I'm new to minis and want to build a collection. What are some that you feel will see a lot of use? Certain monsters? Race/Class combos? Any other suggestions?
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If you haven't gotten started collecting yet, give serious consideration to the Pathfinder Pawns rather than plastic minis. You'll get a much larger collection for a much more reasonable price point, and the Pathfinder Pawns are basically self-indexing thanks to the cool numbered punch-out cardstock.
If you go this route, the Bestiary boxes are the place to start, plus the NPC Codex box (for a plentitude of NPCs).
If you haven't gotten started collecting yet, give serious consideration to the Pathfinder Pawns rather than plastic minis. You'll get a much larger collection for a much more reasonable price point, and the Pathfinder Pawns are basically self-indexing thanks to the cool numbered punch-out cardstock.
If you go this route, the Bestiary boxes are the place to start, plus the NPC Codex box (for a plentitude of NPCs).
I have 3 reaper minis right now, 2 plastic, one metal. I enjoyed painting them (used a friend's paints) and would like to continue the hobby.
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It might be worth getting a vampire level box of bones still. $325, not as good of a deal as we got through the kickstarter but still a good deal.
Also, even though the bones 2 kickstarter just ended, I noticed I am able to log in and get the deals even though I never pledged.
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Fighter type, wizard type, thief type, cleric type.
Laruna, there is a miniatures" forum on these boards that you should check out.
To try to answer your question requires knowing a bit more about your intentions. When you ask about the "must have" minis, do you mean as a player, a GM or a casual collector? All have different needs.
As a player the "must have" miniatures I have are the ones that specifically and accurately depict my characters. For me that usually means sculpting and painting my own custom miniatures since I can almost never find a "perfect" miniature pre-made. If I didn't sculpt my own, I'd say that the "must have" minis would be those that best approached the vision I had for my player characters.
As a GM who uses miniatures extensively, where is what I recommend:
1. Your standard NPC minis, a warrior, mage, healer and sneaky-type character. In fact you usually need more martial minis than casters as a GM, and it is nice to have both melee and ranged miniatures if you want to approach any sort of tactical accuracy.
2. A decent variety of common monsters, particularly those that frequent dungeons such as goblins, kobolds and orcs. What a "decent variety" might mean is highly variable depending on your financial wherewithal and your desire to build a collection, but enough to provide some visual and tactical interest is nice. Back when I had a very limited budget and had not yet begun sculpting my own minis, I used to use a mixture of miniatures and plastic colored pawns for my encounters. I'd usually put down a miniature that represented something fairly well (a goblin with a bow, for example) and then put a few to several pawns down saying "and these are just like that one." That way a couple miniatures and several pawns could create a tactically useful battleground.
3. Undead. It's hard to have too many undead. You can buy them in hordes too, and I recommend you do so. Skeletons, zombies and ghouls are great not only for playing, but they are great at creating ambiance and come in handy as markers for long-dead adventurers as well.
4. I also highly recommend that you get to a local toy store and check out their miniature animal figures. For the price of a couple lattes you can load up on spiders, jungle animals and domesticated stock (horses come in real handy in many games). Also if you hurry you might still be able to get some Halloween clear-out prices on bats, rats, bugs and even some skeletons and skulls and stuff.
5. Dragons. Just get some dragons.
If you want to discuss painting them, that's a whole nother thread...
AD, you got any guides for sculpting customs?
If you just want generic soldiers there are often bargain bins of dead war games at game stores. GW's WHFB minis used to be a decent value, but they have priced them selves sky high these days. I would just browse the reaper catalog and pick what you like, what you see people play a lot, and what you would like to use if you GM.
Also the iconic line of minis for PF is a good way to get great sculpts of various PF classes.
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AD, you got any guides for sculpting customs?
Heh... so tempted to say "just do it." That's what I did.
But that's a bit disingenuous, and not only because I learned a few things.
Here's my handy-dandy "Beginners Guide to Custom Mini Sculpting".
1. Don't be a perfectionist! Seriously, you may be a budding Michaelangelo or DaVinci and could well be the next superstar miniature sculptor just waiting to discover your inner muse, but even so your first attempts are going to eventually embarrass you. But guess what? Those first attempts will be fun as hell to play with, even if they totally suck. Why? Because they are YOUR CUSTOM MINIS. So take the plunge, make a couple lame-ass goblins and if one of them has a hand as big as his head, so what? It's still going to be better than plopping a nickel on the table.
2. You don't have to totally sculpt a miniature from scratch if you just have some specific goals you are wanting to reach. If you want to have a great-axe wielding half-orc, but the best mini you can find that meets your expectations happens to have a bastard sword, you can buy individual weapons from Reaper and with a bit of careful snipping, gluing and/or soldering BINGO, he's now swinging a sweet great-axe! This approach can be used to do a wide range of customization. Put a six-gun where that goblin's crossbow used to be. Add a shield, a cape whatever.
3. If you want to test the waters on the cheap, get yourself some Sculpey clay and some aluminum wire from your local Hobby Lobby, Michael's or other hobby store. Make a quick and dirty armature (wire skeleton) and start sticking Sculpey clay on the wire to build up mass, then use a toothpick to make some details (faces, buttons etc.) You can make several in an evening if you just stick to basics. Then toss 'em in the oven until they harden and paint them when they cool. You'll be surprised how good they look I bet.
4. Start big. Don't try to make a gnome mini. Start with an ogre. Most of the difficulty I have in sculpting is due to the tiny size of some of the figures I'm sculpting. So don't make it hard on yourself, and you'll need that ogre or hill giant in a game some time.
One of the first miniatures I ever made was a gargantuan red dragon. It's pretty silly looking to me now that I've improved my technique but it's still totally playable. I made it with a crushed aluminum foil armature overlaid with Sculpey clay. I sculpted it while watching TV one evening, just messing around. That dragon still has an honored place in my dragon collection (most of which I did not sculpt, I happen to like dragons and buy them all too frequently).
Also, while my first attempts at sculpting a collection of goblins and kobolds ended up being sort of laughable, we used them for years and I still have them. And as surprising as it might seem, two of those miniatures are still among my favorite miniatures I've ever sculpted. One is a wild-eyed goblin caster that reminds me of Slim Whitman every time I see it, and the other is a pot-bellied ancient and scarred kobold shaman that is still among the creepiest minis I've ever done.
So even the early stuff can be surprisingly long-lived. That goblin mini was endearing enough that I eventually made a custom mold and cast a dozen copies of it.
Oh, if you really get into sculpting you'll start wanting to look into some of the various two-part epoxies that all the pros use. That's good stuff. But it ain't cheap, and it hardens fast, so you need to be ready to go before you mix it.
If you are interested, here's a link to the miniatures portion of my gaming blog. I don't claim to be an artist, but I've got about a hundred custom minis I use as a GM and a player. Lately I've been doing more with terrain than with minis so you may have to scroll through a few pages to see enough to be interesting.
To get started, as dungeon master:
A half dozen medium humanoids, orcs will fill the role nicely.
A half dozen small humanoids, I recommend goblins or kobolds.
A half dozen medium quadrupeds, wolves.
A half dozen small quadrupeds, rats.
Two or three large figures, a brace of ogres and a giant worm for me.
And, one huge dragon.
Paint 'em, throw 'em in a bag (except for the dragon of course) and you're good to go. Later you can add more specific miniatures, but these will get you through most situations.
Laruna, there is a miniatures" forum on these boards that you should check out.
To try to answer your question requires knowing a bit more about your intentions. When you ask about the "must have" minis, do you mean as a player, a GM or a casual collector? All have different needs.
As a player the "must have" miniatures I have are the ones that specifically and accurately depict my characters. For me that usually means sculpting and painting my own custom miniatures since I can almost never find a "perfect" miniature pre-made. If I didn't sculpt my own, I'd say that the "must have" minis would be those that best approached the vision I had for my player characters.
As a GM who uses miniatures extensively, where is what I recommend:
1. Your standard NPC minis, a warrior, mage, healer and sneaky-type character. In fact you usually need more martial minis than casters as a GM, and it is nice to have both melee and ranged miniatures if you want to approach any sort of tactical accuracy.
2. A decent variety of common monsters, particularly those that frequent dungeons such as goblins, kobolds and orcs. What a "decent variety" might mean is highly variable depending on your financial wherewithal and your desire to build a collection, but enough to provide some visual and tactical interest is nice. Back when I had a very limited budget and had not yet begun sculpting my own minis, I used to use a mixture of miniatures and plastic colored pawns for my encounters. I'd usually put down a miniature that represented something fairly well (a goblin with a bow, for example) and then put a few to several pawns down saying "and these are just like that one." That way a couple miniatures and several pawns could create a tactically useful battleground.
3. Undead. It's hard to have too many undead. You can buy them in hordes too, and I recommend you do so. Skeletons, zombies and ghouls are great not only for playing, but they are great at...
Thanks for the link, I tried to find a specific board. I guess I overlooked it.
All three really. I play in a game, I GM one at home, and I just like the look of them. I've collected dragons for years, and they look nice among my dragons.
Good suggestions in number 2. I was thinking about getting the "bag o zombies" for that reason, and #3.
For #4, unfortunately I live in a fairly small town. It's about a 2-3 hour drive to any store that sells minis or anything close. My purchases are online exclusive.
For #5, again, dragon collector. No shortage in that department. :P
For painting, I've found a lot of great resources for what to paint with. That seems to be the easy part.
Great response. Thanks.
If you're looking for a cheap way to get yourself loads of minis cheaply, you might want to consider printable paper minis. One Monk Miniatures has loads of free stuff, some of which is really great. Particularly Dryw the Harper's Imperfect People, which give you all sorts of options for NPC's. Nice noncombatant NPC's tend to be hard to get enough of, and Dryw gives a wide variety.
And I'll go ahead and plug my own Ebay listings which make it really easy to build a collection. I've got lists of PC's and lists of monsters that you can build a set from:
For PC's: http://www.ebay.com/itm/251374939094?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid= p3984.m1555.l2649
For Monsters: http://www.ebay.com/itm/251374939211?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid= p3984.m1555.l2649
But if you're really enjoying painting your own, you should check out Reaper Miniatures' Bones line. All sorts of great and affordable minis there.
To get started, as dungeon master:
A half dozen medium humanoids, orcs will fill the role nicely.
A half dozen small humanoids, I recommend goblins or kobolds.
A half dozen medium quadrupeds, wolves.
A half dozen small quadrupeds, rats.
Two or three large figures, a brace of ogres and a giant worm for me.
And, one huge dragon.Paint 'em, throw 'em in a bag (except for the dragon of course) and you're good to go. Later you can add more specific miniatures, but these will get you through most situations.
Great list. This is pretty much what I want. Some stuff that I will get a lot of use out of and can build on.
Dragons are probably one thing I don't need, though I'd love some. I also have some small unicorns. I've been scoping out gumball machines too. There's a yugi-oh one with a black dragon in it at the pizza place down the street that seems kinda cool. Might be a neat stand in for a small dragon.
This is a trick question, because miniatures aren't a must have.
Now a portable white board and markers, that is really useful (and far cheaper than even a few miniatures).
If you're looking for a cheap way to get yourself loads of minis cheaply, you might want to consider printable paper minis. One Monk Miniatures has loads of free stuff, some of which is really great. Particularly Dryw the Harper's Imperfect People, which give you all sorts of options for NPC's. Nice noncombatant NPC's tend to be hard to get enough of, and Dryw gives a wide variety.
And I'll go ahead and plug my own Ebay listings which make it really easy to build a collection. I've got lists of PC's and lists of monsters that you can build a set from:
For PC's: http://www.ebay.com/itm/251374939094?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid= p3984.m1555.l2649For Monsters: http://www.ebay.com/itm/251374939211?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid= p3984.m1555.l2649
But if you're really enjoying painting your own, you should check out Reaper Miniatures' Bones line. All sorts of great and affordable minis there.
LOL wow, my friend was scoping out that listing last week. Small world.
The two plastic ones I have right now are bones series.
Many of the small companies doing fantasy and ancient world stuff are excellent and affordable. Avoid warhammer at all costs, others do it cheaper.
This is a trick question, because miniatures aren't a must have.
Now a portable white board and markers, that is really useful (and far cheaper than even a few miniatures).
I'll agree that they aren't necessary. They really help with the group I GM though. Half the group are women in their 40s and 50s with no gaming experience. One has a lot of trouble visualizing and the cues help. I'm borrowing a flip mat from a friend, he has a stack of them.
Yeah, I'm happy to say that, for the moment anyway, if you type "D&D minis" into Ebay's search engine, my PC's listing comes up first, so it's not hard to find me. But I flatter myself that I offer one of the easiest and most reasonably priced opportunities to round out a minis collection that's around right now, and I also have a lot of higher value minis sitting around that I need to get listed on Ebay, so if there's something fancy you're interested in, I could probably help out with that too :-)
Yeah, I'm happy to say that, for the moment anyway, if you type "D&D minis" into Ebay's search engine, my PC's listing comes up first, so it's not hard to find me. But I flatter myself that I offer one of the easiest and most reasonably priced opportunities to round out a minis collection that's around right now, and I also have a lot of higher value minis sitting around that I need to get listed on Ebay, so if there's something fancy you're interested in, I could probably help out with that too :-)
Maybe we could do a trade? One of my dice bags for some of your minis? My etsy shop
I do custom colors.
Many of the small companies doing fantasy and ancient world stuff are excellent and affordable. Avoid warhammer at all costs, others do it cheaper.
Can you suggest some small companies online?
Sent a pm :-)
Sent a pm :-)
Got it. Replied.
A group of friends started me off with the Beginner's Box Heroes set by WizKids. It comes with Erzen, Merisel, Kyra, and Valeros. Basically all you need for a group of PCs. From there, I started expanding by purchasing miniatures that were more appropriate to represent my PCs; I buy primarily from Reaper Miniatures, but I've seen other excellent studios as well.
Things really started to heat up when I got into Pathfinder Battles. Again, I started planning encounters and buying what I needed to run them. Then the Reaper Bones Vampire Package came in, and I was done. Now drowning in a sea of several hundread miniatures (both WizKids and Reaper), I've started moving on to sculpting my own bits and parts.
Miniature Madness, I tell you!
Thanks AD!
I have painted 200+ and have 200+ unpainted, and still don't have everything I need. :)
My opinion on this matter depends on the levels your group most often plays at.
Laruna, if you want to build out any significant number of miniatures there are a number of ways you can go. PM me if you want to, I can send you some links.
What I did when I decided to build out my mini collection is to seek out both specific miniatures and to look for miniatures of any sort. For the specific miniatures I found some great super-cheap orcs, elves and undead sets and also found a number of ancient army sets, which I was looking for. In the end I purchased almost 400 minis for less than $100 as I recall, and then painted them en masse over a week long painting rampage.
I also checked out "Mage Knight" mini listings on eBay and found a couple of collections that someone was selling super-cheap and got another 500 or so fully painted minis for about $100. Those two sources form the bulk of my mini collection now. The Mage Knight minis are not exactly aligned with the Pathfinder Bestiary, but I like to reskin and create custom monsters anyway, so that's not a big deal to me. Having a thousand+ minis now I rarely lack minis, and my total investment in minis ended up being about $400, with the bulk of that being my dragons. Other than dragons my minis cost me about a quarter apiece. Not too shabby.
AD, you got any guides for sculpting customs?Heh... so tempted to say "just do it." That's what I did.
2. You don't have to totally sculpt a miniature from scratch if you just have some specific goals you are wanting to reach. If you want to have a great-axe wielding half-orc, but the best mini you can find that meets your expectations happens to have a bastard sword, you can buy individual weapons from Reaper and with a bit of careful snipping, gluing and/or soldering BINGO, he's now swinging a sweet great-axe! This approach can be used to do a wide range of customization. Put a six-gun where that goblin's crossbow used to be. Add a shield, a cape whatever.
Converting is the gateway to sculpting. Going from scratch to mini can be very intimidating at first, but stuff like weapon swaps or adding details is relatively easy.
I'd advise picking up some Kneadatite, though. It's a 2 part epoxy putty that a lot of professional sculptors use, and comes in a couple colors (the blue/yellow that becomes green is most common - often called 'green stuff'). It has a decent working time and you don't have to bake it in an oven. Just remember to use water on your tools to keep it from sticking to it. IIRC Gale Force 9 sells it.
My biggest recommendation when dealing with minis, though, is to have the right tools. They include:
Nippy Cutters (flush cutting shears for use in electronics, available at any Radio Shack or similar)
Pin Vise and drill bits (for drilling holes for pinning minis together, which makes them vastly more durable)
Diamond Files (I got a set of 3 from Princess Auto for $3)
X-Acto Blade (the kind with the small triangular knives)
SELF HEALING MAT (to avoid destroying your work surface - Staples sells them, they're not expensive, and they last basically forever)
Those are the tools you'll need for cleaning, prep work and most conversions.
For putty work, I recommend:
Round Toothpicks (the most basic and cheapest option, highly useful regardless)
Dental Picks (harder to find, VERY useful)
X-Acto Blade (same as above, double duty)
Heh, I keep waiting for the mods to move this to the miniatures forum...
"Green Stuff" or Kneadatite is just one of a lot of options for two-part epoxy modeling. And I would say it is probably one of the worst choices for a beginner. I like Apoxie Sculpt a lot more for most of my sculpting because it's about 1/10 the cost of green stuff. It's also more forgiving and takes longer to cure, all good things for beginners.
Having said that, there's a reason that the pros tend to use "green stuff" and it's close kin "brown stuff" for sculpting. Once you get the hang of it and know what you are doing (which I can't honestly say I do overall, but there are some things I feel I'm pretty decent at) then green stuff is probably best. But most beginners will find it difficult to work with and it is very expensive to learn on.
Super Sculpey is even better for most beginners because it won't "cure" at all until you bake it in the oven. Until then you can mold and tweak to your hearts content.
One thing I didn't mention was one of my favorite techniques, which I call "Frankensteining". That's when I take bits and pieces from different miniatures and stick them together with my own custom sculpting where needed to create what I need. I don't have to be an awesome sculptor to create a near-perfect pegasus, manticore, minotaur or similar mythological beasties. I just have to be pretty handy with an exacto knife, super glue and know how to smooth out the seams with some epoxy putty. I've got an absolute menagerie of monsters I've created this way, some classic beasts from mythology, but a lot that are my own unique creations. Go to a toy store and buy up all the el cheapo miniature animals and bugs you can find, then cut and paste to your heart's content!
Lots of great tips.
Today I went out to try and find things I could purpose to the game, not necessarily officially minis.
I found army men, but they were too big. I found spiders, but they were very flat and about 2x3 squares on a mat big.
I found lots of dinosaurs and animals that were about 10x too big.
But I also found some neat stuff:
3 dragons (dollar store)
1 bag of moss (dollar store)
1 warhammer 40k citadel paint set (8 paint pots, a brush, and some minis that look like robots) (baseball card shop that got some things by accident and couldn't sell them, clearanced)
And I only spent $14.
Not bad I think.
Laruna,
We have a store here in the Denver area called "US Toy". They have aisles full of miniatures that I have used for gaming. In some cases I just use them as is, in others I Frankenstein them.
Here's a short list of the sorts of miniatures they have that I have used without doing anything but gluing them to a base.
1. Bugs (spiders and insects both)
2. Animals (some of these are not "perfectly" sized, but they are close neough). Examples include big cats (lions, tigers, leopards), big game (rhinos, hippos, bison, etc.) domesticated animals (horses, cows, pigs, even a few chickens), forest animals, gorillas, monkeys and even some birds that I've used as "giant" versions of owls, eagles and a few others.
3. Dinosaurs (you have to look around, and sometimes you end up using a velociraptor as a T-Rex or something like that).
4. Lizards, including snakes, mostly used as "giant" versions of the animal, but in some cases, like crocodiles or monitor lizards, they are just about the right size.
5. Sea critters, crabs, dolphins, sharks, etc.
I literally have two big plastic bins full of them.
I rarely pass up a dollar store without doing a quick check to see what they have. I've even purchased superhero minis for a buck that I've repainted as golems or wizards.
Sometimes you have to get creative. I have a couple of "dragons" that are actually dinosaurs (velociraptors or similar sculpts) that I've glued wings on. Sometimes I use bat wings I cut off of Halloween bats I purchased for pennies on the dollar from after Halloween sales, and others I have made myself from foam sheets, epoxy or Sculpey clay.
It's interesting what you can find and use if you just look around.
Green stuff's not very expensive. I checked Gale Force 9's web site; those 2 tubes of putty cost $20. That amount goes a hell of a long way; I converted an entire Plague Marine army plus tons of other stuff and I still have 1/3 of the stuff left...after almost 10 years of using it. Obviously I'm not making minis out of it whole cloth, but if you're just converting it goes a hella long ways.
So yeah, it might cost 3-4x what some other stuff does, but IMO totally worth it. Just be sure to avoid Milliput and model airplane putty. They're both garbage.
Warhammer is way overpriced, that is true, but for $35 you get a box of 10 or 12 skeletons or zombies or Orcs, its almost worth it.
Its worth looking at various boardgames like Descent or Hero Quest. For the price, games like these can get you a lot of minis.
It might be worth getting a vampire level box of bones still. $325, not as good of a deal as we got through the kickstarter but still a good deal.
Also, even though the bones 2 kickstarter just ended, I noticed I am able to log in and get the deals even though I never pledged.
Once Reaper's pledge manager goes online (hopefully within the next week or two) anyone who pledged on the kickstarter can increase their pledge to get more stuff and anyone who didn't pledge initially can still get in on the deal, but they have to pay a bit more. (I think it was 10-20% more, but I don't want to dig through 75 updates and/or a ton of comments to find the actual.) Then you have until Dec 31st to lock in your final amount.
The core set isn't quite as insanely good deal as the Vampire was, but still better than picking up a Vampire box now. Though, since the average mini size is bigger and you get a bunch of bases, it's not really fair to directly compare the two (at least using $/mini). You can also consider picking up a few add-ons to get some dragons and/or other bigger monsters (there are some nice demon and devil packs too).