Minis (and all things mini-related)! Do you use 'em?

[ArqArturo]

I love miniatures, especially if they're unpainted (Reaper minis FTW). I started painting Warmahordes models for over four years and have developed a bit of a love to the art of painting minis, especially if they have lots of detail (hero-clix/miniatues with little to no detail sort of bore me, though).

For our D&D/PF/nWoD sessions, we have some Heroclix (:smallmad:) models we've adapted to a grid, but sometimes we use a measuring tape instead. Lately, I've also started to build papercraft buildings to add dimension to games (and terrain to my Warmahordes games :p).

Do you use minis? If so, do you paint them, or someone does it, or do you preffer the prepainted, or none at all?.

[(Un)Inspired]

I use lego minis from my childhood that I just never had the heart to throw away. As a wee lad in the early-mid nineties I accrued a pretty broad collection of knights, spacemen, underwater fellows (of both the good and evil varieties), serveral dragons, octopi, skeletons, crocodiles, horses, sharks, and a yeti.

They work pretty well with the 1 inch hex mat I game with, they let my players put together a fig that looks reasonble close to their mental image of their characters and I get to feel all weepy and nostalgic every time I game.

My close friend owns a metric ton of the minis that wizards of the coast produced as well so anytime we need a monster that would be hard to build out of lego parts (I'm looking at you hydra) I dive into his collection and use one of them.

Occasionally I'll also build sets out of legos to lay over my hex grid but that's pretty rare.

[Callin]

Buddy of mine built an 8x4 table and hand measured and painted a 1in grid on it in alternating black and white then covered with an old window pane from his garage. Then we use WotC prepainted minis, and dry erase markers to make dungeons. He did just get one of those 3d dungeon packs though and we have been experimenting with that.

[ArqArturo]

I have these (sorry about the mess)!:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/CygnusDarius/2C282803-BB87-4602-94A7-001E086E68DA_zpszmhfazy7.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/CygnusDarius/CC48CD7C-3DC9-416E-9062-9C5441D7DFA4_zpsfn7wjntv.jpg

[Nibbens]

I play Warmahordes (I like that name. lol) as well as D&D/PF. The group I play with has ridiculous money sunk into warhammer mini's, all hand painted by the players who played them. Once they stopped using them, they now have eleven different tackleboxes all filled with miniatures that fuel our tabletop games. They even have a rule of "If we mention it in game, put it on the board because we paid for the d*mn things." lol.

The privateer press mini's are really fun to paint (at least I think so) and have fallen in love with painting because of them. They all seem heavily detailed and I like that. :D

[Tarlek Flamehai]

I have many, many miniatures. To many are unpainted so far. I don't mind prepainteds for NPCs and monsters. I do prefer to find the perfect mini and paint it myself for PCs. I also use a doublesided megamat and vis-a-vis markers for drawing the map.

[(Un)Inspired]

I have these (sorry about the mess)!:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/CygnusDarius/2C282803-BB87-4602-94A7-001E086E68DA_zpszmhfazy7.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y191/CygnusDarius/CC48CD7C-3DC9-416E-9062-9C5441D7DFA4_zpsfn7wjntv.jpg

A. I like your taste in Macross models

B. What company makes those righteous 3d building and are they reasonably priced? I soooo want some of them now.

[dysprosium]

I love minis! My family would say that I have an addiction to them.

I too have a metric ton of them--last count was over 10,000. The majority of them are the WotC prepainted minis but I also have minis from Pathfinder, various -Clix (Hero-, Horror-, Mage Knight, Yugi-), Heroscape, and various others. They're all organized and ready to use for whatever kind of encounter I need to run.

I'm also a beginning modder. I've made a couple but have not had the time lately to do as many as I have ideas for.

One of my players exclusively uses Legos for his characters.

[ArqArturo]

A. I like your taste in Macross models

B. What company makes those righteous 3d building and are they reasonably priced? I soooo want some of them now.

I think there is a Kickstarter for a modular terrain pieces.

Edit: Found it, and it's finished (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/458846070/labyrinths-customized-modular-dungeon-terrain).

[dysprosium]

Fat Dragon Games (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/346/Fat-Dragon-Games) on rpgnow.com has lots of 3D terrain. I've bought a couple of their sets and I liked them.

[(Un)Inspired]

Fat Dragon Games (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/346/Fat-Dragon-Games) on rpgnow.com has lots of 3D terrain. I've bought a couple of their sets and I liked them.

Wow those prices aren't too bad

[ArqArturo]

Fat Dragon Games (http://www.rpgnow.com/browse/pub/346/Fat-Dragon-Games) on rpgnow.com has lots of 3D terrain. I've bought a couple of their sets and I liked them.

Those look good! Might even loosen up some cash this Christmas.

Now, when it comes to 3D printed anything, has anyone found anything good? I've noticed most 3D printed stuff when it comes to hobby/minis/rpg, the quality is... Not to good.

[Katana1515]

A mispent youth playing non RPG related tabletop games (Gamesworkshop, you fiends where has all my money gone?) has left me with a large collection of fantasy models, in various stages of decay. My trusty dark elves and various undead ghouls, skeletons and vampires make up the bulk of my collection. My painting skills unfortunately leave something to be desired XD

I do find running PF/3.5 on a mat with mini's to be all but essential though. Some other RPG's like the various 40k games or white wolf systems I run in narrative mode without any trouble. 3.5 seems to demand a mat though, otherwise their are inevitable arguments about who was where, who is flanking who etc. Also the pleasure of seeing the dungeon you have crafted come to life around your players (and hopefully scare em witless) is immeasurably greater with good mini's and a grid.

[Blackhawk748]

I dropped 200 bucks on a Colossal Red Dragon if that answers your question lol I have 100 (ish) prepainted minis from PF and WotC, a full Warhammer 40k ork army, and a Vampire counts army with 120 zombies, 40 skeletons, 40 fully armored skellies (graveguard if anyone cares) a few mounted undead and a really sweet looking spirited mounted palanquin..... thing. (its a mortis Engine) Oh and a Corpse cart, which we actually use in DnD.

Also i have about a dozen or so Reaper minis, unpainted as im to lazy.

[ArqArturo]

I dropped 200 bucks on a Colossal Red Dragon if that answers your question lol I have 100 (ish) prepainted minis from PF and WotC, a full Warhammer 40k ork army, and a Vampire counts army with 120 zombies, 40 skeletons, 40 fully armored skellies (graveguard if anyone cares) a few mounted undead and a really sweet looking spirited mounted palanquin..... thing. (its a mortis Engine) Oh and a Corpse cart, which we actually use in DnD.

Also i have about a dozen or so Reaper minis, unpainted as im to lazy.

I've a friend who gave money to the Reaper Bones kickstarter (both of them), and every time we play at his house, whenever I see the box full of unpainted minis, I'm screaming "Your minis! Give them to meeeeee!" in my head XD.


A mispent youth playing non RPG related tabletop games (Gamesworkshop, you fiends where has all my money gone?) has left me with a large collection of fantasy models, in various stages of decay. My trusty dark elves and various undead ghouls, skeletons and vampires make up the bulk of my collection. My painting skills unfortunately leave something to be desired XD

I do find running PF/3.5 on a mat with mini's to be all but essential though. Some other RPG's like the various 40k games or white wolf systems I run in narrative mode without any trouble. 3.5 seems to demand a mat though, otherwise their are inevitable arguments about who was where, who is flanking who etc. Also the pleasure of seeing the dungeon you have crafted come to life around your players (and hopefully scare em witless) is immeasurably greater with good mini's and a grid.

Yup, nWoD is a blessing for me, because it leaves the table clear of anything else except dice, paper, and snacks :p. But I do enjoy having the minis from time to time. I think at one point we did quite a few paper-folded houses and terrain bits here and there, enough that the grid and combat looked more like an interactive diorama.

Then again, those were the highschool/pre-thesis college days, when weekends were sacred.

I am interested in the Dwarven Forge terrain pieces, since they're modular, and I am looking for 3d printed ones just in case, as a future project

[Brookshw]

Oh, absolutely down with minis. I don't have as many now as I used to , or as much terrain as when I did table top army games. Paintings fun but I doubt I'll ever make the time to paint everything that I'd like to, I still have unpainted figures from 15 years ago.

[DJroboninja]

My group contains two carpenters, so we have a bomb-ass hand made gaming table, with a 1 inch grid covered by a sheet of plexiglass that I use to draw the dungeons. One of the players makes minis for the PCs, and I just draw pictures of the monsters and use them as standees (is that a word?) on the grid.

Works very well for us, but I know that one day I'm gonna buy some monster minis and start a whole new addiction...

[ArqArturo]

My group contains two carpenters, so we have a bomb-ass hand made gaming table, with a 1 inch grid covered by a sheet of plexiglass that I use to draw the dungeons. One of the players makes minis for the PCs, and I just draw pictures of the monsters and use them as standees (is that a word?) on the grid.

Works very well for us, but I know that one day I'm gonna buy some monster minis and start a whole new addiction...

Mine has been painting, but it's really weird because if the mini has little to no intricate features/details, I'll leave in the shelf. Otherwise I get sort of an itch. I know this because a friend wants me to paint some cheap-CENSORED Star Wars minis with almost no detail, but every time I see them I go "...eh" and keep working on something else. On the other hand, a friend commissioned me to paint and convert an Iron Kingdoms mini (it lacked arms) and I had blast doing so.

BTW, has anyone gone with the Iron Kingdoms way of measuring distances via measuring tape?. I've done it a few times, and I think it works rather well, and frees miniatures from the constraints of the grid.

Speaking of grids... Who has experiences with combat on a hex grid (not the squared one) ?.

[Extra Anchovies]

Speaking of grids... Who has experiences with combat on a hex grid (not the squared one)?

Hexgrid combat is awesome. Burst effects and cone effects are so much easier, the shortest path(s) from A to B is/are always obvious (in square-grid, the shortest path sometimes involves fiddly diagonal movement [ab]use), circles aren't square... I recommend it over square-grid in all circumstances except possibly squad-based mass battles (but for those you should really be using gridless tape-measure anyways).

[ArqArturo]

Hexgrid combat is awesome. Burst effects and cone effects are so much easier, the shortest path(s) from A to B is/are always obvious (in square-grid, the shortest path sometimes involves fiddly diagonal movement [ab]use), circles aren't square... I recommend it over square-grid in all circumstances except possibly squad-based mass battles (but for those you should really be using gridless tape-measure anyways).

Hmm, I might consider trying a hex grid one day, considering that a lot of my friends play spellcasters.

[Extra Anchovies]

Hmm, I might consider trying a hex grid one day, considering that a lot of my friends play spellcasters.

Do it! You never have to get out any of those area templates and try to position them over the minis; just pick a space and count X spaces away from it. Done.

I don't get why there's opposition to it; I guess because square grids are so ingrained in the game. The hex-grid rules are my favorite thing in Unearthed Arcana.

[ArqArturo]

I think I know the culprit (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0175.html), heheh.