Sources for tokens and CHEAP miniatures?

[Curmudgeon]

I'm planning an Epic D&D game and I need some tokens and cheap miniatures for it. Being mostly a battle of armies, standard PC races will be the most common. But there will also be occasions when there are ~200 undead running around, and I don't want to spend a fortune on miniatures for these hordes. I figure tokens will do for the undead and other monsters, and I'll need several dozen miniatures to represent the various soldiers that are in the front lines.

Can somebody suggest an online store that offers a decent selection of low-cost plastic miniatures and tokens? Free or discounted shipping on a big order would help. I'm sure most lines like Reaper have multicolored plastic figures that will work fine for my needs, assuming the price is low enough. I'm not going to be too picky about anything except total price (with shipping).

[RTGoodman]

I don't know about miniatures, but if you browse through the free stuff on RPGnow.com they usually have free tokens of various sorts for downloading. I don't know if they'd have what you need, but it's a start.

[Quietus]

Go to a pet store, and buy the multicolored rocks they use for fishtanks. Cheap, and plentiful - although they don't have the same effect as an actual mini would, admittedly.

[Balkash]

Well my ideas would all revolve around the Risk guys, some Legos, and maybe a couple of shoes (to represent the dragons of course)

[BardicDuelist]

Reaper's pre-painted plastic monsters aren't bad. The game Zombies! has bags of zombies (and glow in the dark ones too!) that could work well.
You get 100 for about $10.

For tokens in general, I use pennies, dice or spare miniature bases. Somtimes dollar stores will have cheap bags of little monsters that I'll buy.

[valadil]

Go to a pet store, and buy the multicolored rocks they use for fishtanks. Cheap, and plentiful - although they don't have the same effect as an actual mini would, admittedly.

Arts and crafts stores sell the same beads and rocks (which any gamer should have) but for less than one fourth the price usually.

[AKA_Bait]

Ebay is good if you want detailed ones. You can get pretty large numbers of the commons from recent D&D Mini's sets for reasonable prices.

However, if it's a lot of them, I suggest... candy. For a horde of mooks skittles, M&Ms and reces peices are awesome as when the player manages to off a few they get to drink their tasty tasty xp and get a sugar rush all at the same time.

[bugsysservant]

Go to a pet store, and buy the multicolored rocks they use for fishtanks. Cheap, and plentiful - although they don't have the same effect as an actual mini would, admittedly.

God, I thought you were going to suggest buying a couple of guppies and waiting till you have 200. This is why its bad to think faster than you read.

[Felius]

You can also make paper miniatures like this http://www.lpjdesign.com/images/PaperViolenceDemo.jpg
or even create your own. Just pick the image you want for them, and use some paiting program, like corel, or paint.

[Rigon]

God, I thought you were going to suggest buying a couple of guppies and waiting till you have 200. This is why its bad to think faster than you read.

and how would you zombify 200 guppies anyway?

[bugsysservant]

and how would you zombify 200 guppies anyway?

You don't, they'll zombify themselves. Just make sure you buy at least one necromancer guppy from your friendly neighborhood pet store...

[Rigon]

You don't, they'll zombify themselves. Just make sure you buy at least one necromancer guppy from your friendly neighborhood pet store...

Guppies can take class levels?! This makes playing humanoids even more boring.

[AKA_Bait]

Somehow now I'm just waiting for an Awakened Pseudonatural Halfdragon Paragon True Necromancer Guppy to show up in the GitP huntclub... Fax?

[Rigon]

Somehow now I'm just waiting for an Awakened Pseudonatural Halfdragon Paragon True Necromancer Guppy to show up in the GitP huntclub... Fax?

Can't dragons simply draw a borderline between races they get laid with and races they don't get laid with? Thinking of dragons it's too simple to imagine one of them polymorphing into a guppy and then mass-raping a swarm of guppies... just for the kick of it. And think of the horror in the pet shop: a Guppy with a breath attack.

Let us stop dragons once and for all with their cross-species breeding! I mean no wonder we want to kill them so badly. What if this cross-breeding thing is an instinct? Have you ever thought about that? "I am a half-orc-half-dragon and i a feel the sudden urge to breed with chicken." Women of humanoidkind! Remember to ask the question "Are you a dragon?" before doing something conceptive!

[Duke of URL]

Somehow now I'm just waiting for an Awakened Pseudonatural Halfdragon Paragon True Necromancer Guppy to show up in the GitP huntclub... Fax?

Actually, this got me thinking of an "awakened fish" aquatic-based game over in PbP...

[AKA_Bait]

Actually, this got me thinking of an "awakened fish" aquatic-based game over in PbP...

Ooh ooh can we call it "Finding NPC disidentical to but similar in concept to Nemo"?

[Cristo Meyers]

You might try Reaper's Legendary Encounters line. Other than that, your best, cheapest option would probably just be paper standees.

[Duke of URL]

Ooh ooh can we call it "Finding NPC disidentical to but similar in concept to Nemo"?

How about "Searching for the Nautilus' Captain"?

[Person_Man]

I was able to find a couple of boxes of Heroscape for $20 a piece online. Each box has a ton of miniatures in it, plus stackable terrain that works really well for any outdoor encounter.

Also, plain old chess pieces from any thrift shop are relatively cheap and plentiful.

[AKA_Bait]

How about "Searching for the Nautilus' Captain"?

Or "20,000 nanometers under the tank cover?"

Ok, going to stop derailing this thread now. I promise.

[Irreverent Fool]

Find the hobby shops in your area. Occasionally these places will have old lose miniatures. I recently picked up a large number of old Ral Partha metal miniatures for 25 cents each. I've also found some generic soldier figures at toy stores for about 1 cents each. I have a whole army of Romans now!

Also at specialty toy stores (the kind that carry things like tiny plastic animals etc) usually have some bins of cheap little plastic people. A bucket of old-fashioned green plastic army men could even serve your purposes!

Elsewise, paper standees are probably the cheapest option, though not the prettiest.

[Fhaolan]

Dollar store.

Not kidding.

Go to the toy section. One of the DMs I deal with on a regular basis went there and found a bags of multicolored colored 'ninjas' that are almost the right scale. There was about six different colors, with different weapon variations within the colors. Enough to be able to identify each individual ninja for recordkeeping purposes.

[Jayabalard]

buy some card stock, and print out tokens; you can grid them out so that they are the correct size for the creature that they represent, and since they're square, it's easy to make simple formations with them.

[Dalboz of Gurth]

buy some card stock, and print out tokens; you can grid them out so that they are the correct size for the creature that they represent, and since they're square, it's easy to make simple formations with them.

I like using this method combined with the Cardboard Heroes idea, where you cut out rectangular pieces and fold them so they stand up. Makes it easier :D

[nerulean]

Possibly represent hoards by single, large tokens printed off the computer? If you've got a 200ft by 200ft army of zombies marching towards you, your players will not thank you for stopping to neatly place each one of them, only to see them fall in a single AoE spell.

[goat]

Or "20,000 nanometers under the tank cover?"

20 micrometers from the surface? That's... less than a hair's width.

Are the fish dead?

[PolarBearGod]

Bucket O' green army men?

[TheLogman]

For token purposes, I found a great source at the Dollar Store. They sell these packs of "Luster Gems", highly polished what I believe to be glass, or possibly stones. They come in See-through and opaque, and are $1 for a pound of them. The "gems" in question are not very large, about the same diameter of penny, some a little larger.

[olelia]

http://www.dragonfiresigns.com/store.php?crn=216

Bulk tokens...custom artwork for relatively cheap bulk prices!

[Eldmor]

I recently found packing peanuts split in half into two 'nubs' to make great generic tokens. You can mark on them and simply throw them away when done. Plus you get an insane amount for your money.