What Kind of Miniatures do you use?

[Ionsniper]

Ive seen so much homebrew and custom works on this site, it got me to thinking. Do people use standard, fresh off the presses miniatures or do people Make their own?

So I was curious and thought Id ask. What kind of miniatures you use for your Avatar/Charachter? Do you use toys as figures/monster sometimes, or just sculpt your own?

Right now Im using a Warmachine mini called Fane Knight Skeryth Issyen to represent my Half Dragon on the board. Put some dragon wings on him and made him a full helmet.

[Mrc.]

I'm currently swimming under a mountain of Reaper Bones, and have a collection of various minis from various companies going further back than I care to remember. Which mini I use when depends on lots of things. I purchased a Privateer Press mini (only one, couldn't afford many more!) which is some form of druid and works great for that. Several Ral Partha metals have been characters or monsters throughout the years and the D&D minis lines, both the plastic ones and the pewter originals, help flesh out encounters. I've used some GW stuff in the past but they tend to be too big.

[Knaight]

I generally avoid systems which have the sort of positioning focused combat systems that require miniatures. Even when I don't I don't use them - at most, I'll use tokens of some sort, usually graph paper with small beads on it.

[LimeSkeleton]

For D&D 4e, my group uses a combination of Lego minifigs, dice boxes (for large monsters), dice, candies, and miscellaneous plastic toys.

We're all too cheap to go out and buy any "real" miniatures, but most of us loved legos when we were younger. :smalltongue:

[Subaru Kujo]

For monsters in our ADnD game, we use wire nuts that have a number and a "face" (arrow in the direction they are facing). Otherwise, we use pewter minis. My minis for that game are below.

http://i.imgur.com/g1vSPkI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UbmE3aD.jpg

[Lord Torath]

Legos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/warhammerhouse/9780082576/). :smallcool: But only because I've already got a ton of them.

I only use them to give (and get) a general idea of where things (and people) are. We never break out the tape measure for RPGs.

[Joe the Rat]

Yeah, my group poo pooed the lego figs. I even had one for the druid's horse!

We use home printed cardstock stands, for they are cheap, and none of us were "the miniatures guy" back in the day.

Well, mostly cardstock stands. The animal companion (warhorse) was built from pipecleaners, with a saddle "tab" we could hook the druid mini on. Had a pipecleaner giant snake at one point as well. (If you're playing one of those grid-based games, pipe cleaner spell templates are really handy. You can set them over the top for positioning without bumping the minis too much.)

And we used my daughter's MLPs for monster summons. I've been requested to cut that out.

[Erasmas]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Erasmas/Mobile%20Uploads/CAM00356_zpsd7d1d239.jpg


This is a picture of the miniatures shelf in my D&D Room. So, as you can tell, I love building/painting/collecting miniatures, for all kinds of the games we play. I also build terrain and vehicles for them as well. It's almost as much a part of the hobby for me as playing.

[Eldan]

Never used battlemaps or minis. I find them distracting while roleplaying. I do, however, do a lot of Warhammer conversions and some basic green stuff sculpting.

[Erberor]

I just pull out my warhammer 40k models. I've got a bunch of space marines, some Imperial guard and enough orks to do most encounters (D&D3.5). Of course, every time I pull out one of the models, they're all like "That iron golem looks a lot like a dire wolf" because I used that model for a dire wolf in the second adventure :smalltongue:

[Gettles]

Legos, washers, risk pieces, a weird knight figurine of mysterious origin, anything at hand

[supermonkeyjoe]

I've been collecting the plastic DnD minis for a while, buying a few job lots from eBay and they've done me pretty well so far.

Players usually use painted metal minis from reaper or games workshop or whoever for their characters.

[Socksy]

Flying creatures get represented by d10s or d%, the number facing upwards being how far they are above the ground in squares.

[BWR]

For most of our gaming history we used dice. Other than that, paper tiles were very common. In recent years we've started buying D&D and PF miniatures and a few SW miniatures as well (for when we played that). Shiny rocks and Lego figures are also somewhat common.

[ElenionAncalima]

For generic enemies I use these cheap medieval toy figures that I got a bag of for a couple dollars.

For players and important NPC/enemies I have some regular miniatures. One of the players is a regular flea market shopper, so she keeps an eye out for cheap ones and gave me a bunch for my birthday. She also did a good job of making them fit the PCs which is nice.

[Mastikator]

I'm in the process of building a 3D printer :smallcool: and for my group I'll be printing my own miniatures, specially designed for each character.

Besides that I've never used miniatures, never had the need for it, still don't. But it's fun.

[Airk]

For D&D 4e, my group uses a combination of Lego minifigs, dice boxes (for large monsters), dice, candies, and miscellaneous plastic toys.

We're all too cheap to go out and buy any "real" miniatures, but most of us loved legos when we were younger. :smalltongue:

Lego Minifigs are THE BEST miniatures. Accept no substitutes!

That said, yeah, we ONLY use them for 4e; It's the only game we play (out of many) that benefits from miniatures.

[Feddlefew]

We printed out pictures and attached them to the bottoms of those flat-glass marble thingys that people put in fishtanks and decorate paving stones with. They come in a wide range of sizes and can be bought by the bagful, so it's inexpensive.

The only real downside is that they can get quite heavy when you've got a box of 300-400 of them....

[Lord Torath]

*snip mini "shelf"*
This is a picture of the miniatures shelf in my D&D Room. So, as you can tell, I love building/painting/collecting miniatures, for all kinds of the games we play. I also build terrain and vehicles for them as well. It's almost as much a part of the hobby for me as playing.Is that the Black Seas Barracuda on the top left? I always wanted to get that one, but we only got the Caribbean Clipper ($40 vs $100) Looks like the Troll Warship on the top right! Another set I wanted but missed out on.

I also use Battle Beasts, and the Giant's "A Monster for Every Season" printable minis, but generally only for monsters.

[lytokk]

I've got a wide assortment of miniatures from years ago which have worked for the time being. Now we're switching to lego's since they're cheap and everyone can customize their mini to match what they think their character should look like. NPCs and monsters will still most likely use the other miniatures, but for PC's legos work. That and we can build the little things we need, such as wagons.

[Erasmas]

Is that the Black Seas Barracuda on the top left? I always wanted to get that one, but we only got the Caribbean Clipper ($40 vs $100) Looks like the Troll Warship on the top right! Another set I wanted but missed out on.

I also use Battle Beasts, and the Giant's "A Monster for Every Season" printable minis, but generally only for monsters.

No, it is called Brickbeard's Bounty. But yes, that is the Troll Warship on the right. The ships are pretty good to use (even with standard miniatures), but the pips can be somewhat troublesome and the lengthy ships try to come apart in the middle with too much handling.

I have been collecting minis for about 14 years or so now (ever since I started hosting my own group) and have a little bit of everything in there. HaloClix, HeroClix, StarWars, HeroScape, HeroQuest, Battle Masters, Games Workshop, Reaper, D&D, Pathfinder, Infinity, Schleich, aquarium decorations, stuff from Animal Toobs, dollar store converts, and more than one recycled toy of my son's. I also have boxes and boxes of bits and odds and ends (including a "body parts" bin) that I use to kitbash some of the things that I need/want for the table. Likewise in that picture, on the upper left just in front of the LEGO pirate ship is a massive bone golem that I put together for my last D&D campaign. Fun stuff!

[Chaucer85]

While the GM has provided plenty of miniatures for community use, our group has slowly bought our own for favored PCs. Slayer and Pathfinder lines have the best variety so you can find that just so idea of your character, mixing race, gender, and class. Plus they often fit the squares of the mat we use.

[Prince_Ornstein]

I like using chess pieces, pawns for grunts and pieces scale up with the importance of or degree of difficulty of an enemy.

Plus I love seeing my players faces when I pull out a bishop or queen....such a great feeling.

[Einrikr]

Lego minifigs of course (I also use lego for props and baseplates for battle maps, currently updating to the modular lego dungeon system used in Brickquest) :smallbiggrin: though using lego seems quite common if this thread is anything to go by... as for me I was into lego before I got into D&D (and still is XD) so it was just natural to combine it, the only problem I have with lego is that its hard to build good looking minifigs for the more exotic pc races like genasi or drow (colletible minifigs, fantasy era and lego lotr was really good for providing material for everything else though :smallsmile:)

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Is "None" a valid answer?

I've seriously found that combat goes way faster, and we don't need half as much gaming space to play.

As GM, I just jot down some notes about the scale of an encounter, and then describe the scene. Players ask "Am I in range to charge the wizard?" and I judge it based on where they started.

It probably helps that I started out playing this way, for decades - and only got dragged into thinking you need minis by Hasbro trying to sell RPGers toys. Shrugging them off again has been liberating.

[Remmirath]

We mostly use metal miniatures (although we got a decent infusion of Bones a while back, I prefer the metal ones even though the plastics are occasionally useful). The majority of our collection at this point is Reaper, but we've got a decent number also of Ral Partha and Grenadier figures from as far back as the seventies, and then also some from Dark Sword and Thunderbolt Mountain.

Even though we never use as strict of positioning rules as many groups, we do always make use of miniatures, simply because (particularly with how many characters and NPCs we often have "on stage" at the same time) it is easier to keep track of where everyone is. Keeps one honest about things such as friendly fire and lines of sight as well.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Erasmas/Mobile%20Uploads/CAM00356_zpsd7d1d239.jpg


This is a picture of the miniatures shelf in my D&D Room. So, as you can tell, I love building/painting/collecting miniatures, for all kinds of the games we play. I also build terrain and vehicles for them as well. It's almost as much a part of the hobby for me as playing.

Nice collection, there. I'd say we've got about as many at this point, although more of a focus on humanoids and less on creatures (we tend to go fairly heavily for stand-ins such as action figures and what for those). I'm rather behind on painting them, but it's something I enjoy doing as a break from larger paintings.

[FabulousFizban]

I used to play heroclix, so I rebased about 40 of the more fantasy looking ones for use in my game. The LotR set really helped with that. It actually works really well; since you're looking for cool sculpts and not useful dials, you can buy clix that look good in a fantasy or sci-fi game for about 25 cents apiece.