D&D minitures

[Inhuman Bot]

I guess this goes here...

So for a long while now we've been using "collectible" minatures, those random packs, where you might get that Fire elemental you needed or MORE human archers. I was wondering if anyone has thought of a good way around this. (e.g. Using lego minatures for the huminoids or something). If anyone has any good ideas, could you tell me?

[juggalotis]

i like warhammer figures. and looking at your name i would guess you have a few?

[de-trick]

Buy selective minatures, that you want. This will cost more but you can get minatures you want.

[Fenrir]

I don't really like to buy minis because I feel you never get EXACTLY what you want, so my way around it is that I make my own minis

It's a lot of work but it's worth it. I love making them and I make one for each of the people I play with too.

[zerombr]

Well I play Heroscape, and I tend to use those figs for any battles. course I have devoted a deal of cash to that game...never get to play it either...hmmm

[Kurald Galain]

I was wondering if anyone has thought of a good way around this. (e.g. Using lego minatures for the huminoids or something). If anyone has any good ideas, could you tell me?

This is probably not the answer that you want to hear, but the best way around this is simply not using battle maps. With the right kind of DM, D&D tends to play faster without them.

[Narthon the Bold]

Naw, use minis, the game is really designed for it. Everything has speeds and ranges for a reason.

Go to the dollar store and buy army men and animal packs. This will fill a lot of your miniature needs.

Offer bonus xp to players who supply their own minis.

Get some metal minis and use them with or without paint. The painting can be a hobby in itself.

I do buy D&D miniatures and hate myself for it. I have started doing some trading of them, which helps things a bit, and buying exactly what you want on e-bay is fairly cost effective, but you can't get beholders and dragons for reasonable prices.

[DeathQuaker]

Solutions for D&D miniatures:

If you want plastic minis:
- order them from EBay, where they are cheaper and often grouped in packs of identified creatures

- Check out Reaper's NON-randomized plastic minis: http://www.reapermini.com/LegendaryE...aintedPlastics

The line is small right now, but keep an eye on them. Their packs are reasonably priced and very attractive.

Good substitutions:
- As OP says, Lego Men
- Any kind of marker will do -- I paint numbers on plastic miniature bases, which you can buy huge bags full for pretty cheap
- Print out appropriately sized pictures on posterboard or glue them to bases
- Skittles/M&Ms/peanuts (slayer of monster gets to eat it)
- Dice

Also:

Do a search for miniatures in this board. You will find many similar threads with lots more suggestions, many of them very creative.

[Paul H]

Hi

DeathQuaker is absolutely right about EBay. Been buying minis there for years (about 600 minis now). Just make sure vendor has a good rep.

Loads of sellers sell individual minis, but some sell in 'groups', eg 6 Hobgoblin Archers, etc. More usful for GM's than finding just one mini they want in a random box. Always nice when players ask you as GM what they're facing, and you just point to the mini(s) and say .. "what you see......".

Although I live in UK, most of my minis bought from USA. The cheap price (strong pound), plus the fact I can choose what I want, when I want, more than make up for extra postage cost. (About £15 to UK). Usually buy about 60 minis/order.
Be warned that iconic minis like Dragons & Beholders cost more.

Recommend BrapsMagic.
(Moderator: Please delete if we're not allowed to advertise).

Cheers
Paul H

[TheThan]

I use a combination of warmachine/hordes minis, LOTR fantasy battle game minis and warhammer fantasy minis.

I checked Ebay before for minis, and all I came up with were the random packs. Maybe my Ebay-fu is just not strong.

[Narthon the Bold]

Recommend BrapsMagic.

I've bought from them before, they are great.

[reorith]

Solutions for D&D miniatures:

If you want plastic minis:
- order them from EBay, where they are cheaper and often grouped in packs of identified creatures

- Check out Reaper's NON-randomized plastic minis: http://www.reapermini.com/LegendaryE...aintedPlastics

The line is small right now, but keep an eye on them. Their packs are reasonably priced and very attractive.

Good substitutions:
- As OP says, Lego Men
- Any kind of marker will do -- I paint numbers on plastic miniature bases, which you can buy huge bags full for pretty cheap
- Print out appropriately sized pictures on posterboard or glue them to bases
- Skittles/M&Ms/peanuts (slayer of monster gets to eat it)
- Dice

Also:

Do a search for miniatures in this board. You will find many similar threads with lots more suggestions, many of them very creative.

thanks for the link

also, origami.
edit: also also polymer clay and paper mache.

[Epinephrine]

Haven't tried it, but I've heard that used heroscape figures are cheap to pick up, and can even come with the terrain bits (could be handy).

[EvilElitest]

Personally i think it would be more consumer friendly of WotC to sell not randomizied packs with 4E coming out and using miniatures, but i doubt it would happen
from
EE

[TheThan]

Personally i think it would be more consumer friendly of WotC to sell not randomizied packs with 4E coming out and using miniatures, but i doubt it would happen
from
EE

I'd be happy if they didn't sell randomized packs of dnd minis. So if I need say, zombies for that zombie horde, i can just get them.

[RTGoodman]

I'd be happy if they didn't sell randomized packs of dnd minis. So if I need say, zombies for that zombie horde, i can just get them.

I'd be fine with them still selling randomized minis if they also had some decent non-random packs. A pack full of orcs or kobolds, maybe a pack of undead, a pack of various adventurers with all the basics covered, and stuff like that, but still have some random stuff for people that like that kind of thing. I mean, they say they do "non-randomized stuff," but it's just the dragons and the Drizz't set (none of which I have any use for).


For a really easy but durable substitute, print out a sheet of inch-wide and maybe 1.5 inch tall pictures of what you need, paste them to some cardboard, cardstock, or other think-ish material, and then either paste them to little coins or just stab some flat thumbtacks in the bottom.

[AslanCross]

Ranting, sort of.
This has also been a problem in my campaign. It's been almost a year since we started and still we don't have suitable miniatures for the BBEG and some of his cronies. I use a Wulfgar miniature for the cleric of Bane! What gives?!

What makes it worse is that not only are miniatures expensive, but their availability here is limited. Only the Night Below set was easy to find recently, and right now it's almost out of stock. What's strange is that sometimes the boxes can sit on shelves for months, and then all of a sudden, they vanish as if someone started panic-buying and hoarding them.

Even worse is that there really isn't much of a D&D community here, and they (someone has to be buying those books and miniatures![/i]) don't seem to be very keen on hooking up with others. End rant. $

In any case, I am intending to use some of my brother's Mageknight figures in future battles. They're a lot bigger, so most of the time they'll be at least Large-sized creatures.

[EvilElitest]

Yeah, the miniture thing makes money but doesn't earn your friends
from
EE

[bosssmiley]

Go to the dollar store and buy army men and animal packs. This will fill a lot of your miniature needs.

Buy a bag of plastic dinos. Repaint and stick on pieces from your bits box to turn them into fiendish dinosaurs, drakes, basilisks, etc.

I know some of the historical wargames mags have adverts for cheap bags of plastic toy soldiers historical warriors (90 plastic hoplites/legionaries/vikings for $xx).

They're a bit pricey but the GW plastic regiments boxes are gold for customizers. You get the 16-20 models (Orcs: that's your humanoid needs for the campaign catered for from 1 box. Empire: that's your low level fighters & rogues, then your entourage when you get Leadership later on. Chaos Warriors: Death Knights, Blackguards, animated statues, etc.), plus you get sprues full of spare parts for later conversions.

I saw a WD a while back where one guy used spare limbs from his zombie sprues to create a hilarious Crawling Claw unit (statted as rat swarms IIRC).

[Quincunx]

Is there anyone here who's ever cast their own minis?

The beginner's casting kit tickles my fancy, but I have no excuse to buy it. . .

[Closet_Skeleton]

I use warhammer minis and the odd lead figure from other companies. Never bothered with D&D minis due to the randomness and I prefer to paint my models anyway.

[Glawackus]

I use chess pieces, with pawns representing the enemies (with colored counters or that sort of thing underneath to help preserve my sanity ).

[Paul H]

Hi

Have already pointed out one place to buy cheap minis from about £0.25 each - Games Workshop are considerably more.

Another cheap option we've used occasionally is Jelly Babies or other cheap sweet. Used as the bad-guys, whoever kills the monster gets the sweet.

Cheers
Paul H

[skywalker]

There's no way they would switch to non-random packs. Let's think about who we're buying from(and I'm not ranting, even tho I am pre-disposed to, I'm just stating facts.).

We're talking about Wizards here, a company that made it's bones selling Magic:The Gathering, a card game where players acquire the cards they need by buying randomized booster packs. The transfer from this to D&D minis was easy for them. Now, in fourth edition, they're pushing D&D minis as an integral part of the game. It's simple economics, and the reason Wizards is the only profitable RPG company.

As for the original topic, my advice is, yes, use a battlemat. However, either decide you don't care what the minis look like(I've used the same 7 pewter orcs to represent a multitude of different enemies) or use dice. d4s(pray the wizard doesn't roll you for magic missile damage) and d12s(they'll get touched besides taking them out of the box!) to represent characters. You can also cut up squares of paper to fit your particular battle mat. I've also used the tops of dice boxes to represent large creatures, etc.

[Breaw]

I highly recommend pewter minis. One of the players in my campaign works at the local nerd shop and if when we start a new campaign he will generally find a mini that fits the character description well for each player and bring them in (he uses store credit for them, it's a pretty sweet deal).

Anyway, it's also very affordable for players to rifle through the near infinite selection of minis to find one that best fits their character. My wife and I have taken to painting anyones mini who doesn't want to paint it themselves. We only paint 2 minis a week so depending on the number of players it can take a while, but it looks great in the end.

Having the custom paint job on the mini that fits your character well can be a lot of fun, that and a short back story written up and I'm generally really feeling a character.

All in all I own 4 miniatures total, one for each character I've played to any serious degree. Several of our players have a box of orcs or human pikemen or skelletons or spiders or something. Everyone contributs and we generally have something reasonable for most encounters. None of the monster minis are painted, just don't have the time.

[sonofzeal]

I don't use minis, never have, potentially never will. In six years of gaming, I've had all of one session using minis. It's just not a part of my playstyle, or the style of the people I game with. I don't have anything against them, but I do find it's easier to roleplay in combat without them, and they tend to slow things down more than they help.

[drengnikrafe]

I don't use Minis. Heck, I hardly (if at all) use grids, unless I'm in a dungeon.
Everything in my (and all my friends's) campaigns are ad-hoc. Distances are stated at the beginning, and then assumed from then on. Rather then Minis, we use Chess Pieces and Dice. Cast Enlarge Person on the Goliath? Okay, put a gigantic D6 under the Queen. Aren't sure of the distance, or whether or not you can Great Cleave that guy because you aren't sure of whether or not it's close enough? Sure it is, no problem.
We get to the action a lot quicker that way.

Then again, we play D&D as though it were a game, and not lifeblood and obsession.