Miniatures
When I was a kid, my brother BD played D&D. I remember that he would get together with some friends and play on the front porch. Once he attempted to DM my other brother and I through T1: Village of Hommlett, but gave up when we tried to kill Elmo a short way out of town. I don't remember him playing with us much after that.
B was the first person I knew to own miniatures. I can vaguely picture them, a knight and an archer if I recall correctly. He never painted them and the most artistic thing that I did with them was wrap a wire around one foot with the other end sticking into the socket and use another wire connected to the other socket to sort of arc weld new designs into the figures.
When I graduated from college, I played a game of Warhammer FRP with SS, BC, and CS. B had convinced us over lunch to try it out and we did. The Warhammer FRP had some notable flaws. As BC put it, "A naked dwarf is harder to hit than an armored human." But the notable thing about the sessions is that both BC and CS had painted miniatures. I had an ambivalent reaction. On the one hand, they looked really cool. On the other hand, it seemed like a colossal waste of time.
Fast forward a couple of years to when D&D 3.0 was being released. I mentioned to some friends at a party that I'd like to play. They had played in college, were short on money, and, with a new baby, were looking for some entertainment that didn't cost a lot of money or require them to leave their house. BC joined the group that included MC, PF, AF, my wife, and I. Combat under the new rules was easiest to understand when using miniatures, so BC brought over his collection which was now both cool and useful.
Fast forward a couple of years as I continue to DM and become unsatisfied with the collection of miniatures. There are several well painted miniatures for the player characters (PCs) and a few well painted miniatures for the significant monsters/non-player characters (non-PCs or NPCs), but for the less significant monsters/NPCs (or mooks), BC has a collection of unpainted red plastic figures and unpainted green plastic figures. When in the middle of a fight, it is hard to treat the mooks any differently (Is this the one with the axe or the spear?) or accurately record damage to specific targets (Did this green one or that green one get hit by the fireball?). Also my players know to metagame by targetting all of their fire power on the creatures that correspond to the well painted NPCs (Yeah, that's an ogre. But the little guy in the corner is significant). So I went out and bought (ironically from CS) a set of plastic figures that I could paint and turn into generic but discernable mooks (I hit the mook with the spear).
Some time passed and I wanted to provide new miniatures for the PCs. Some of the PCs were using figures that we had been using since we started playing and it was awkward to remember to say the name of the current PC instead of the previous PC that used the same miniature. And there were new NPCs that I wanted to make an impact with the players. Then I discovered Ebay. After a few short weeks, I now have more unpainted miniatures than BC. Now I get to paint them.
Once we get our PC set back up I'll post some pictures and walk you through a step by step of me painting one of them. I'm not very good yet (and given my artistic ability so far I might have already peaked), but it is something that I enjoy and that I'm then able to roll back into my D&D game. There are people who are very good at this and are able to sell their miniatures for a lot of money, but I just want to solve the unnamed mook problem. And if it looks good, then that's a bonus.
B was the first person I knew to own miniatures. I can vaguely picture them, a knight and an archer if I recall correctly. He never painted them and the most artistic thing that I did with them was wrap a wire around one foot with the other end sticking into the socket and use another wire connected to the other socket to sort of arc weld new designs into the figures.
When I graduated from college, I played a game of Warhammer FRP with SS, BC, and CS. B had convinced us over lunch to try it out and we did. The Warhammer FRP had some notable flaws. As BC put it, "A naked dwarf is harder to hit than an armored human." But the notable thing about the sessions is that both BC and CS had painted miniatures. I had an ambivalent reaction. On the one hand, they looked really cool. On the other hand, it seemed like a colossal waste of time.
Fast forward a couple of years to when D&D 3.0 was being released. I mentioned to some friends at a party that I'd like to play. They had played in college, were short on money, and, with a new baby, were looking for some entertainment that didn't cost a lot of money or require them to leave their house. BC joined the group that included MC, PF, AF, my wife, and I. Combat under the new rules was easiest to understand when using miniatures, so BC brought over his collection which was now both cool and useful.
Fast forward a couple of years as I continue to DM and become unsatisfied with the collection of miniatures. There are several well painted miniatures for the player characters (PCs) and a few well painted miniatures for the significant monsters/non-player characters (non-PCs or NPCs), but for the less significant monsters/NPCs (or mooks), BC has a collection of unpainted red plastic figures and unpainted green plastic figures. When in the middle of a fight, it is hard to treat the mooks any differently (Is this the one with the axe or the spear?) or accurately record damage to specific targets (Did this green one or that green one get hit by the fireball?). Also my players know to metagame by targetting all of their fire power on the creatures that correspond to the well painted NPCs (Yeah, that's an ogre. But the little guy in the corner is significant). So I went out and bought (ironically from CS) a set of plastic figures that I could paint and turn into generic but discernable mooks (I hit the mook with the spear).
Some time passed and I wanted to provide new miniatures for the PCs. Some of the PCs were using figures that we had been using since we started playing and it was awkward to remember to say the name of the current PC instead of the previous PC that used the same miniature. And there were new NPCs that I wanted to make an impact with the players. Then I discovered Ebay. After a few short weeks, I now have more unpainted miniatures than BC. Now I get to paint them.
Once we get our PC set back up I'll post some pictures and walk you through a step by step of me painting one of them. I'm not very good yet (and given my artistic ability so far I might have already peaked), but it is something that I enjoy and that I'm then able to roll back into my D&D game. There are people who are very good at this and are able to sell their miniatures for a lot of money, but I just want to solve the unnamed mook problem. And if it looks good, then that's a bonus.
posted by mypetrock at 11:20 PM
2 Comments:
I also want lots of figures when we play. I think figs add a lot to the game, especially when you've got good figs for the bad guys ("oh god, what is THAT?"). Our solution has been those plastic minis from WotC. They look nice and they've got a great selection. Ebay is great for getting what you want instead of buying the random packs. Have you checked them out?
-Mike
I've looked at the Wotc minis and I like them. The sculpt and the paint jobs are exactly as they are supposed to be. The size is right for the creatures - a large size creature takes up 4 squares and so on.
But the problem is that unless someone hits me over the head, I have no desire to play the D&D miniatures game by itself. So if I want a particular creature, I end up paying a premium because it CAN be used for the D&D miniatures game even though I won't (or shouldn't) use it for that purpose. Buying Warhammer figures has the same problem - you end up paying a premium because you could play the Warhammer miniature game.
Reaper, Ral Partha, Grenardier, and other companies don't (or didn't) have a specific miniatures game associated with them so the figures are less desirable, hence less expensive. They are also unpainted, but I'm getting into painting them in my own cheap-ass bastard sort of way (it'll become clearer when I post the pictures).
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