Maximizing Miniatures

[TroubleBrewing]

I'm going to be running a 4e campaign in a few short weeks, and I'm wondering how to go about acquiring miniatures in bulk... I've looked on ebay and things, but for some reason it's all lots of individual monsters. I don't need a zillion different large monstrous humanoid types, I need 30 skeletons!

My budget isn't large for this, so I'm looking for a way to either substitute some other type of miniature figure for the standard D&D ones, or find a cheap way of acquiring duplicates of common monsters.

[originalginger]

Instead of miniatures, have you considered using tokens? There are various places to download them, or with some Google searching and very basic image manipulation skills you can easily make and print your own. Basically just find your pictures, resize them to and crop them to about 150 x 150px in photofilter, and arrange them in an 9x12 grid pattern so that when printed they are just under an inch.

What I did was make a bunch of circular tokens, printed them out on cardstock, and glued them to 1 inch poker chips I found at Goodwill. It worked out spectacularly, easy, cheap, and rather nice looking.

EDIT: If the idea interests you, but you lack photo manipulation skills, I can upload the template I use to Deviant Art with an illustrated step-by-step tutorial. Photofilter is free and easy to use, and the whole process takes literally minutes once you have your collection of images.

[TroubleBrewing]

Oh man, that is an AWESOME idea! Holy cow. You've seriously just saved my bank account.

[Adoendithas]

If you like the OOTS style you can download and print your own 3D minis here (http://iheartprintandplay.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html#minis). They're drawn by the same artist who made my avatar, based on the Giant's "monster minis" Kickstarter rewards.

[originalginger]

Oh man, that is an AWESOME idea! Holy cow. You've seriously just saved my bank account.

No problem. Like I edited my post about above, I can help you if you need. Hell, if you let me know what you want, I will throw together the token sets for you. I already have a few made, and have little else to do for the weekend.

[Yakk]

As we are on GITPG, not mentioning this would be amiss:

Take a sheet of card stock.

Cut a 1" by 6" piece out. Draw lines at 1", 3" and 5". (If you find this is too short and stubby, do 1" by 7", and draw lines at 1", 3.5" and 6").

Draw a stick-figure version of the front of the creature on one of the 2" sections, and the back on another 2" section, "head" towards the middle in both cases.

Fold along the lines. Tape the two 1" flaps together, with a quarter inside.

Can be made cheaper by using multiple pennies instead of a quarter.

[originalginger]

Also, since it is nearing Halloween, you may be able to find packs of plastic "army man" type skeletons and monsters at Wal-Mart, the dollar store or whatever. Several years ago the dollar store near me had 'medieval fantasy' army men with knights, elves, goblins, skeletons, etc. My group had just as much fun painting them in wacky ways as we did actually using them in game.

[TroubleBrewing]

Great suggestions, everyone! Gaming on a budget is easier than I thought!

[ghost_warlock]

WotC's own Monster Vault is a fairly cheap (~$22 on Amazon) way to get a large number of full-color double-sided (bloodied on back) tokens. Unfortunately, you won't find 30 skeletons in there - at most 8 of a kind. It does have a good number of Large- and Huge-sized creatures, though, and a number of tokens that would work as PCs. The battle map it comes with is also pretty, if situational.

A buddy of mine uses washers with stickers on them for his monster minis. Definitely works, but can get bulky fast if you need to carry large numbers of them.

I usually prefer the paper tent approach, though it is more labor-intensive and you either have to weigh them down somehow (washers or pennies, as suggested above) or play in a place without ventilation. :smalltongue:

[originalginger]

Went ahead and uploaded the template anyway. Can upload ones for other sizes, or in specific color schemes if requested.
Link to DA page (http://theoriginalginger.deviantart.com/art/Gaming-Token-Template-398761639)

Instructions for photofiltre, which is free, and has everything you need.

1- Open the token sheet image in photofiltre, Open up Google image search.

2- Search for images you like, when you find them, click so it opens a larger version - right click > copy image > Go to photo program > paste as new image

3-Crop the area of the image you want, resize to 150px on shortest size, maybe slightly larger to give room for adjustment.

4- Use the 'magic wand' to select the white area inside the token you want to use, 'copy image' on the picture, 'paste in' on the token sheet. You can move it around if needed to line it up how you want it, the magic wand selection will ensure the image stays inside the border

5- Repeat until page is complete.

The little tab on the bottom of each token represents the direction the creature is facing. They should print at between 3/4 and 7/8 inch on standard printer paper, depending on how close to the edge your printer prints to.