on them. For instance, I've got two Antares Draco figs from the Star Wars Minis line. One has a nice thin coat of paint on his face and you can see all his facial features and such, the other has such a thick coat of paint on the face that he's got no nose or mouth ... :/

Somehow I don't think they hire professional miniatures artists to work the assembly line.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Hey I love the plastic minis exactly for their light weight and not breaking

but they also do deserve to be in metal for those who want high quality minis
those initial sculpts are gorgeous and worth showing in their glory

 

[pukunui]

Somehow I don't think they hire professional miniatures artists to work the assembly line.

Right. My point, though, was that I don't think that the relative lack of detail on WotC's miniatures is entirely because of the medium they chose to use. It has as much, if not more, to do with the amount of paint that their third-world laborers slop onto the minis as they go through the factory en masse.

 

[JustKim]

That said... I would like to see the remorhaz in metal.... (The purple worm on the other hand... a woim is a woim, metal or plastic, I'll take 'em both.)

Is it the specific WotC sculpt you want in metal? Because Reaper has a remorhaz now, and it's quite good: Reaper Miniatures :: OnlineStore

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Is it the specific WotC sculpt you want in metal? Because Reaper has a remorhaz now, and it's quite good: Reaper Miniatures :: OnlineStore

Heh - I have both. I use them to indicate gender based dimorphism. (That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it! It couldn't possibly be just because I like both models and the critter itself, now could it? ) And yes, the Reaper Frost Worm is quite nice, if a trifle ouchy in regards to price ($40 US). (I bought it anyway, but it hurt....)

For that matter, I wish that I had the old Ral Partha remorhaz model, with its eighty gazzilionty little legs....


The Auld Grump

 

[carmachu]

Just readin this article on WOTC
Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Lords of Madness Preview 2)

so they now use CAD for making minis, wonder if that's "Zbrush" work?
damn that's good, MUCH better than the minis, alas plastic sucks for precision, unlike metal. The Human-sized figures mostly are pretty poor, alas because of that hence I preffer larger sized plastic WOTC minis.

At that quality of original design I'd love to see them putting them out as metal minis!

Actually, you'd be wrong. Go look at Games workshop models. They use CAD for all their plastics and they turn out fantastic.

Its a matter of time and effort they putinto it. Frankly mass produced prepainted, there's very few who put in the effort to get them very well done.