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 lord_blackfang wrote:


This is what Archon flexed on their Discord recently. From the blur I'd guess it's not out yet.

I have really no idea what wizkids and WoTC are doing then. Seams weird that a licensee is competing with a license holder. Though maybe that's just the mandatory WoTC copyright for a wizkids sprue?




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 Paradigm wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Ugg, the GF9 resins are trash. So annoyed at that. I was looking at getting one of the dragon kits and the molds/casts are so bad you have to actually break the wings to assemble and then greenstuff things back together. Tons of really bad reviews for both of the dragons they sell as none of the parts/joints fit.

Bought the wizkids unpainted stuff instead.

I've found the GF9 Collector's Series minis to be a real mixed bag. The human-sized minis are pretty fantastic, and while Orcus and Baphomet required some small filling and sanding, they mostly went together okay, nothing worse than any other large resin kit. The Dragon of Black Ice, meanwhile, is an absolute disaster of a kit at the price they asked for it. Terrible gaps requiring tons of GS to fill, at least three different types of resin (head and tail the traditional solod cast pieces, a much brittler, shiny stuff for the hollow body that warped like crazy, and the base is almoat closer to vacuum-formed plastic...)

I have one of the smaller resins and it was perfectly fine so i was really surprised about the larger stuff. Glad I stayed away from the big dragon kits.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Ugg, the GF9 resins are trash. So annoyed at that. I was looking at getting one of the dragon kits and the molds/casts are so bad you have to actually break the wings to assemble and then greenstuff things back together. Tons of really bad reviews for both of the dragons they sell as none of the parts/joints fit.

Bought the wizkids unpainted stuff instead.

For the gold I used boiling water on the wings but still sculpted a section. The rest of it was fine. Their more recent sets are good. The avernus stuff. And their demogorgon, purple worm, beholder etc. But yeah it can be a bit of a strange situation. I don't mind it myself as I'm used to resin kits. I do prefer the detail on them vs the nolzurs line

Sf

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Spoiler:

This is what Archon flexed on their Discord recently. From the blur I'd guess it's not out yet.

That image makes me feel a lot better about this project. In fact, it's actually piquing my interest now and I may actually pick up something just to build and paint.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:


This is what Archon flexed on their Discord recently. From the blur I'd guess it's not out yet.

I have really no idea what wizkids and WoTC are doing then. Seams weird that a licensee is competing with a license holder. Though maybe that's just the mandatory WoTC copyright for a wizkids sprue?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Paradigm wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Ugg, the GF9 resins are trash. So annoyed at that. I was looking at getting one of the dragon kits and the molds/casts are so bad you have to actually break the wings to assemble and then greenstuff things back together. Tons of really bad reviews for both of the dragons they sell as none of the parts/joints fit.

Bought the wizkids unpainted stuff instead.

I've found the GF9 Collector's Series minis to be a real mixed bag. The human-sized minis are pretty fantastic, and while Orcus and Baphomet required some small filling and sanding, they mostly went together okay, nothing worse than any other large resin kit. The Dragon of Black Ice, meanwhile, is an absolute disaster of a kit at the price they asked for it. Terrible gaps requiring tons of GS to fill, at least three different types of resin (head and tail the traditional solod cast pieces, a much brittler, shiny stuff for the hollow body that warped like crazy, and the base is almoat closer to vacuum-formed plastic...)

I have one of the smaller resins and it was perfectly fine so i was really surprised about the larger stuff. Glad I stayed away from the big dragon kits.

Maybe per the terms of the lisence WOTC owns the mods and WK just produces them under lisence?

 Monkeysloth wrote:

Carlovonsexron wrote:


Ah, but you're not factoring in the material.

In theory these are going to be made out of the same plastic that warhammer minis are - ABS, or a similar plastic. Which means that unlike the rubbery plastic that most DnD minis are made in which sevearly handicaps kitbashers, these minis can better take advantage of bits from each others kits, and even prey upon well established warhammer bitz boxes.

Where are you getting that info as none of the articles linked state what type of plastic. And, shockingly, PVC plastic uses sprues as well as metal and resin if multiplart. Since everything Wizkids have ever made in 20 years of existence is PVC its safer to assume that's what these will be made out of until it's expressly stated it's HIPS or another plastic.

for kitbashing it would make a lot more sense for them to keep this as the same material as their other minis so players can combine the two easier. Ya, PVC isn't as good as HIPS for this, but you still can (just takes more skill) and why would they lock out people buying the hundred other minis they have for sale for other parts? Doing these kits in HIPS would just push people to buy from GW and other competitors that use the material.

It's mostly an assumption based on the other stuff archon produces; if it was going to be in the same material why would they be using archon at all?

To be fair, if it's not in a material comparable with ABS/HIPS I won't be interested in it. But I'll be very surprised if it isn't.

Archon is producing a lot of plastics for a lot of different people then. Cool.

I'll take that any day of the week over Siocast. It's not bad, but much like Bones it works best with bigger and thicker pieces. It feels very bendy and flexible with smaller model parts.

That Balrog price though... yeah, no thanks.

> These are being made for Wizkids by Archon/Prodos, in HIPS. This is known.
> Iirc, wizkids said on their channel that it's similar to gw style plastic but fairly sure they saidnot quite as rigid... whatever that means regarding material differences.

Assuming it's the same HIPS plastic as Archon's Dungeons and Lasers, the plastic is pretty good stuff. Easy to remove mold lines, at least! I haven't gotten around to the D&L miniatures (eg. animal companions) but had no trouble with it for terrain.

> I don't think the price is that bad for the PCs just for that reason but these really aren't that customizable (most have 2 heads and 2 weapons),

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder myself, especially for the figures with, as their two heads, one female head, and one male head. This doesn't give any market advantage over single-piece miniatures. For an RPG'er, the amount of customization for HeroForge *is* well worth the marginal cost.

Well, we'll see if there's room in the market for this stuff. It does have the "D&D" branding, and you can pick it off the FLGS shelf as an impulse buy. I'd still recommend a D&L late pledge for the RPG GM's, though...!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Sorta wonder if any of the monsters are the same sculpt as Dungeons and Lasers.

15$ for heroes is a bit much for wargaming, but monsters are quite appealing.

They're not for wargaming, so it's all fine then. And i imagine they're more expensive than the generic thing cause licensing fees to use the logo. I still bet they'll sell like hotcakes, there's so much more RPG players than wargamers it's crazy.

They're indeed a bit expensive, I mean, they're quite a bit more than metal figures while not having much more in the way of customisation options. Part of it of course is the logo and everything, so it will still sell. But don't underestimate the cheapness of DMs like me!

Maybe these are designed to drive buyers to the two figures for five dollars blisters that they already sell

Given the people popping into the this thread, I'd say there is genuine interest in them. Personally I've bough a single blister of the pre-primed figs and never plan to again. But this concept is very much tailored to someone like me, and I would assume others.

The tiles on my table are worth more than most 40k army’s. Role players can be quite happy to spend money for stuff that is fit for the game.

That’s a big change from the groups I have seen. Maybe I just gravitate to fellow cheapskates.

It’s probably because I’m old, so very old, but every RPG group I’ve ever been in used only the books, paper and pens. We never used miniatures or tiles or anything like that. If we needed a map, we got out the graph paper.

Might be why our parents were happy to push us to RPGs—they were cheaper than Lego.

I use models for tabletop now, but they're nothing like my character. I use a model that we lovingly call Shovel Death, and he represents everything from my spell weaving casters to Jim Bob down the street.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It’s probably because I’m old, so very old, but every RPG group I’ve ever been in used only the books, paper and pens. We never used miniatures or tiles or anything like that. If we needed a map, we got out the graph paper.

Might be why our parents were happy to push us to RPGs—they were cheaper than Lego.

My group uses them only because I'm the GM 90% of the time and I love using them. I'm the weird outlier on Dakka whos someone that love miniature gaming but rarely, if ever, actually wargames as I don't like competitive games that much(unless they're short boardgame stuff). So my years of collecting, outside of stints playing Heroclix and Infinity, have always been for RPGs. I've actually played more tabletop miniature games in the past year because of the Modihiphis Adventure Wargaming stuff the I have in the past 12-13 years combined (when I stopped playing clix games). I hang out on sites like Dakka as on RPG forums there are way more jerks willing to attack someone for liking the wrong game system then I've ever seen in wargames.

I more then willing to spend good money on something. But that something has to be pretty awesome and unique if it's outside the general price range for equivalents from others.

I also buy all the minis for my group as only one really actually likes minis and I just buy his as I'm buying the others so it's only fair. Heroforge, Desktophero and eldritch foundry have pretty much replaced everything for the PC minis. People can make on in less time then it takes be to brose reaper or wizkids current offerings.

I'm interested to see where this goes

I wonder if this is also spurred on a little by the rise of home 3d printing. I bought plenty of Nolzur's minis a year or two back, but as soon as I got a resin printer I could easily beat that range, along with Reaper and such, in terms of both variety and detail. Throw in the fact that between Blender and Meshmixer I can customise STLs and digitally kitbach to print whatever bizarrely specific mini I need for a player or monster and even things like Heroforge become pretty redundant. Obviously not everyone does this yet, and it's still a niche within a niche, but it's a rapidly growing one and the 3d printing market seems to cater far more to RPG folks than wargamers (largely due to the hassle of printiing armies versus the ease of a few minis for an encounter or session).

These (ar least going by the price) are positioning themselves as a 'quality over quantity' range, so it's possible they're trying to a) counteract the fact that budget ranges are increasingly being replaced by printers and b) capitalising on the fact that due to printing's relatively low cost, some of the market is going to have more 'spare' gaming funds to throw at the odd special model.

I was interested until I saw the prices.

Not sure who this is for.

People who buy fantasy miniatures that are not themselves miniatures gamers are already well served by WizKids pre-paints or Bones or Black Box.

Miniatures gamers who buy fantasy miniatures are going to know these prices are for suckers.

It’s a strange product line.

Licensing fees could be a part of it. Perhaps Wizards of the Coast believes that exclusive access to licensed customizable D&D miniatures should be a premium.

I was thinking that maybe, if the sprue Lord_Blackfang posted isn't related to wizkids, it could possibly be an attempt by Wizards to do a true Warhammer quest competitor (and decent and gloomhaven) with full plastic kits. That's jumping to a lot of conclusions but maybe they want to snag some GW fans by branching D&D out to high end boardgames instead of all the cheap things they've done in the past?

Breotan did seam to think the wizkids renders as they've been shown cut wouldn't work well in plastic (I don't understand plastic mold making enough to know if he's right) so it got me thinking.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I was thinking that maybe, if the sprue Lord_Blackfang posted isn't related to wizkids, it could possibly be an attempt by Wizards to do a true Warhammer quest competitor (and decent and gloomhaven) with full plastic kits. That's jumping to a lot of conclusions but maybe they want to snag some GW fans by branching D&D out to high end boardgames instead of all the cheap things they've done in the past?

Breotan did seam to think the wizkids renders as they've been shown cut wouldn't work well in plastic (I don't understand plastic mold making enough to know if he's right) so it got me thinking.

On the one hand I think that is a bit of a jump too far, and yet GW's financial successes over the past few years are sure to have gotten the attention of hasbro/ wizards of the coast who are going to want in on that kind of action. So it's not totally unreasonable. But I don't think too likely...

wouldn't be the first time WOTC's jumped on a gaming bandwagon, back when WK's clix games where at their height WOTC jumped into the CMG market pretty big

Carlovonsexron wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I was thinking that maybe, if the sprue Lord_Blackfang posted isn't related to wizkids, it could possibly be an attempt by Wizards to do a true Warhammer quest competitor (and decent and gloomhaven) with full plastic kits. That's jumping to a lot of conclusions but maybe they want to snag some GW fans by branching D&D out to high end boardgames instead of all the cheap things they've done in the past?

Breotan did seam to think the wizkids renders as they've been shown cut wouldn't work well in plastic (I don't understand plastic mold making enough to know if he's right) so it got me thinking.

On the one hand I think that is a bit of a jump too far, and yet GW's financial successes over the past few years are sure to have gotten the attention of hasbro/ wizards of the coast who are going to want in on that kind of action. So it's not totally unreasonable. But I don't think too likely...

GWs success does point out that people will fork over however much you want if you have an Official Brand Sticker on your product.

Cronch wrote:

Carlovonsexron wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I was thinking that maybe, if the sprue Lord_Blackfang posted isn't related to wizkids, it could possibly be an attempt by Wizards to do a true Warhammer quest competitor (and decent and gloomhaven) with full plastic kits. That's jumping to a lot of conclusions but maybe they want to snag some GW fans by branching D&D out to high end boardgames instead of all the cheap things they've done in the past?

Breotan did seam to think the wizkids renders as they've been shown cut wouldn't work well in plastic (I don't understand plastic mold making enough to know if he's right) so it got me thinking.

On the one hand I think that is a bit of a jump too far, and yet GW's financial successes over the past few years are sure to have gotten the attention of hasbro/ wizards of the coast who are going to want in on that kind of action. So it's not totally unreasonable. But I don't think too likely...

GWs success does point out that people will fork over however much you want if you have an Official Brand Sticker on your product.

you mean like Dungeons and Dragons, or Magic the Gathering?

 Monkeysloth wrote:


There are some cool builds for the PCs. I think it would have cost them very little and been much easier to justify the cost if there were a peg system for swapping hands and weapons. The material is light weight enough that they should hold with non-round ones I would wager. And maybe I'm being a bit more critical because it seams like something that they should have done but didn't as what RPG player wouldn't love an easy way to do that? With heroforge only $5 more this would have been a great way to offer something they don't.


The dwarf is a great example as she has the stein and that player could swap to a shield or tomb when dungeon crawling and keep the stein for other instances. There are heads with expressions too but I'm not sure they'd stay on without glue, unlike the fighter next to her that has pegs. Though Bluetac might work for the dwarf heads.

Darn.

Now I really want Lego PC kits with different heads and arms.

I personally am not the biggest fan of Nolzur's (sp) because somehow, the human-likes feel off when I paint them and I find some parts to be a bit on the fiddly side. These look to be better proportioned and have a better material but still, it's much for what are still monopose figures with little in the way of actual choice.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:


There are some cool builds for the PCs. I think it would have cost them very little and been much easier to justify the cost if there were a peg system for swapping hands and weapons. The material is light weight enough that they should hold with non-round ones I would wager. And maybe I'm being a bit more critical because it seams like something that they should have done but didn't as what RPG player wouldn't love an easy way to do that? With heroforge only $5 more this would have been a great way to offer something they don't.


The dwarf is a great example as she has the stein and that player could swap to a shield or tomb when dungeon crawling and keep the stein for other instances. There are heads with expressions too but I'm not sure they'd stay on without glue, unlike the fighter next to her that has pegs. Though Bluetac might work for the dwarf heads.

Darn.

Now I really want Lego PC kits with different heads and arms.

Those do exist. 3rd party lego minifigs customizing companies are a big thing out here in the states. There's at least 2 stores dedicated to them in the valley I live in. You can tottaly get a ton of D&D options for them. Here's one that advertises as being for RPGs https://adventurebricks.com/

Lego has no interest in going after any of them as long as they play nice with Lego's Trademarks (meaning don't use them) as they really don't have the patents for a lot of their brick designs anymore.


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Carlovonsexron wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
I was thinking that maybe, if the sprue Lord_Blackfang posted isn't related to wizkids, it could possibly be an attempt by Wizards to do a true Warhammer quest competitor (and decent and gloomhaven) with full plastic kits. That's jumping to a lot of conclusions but maybe they want to snag some GW fans by branching D&D out to high end boardgames instead of all the cheap things they've done in the past?

Breotan did seam to think the wizkids renders as they've been shown cut wouldn't work well in plastic (I don't understand plastic mold making enough to know if he's right) so it got me thinking.

On the one hand I think that is a bit of a jump too far, and yet GW's financial successes over the past few years are sure to have gotten the attention of hasbro/ wizards of the coast who are going to want in on that kind of action. So it's not totally unreasonable. But I don't think too likely...

Oh, it's totally a not too likely but just a what if as I couldn't really think of what else they'd be doing if the Archon sprues weren't for Wizkids as they said and I think that if that is the case then Wizards doing a real premium game with maybe Avalon Hill helping is much more likely then Wizards getting back into skirmish wargaming where they've never had any luck outside of the PP Starwars minis (which was a decent game, I had an ewok army that took up 1/3rd of a board for trolling friends).

Since Hasbro has owned them they've tried several times get a wargame out: Chainmail, plastic D&D minis (which was a dumb game and most people don't realize it was a wargame), and I strongly believe 4E D&D started life as a wargame ruleset. A premium boardgame is a much lower risk, and easier sell, the starting with a wargame. If they wanted to branch out they can even just follow GW and make all the stuff in the boargame usable in the wargame.

I just can't see Hasbro being happy to have D&D, or Magic, being having only their main games and licenses for income. D&D has collapsed several times under Wizards in popularity and now that it's actually making money it make sense for them to branch out of RPGs and licenses and try to make it other things again. And Magic is one of the longest lived, continuously , popular games of any of our life times so the fact they aren't exploiting that game's IPs more is surprising. I know the magic fanbase has been very strongly opinionated about other IPs being brought into Magic but there's a lot of fluff and world building in Magic to be used elsewhere -- Like D&D books that have started coming out.

If that does happen it would be just an interesting event considering the $0k crossover into MTG cards.

I have no particular interest in D&D miniatures, but I have no idea why people find the prices here high. GW recently released two witch hunter models with much less customizability than these, for $50 for the two of them. And it sold out. So why do you think people wouldn't pay $15 for a single hero with a lot of options? Obviously people will and have paid much more.