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$15, without discount, for a multipart customizable character seems reasonable. A single non-customizable GW character is in the range of $30+. These are one off purchases for the most part. It isn't like people are buying an army of female dwarf clerics for D&D.

Now the squads and large monsters do definitely get pricier.

I was referring to the Hag in the video being $25. Admittedly I wasn't clear at all though in my post. I fully admit I'm old man yelling at cloud sprue with regard to plastics pricing.

If the hag is on a 40mm base then I can see that price but there's no reason for it to be $25 outside of them charging more for figures they think will sell slower ala GW.

They have set expectations of $2.50 per miniature in their five dollar packs that usually feature two figures. Some people will buy the new ones but they have bred a market that expects two little dudes for a very cheap price.

The Hag also comes on two sprues, one transparent, and has a familiar.

I doubt these prices are going to attract anyone with a full bits box and any experience outside of the GW (or the expensive official DnD minis) bubble.

They should have just packed two sprues in a box so people could build two options or add gear etc. as their character advances.

Very little additional production cost for them, but gives it that premium feel of being able to have a pretty individualized character model that levels up. There was some metal manufacturer that sold sculpts of the same miniature at three different power levels. I always thought it was a cool concept.

I would buy two for the price they want for one if I were playing.

Bits are only useful if they're cross compatible.

I have Marine bits from 20 years ago that I can still use with marines. But a different arm that can only fit on a certain ogre... what good is that? Unless I happen to find an ogre with the same proportions and who could use that particular arm.

For something like this a Hero Forge account and 3D printer seems the better investment.

What scale are those new plastics? GW/Fireforge/Mantic or Frostgrave/historicals?

Weird that the plastic looks so glossy. Not a fan of the designs there so far. Scale looks 32ish? Not sure

Either way I can see this a cool thing for plastic big monsters but man sized rpg minis not so much.

Shadow Walker wrote:What scale are those new plastics? GW/Fireforge/Mantic or Frostgrave/historicals?

Most likely the same as their PVC which is 30mm-ish.

 Ahtman wrote:
$15, without discount, for a multipart customizable character seems reasonable. A single non-customizable GW character is in the range of $30+. These are one off purchases for the most part. It isn't like people are buying an army of female dwarf clerics for D&D.

Now the squads and large monsters do definitely get pricier.

You hit upon the issue at the end. $15 for your character is a cheap-ish luxury you only need one of per campaign per player. The PC is important, will be in (nearly) every battle, and will get used every session. A $10 upsell is easy.

$25 for a single ogre, a monster you fight in groups of 3+ ($75), where you need trolls next adventure ($75) and it gets absurd. They're competing with $5 D&D branded ogres and trolls. And while the man sized Deep Cuts/Nolzur's aren't particularly great, their large/huge figures are much better. And at 1/5th the price, I think most DM's will trade the smallish drop in quality over the massive boost in quantity.

They could release a DnD Tabletop game.

RazorEdge wrote:
They could release a DnD Tabletop game.

This is likely what WoTC is working with Archon with as there have been lots of attempts to make a D&D wargame over the years (heck, D&D started as one). I wouldn't be surprised if WoTC is looking at GW thinking about how they can mirror some of their success considering the immense popularity of some of their IPs.

Would be cool when an actual Tabletop Game would come.

Unlikely. WotC has already tried twice, first with a heavily revised version of Chainmail — they kept the name and changed most everything else— and then with the D&D Miniatures Game. They may license the name, but that would be it.

RazorEdge wrote:
Would be cool when an actual Tabletop Game would come.

They have one. It's called Dungeons & Dragons

Chainmail was actually really popular, WotC canned it because they decided they didn't want to produce metal minis, not because of poor sales. A lot of the Chainmail figs were directly copied over into prepainted plastics for the early D&D Miniatures Game sets, which was also incredibly popular for many years. It's still a really good game, you can find all the stat cards and rulebooks online for 1st and second edition (D&D 3.0 and 4.0) and whatever your feelings are on 4th ed D&D, it translated REALLY well into a tabletop skirmish game.

I do wish there was a currently produced official ruleset to use the Wizkids stuff in, seems like a missed opportunity. At the very least, I can't believe there aren't conversion rules to use them in the D&D board games series (Wrath of Ashardalon, Castle Ravenloft etc).

 Kalamadea wrote:
and whatever your feelings are on 4th ed D&D, it translated REALLY well into a tabletop skirmish game.

My feelings on 4th is it stared as a wargame and when the higher ups freaked out about declining 3.x sales told people to get a new edition out ASAP and so they just took those rules and added some light RPG stuff and called it a day. I have no real evidence outside of people that I know that worked at WoTC at the time and they said that none of the first set of 4th edition books were play tested at a company level (meaning by WoTC employees not directly on the D&D rules team) like all the previous releases were and no one knew the game existed until it was officially announced (and one of the people that told me that actually worked on D&D books and had no clue). But 4th is a great wargame framework but horrible RPG.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
and whatever your feelings are on 4th ed D&D, it translated REALLY well into a tabletop skirmish game.

My feelings on 4th is it stared as a wargame and when the higher ups freaked out about declining 3.x sales told people to get a new edition out ASAP and so they just took those rules and added some light RPG stuff and called it a day. I have no real evidence outside of people that I know that worked at WoTC at the time and they said that none of the first set of 4th edition books were play tested at a company level (meaning by WoTC employees not directly on the D&D rules team) like all the previous releases were and no one knew the game existed until it was officially announced (and one of the people that told me that actually worked on D&D books and had no clue). But 4th is a great wargame framework but horrible RPG.

My impression was that the D&D mini game was doing so well at the time that, of course, that was what 4E should be about supporting (the mini game stat cards & 4E rules were awfully similar, vs. the 3E stats). Unfortunately, mini costs spiked shortly afterward and the mini aspect/gae was discontinued. With as popular as the minis are again, I'm surprised they haven't picked up the mini game again.

I'll also mention "Swords & Spells" which was TSR's attempt to create a wholly D&D based tabletop miniatures game, and "Battlesystem", TSR's 2nd attempt. I played both BITD, and the original Chainmail back in the day. Very, uhm, primordial by our modern standards.

WotC seems to be focused on the next edition/pseudo-edition of D&D and the computer gaming. Everything else is licensed out. Who knows, maybe WizKids or FFG will try.

I'm still wondering how well this line will do. Miniatures guys are a very small sub-set of RPG gamers these days.

I think 4e was more influenced by WOW and the goal of being "balanced" at the expense of everything else moreso than the minis game. When 4e came out or was coming out, they basically torpedoed the minis game to make it better reflect 4e, not the other way around.

 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.

Huh? Even back in 1E/2E, D&D had lots of minis. Grenadier, TSR and Ral Partha had official / compatible D&D minis way back in the 80s for sure!




Sure, you didn't have to, but they were definitely around!


$15 for a modern X-in-1 hero model is very reasonable for a RPG player who just needs the one mini for their PC, not an entire army (like the poor GM). And having dealt with Bones, if they're modern HIPS, so much the better for being able to use ordinary hobby tools and techniques for plastic scale models.

Well, we never used them. Didn’t even know they existed.

Of course, we mostly played the Star Wars rpg and some Palladium games and tried a few other rpgs. We gave DND the old obligated try.

OK, no worries.

Palladium is pretty funny. No concept of balance whatsoever, so it's entirely up to the GM to keep things in line.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Well, we never used them. Didn’t even know they existed.

Of course, we mostly played the Star Wars rpg and some Palladium games and tried a few other rpgs. We gave DND the old obligated try.

There also were official Star Wars RPG and Palladium (Rifts at least) minis, though ^^

 Red Harvest wrote:
I'll also mention "Swords & Spells" which was TSR's attempt to create a wholly D&D based tabletop miniatures game, and "Battlesystem", TSR's 2nd attempt. I played both BITD, and the original Chainmail back in the day. Very, uhm, primordial by our modern standards.

Respect.

That's at least 10 years before MY time.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 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.

Huh? Even back in 1E/2E, D&D had lots of minis. Grenadier, TSR and Ral Partha had official / compatible D&D minis way back in the 80s for sure!




Sure, you didn't have to, but they were definitely around!


$15 for a modern X-in-1 hero model is very reasonable for a RPG player who just needs the one mini for their PC, not an entire army (like the poor GM). And having dealt with Bones, if they're modern HIPS, so much the better for being able to use ordinary hobby tools and techniques for plastic scale models.

Hell, even GW did an official line of AD&D miniatures back in the day, and Citadel Miniatures were used to promote D&D through breakfast cereal promotions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
OK, no worries.

Palladium is pretty funny. No concept of balance whatsoever, so it's entirely up to the GM to keep things in line.

Don't forget they're also lying scammers!

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
and whatever your feelings are on 4th ed D&D, it translated REALLY well into a tabletop skirmish game.

My feelings on 4th is it stared as a wargame and when the higher ups freaked out about declining 3.x sales told people to get a new edition out ASAP and so they just took those rules and added some light RPG stuff and called it a day. I have no real evidence outside of people that I know that worked at WoTC at the time and they said that none of the first set of 4th edition books were play tested at a company level (meaning by WoTC employees not directly on the D&D rules team) like all the previous releases were and no one knew the game existed until it was officially announced (and one of the people that told me that actually worked on D&D books and had no clue). But 4th is a great wargame framework but horrible RPG.

4th was a replacement system. The original 4th edition (codenamed Orcus) was based on the Book of Nine Swords and other late 3rd edition books (like the Magic of Blue- I forget the official name, and the book with the Shadowcaster/Truenamer/Vestige channeller class- whatever that was called, it was a warlock but not called that because that already existed). But for whatever reason they axed that, and then scrambled for a replacement, because they'd already given Hasbro a timeline for a new edition launch. And a former/lead designer at the time basically muddied the relationship by Hasbro by making big promises that D&D could be a major money earning property like Magic or Monopoly and failed miserably (Hasbro has a fixed earnings threshold for that classification, and D&D earnings generally weren't high enough to even rate a mention in annual reports at the time- it was considered a pet or morale project for the Wizards division, and Hasbro didn't care about it as long as it wasn't actively losing them money and Magic kept making money)

That 4th edition as printed started out as a framework for a new edition of the miniatures game wouldn't surprise me at all. Everything happens on the battlemap and the rules implications are that nothing happens when the PCs aren't there, monster equipment isn't 'real' and nothing much matters out of combat time.

There were also the Minifigs minis for D&D. Many of these were based on the illustrations from the AD&D monster manual, much like what Otherworld minis do today. They were not as good as Ral Partha ( nothing else was as good as Ral Partha, really) or Grenadier.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Red Harvest wrote:
I'll also mention "Swords & Spells" which was TSR's attempt to create a wholly D&D based tabletop miniatures game, and "Battlesystem", TSR's 2nd attempt. I played both BITD, and the original Chainmail back in the day. Very, uhm, primordial by our modern standards.

Respect.

That's at least 10 years before MY time.

Really? I thought that you were early to mid-80's. I played them in '78-'79, and then Battlesystem when it released in circa '85.

They really were not all that much fun. A good fantasy miniatures game didn't arrive until the 2nd edition of Warhammer.