I've been looking forward to the Reign of Winter mini set for a long time. I'm an avid mini collector since Wizards started putting out DnD minis, and I'm playing in a Reign of Winter campaign, and was planning on dropping a large chunk of money buying the cool npcs like Baba Yaga and Rasputin to use in our game.
I've been watching the previews closely, and the sculpts your artists have produced have been just amazing. It's been a bit frustrating to watch paizo repeat the same learning curve with their Minis that Wizards of the Coast did 10 years ago, but you've put out a good number of sets, but based off the previews it looked like the scaling and quality issues had been addressed.
So imagine my suprise when I got to my local comic shop, giddy with anticipation and started pawing through the singles that they had opened.
The scaling, as usual, is attrocious. Large sized minis aternate from barely using the space provided (centaurs), to spilling out over the bases. But scaling trouble I can forgive.
What I can't forgive is the absolutely attrocious quality control for your products. A lot of the rares for this set are humanoids, and the I just can't beleive you let these products be shipped to sell in stores, using the pathfinder logo.
The paint jobs are terrible. Ugly, inconsistant, and most of the time the paint is not even properly mixed (reds and lighter flesh tones seperated all blotchy like instead of blended). I spend 40 minutes digging through the boxes for commons and uncommons, not that I thought were good, but ones that weren't so terribly I couldn't justify spending the not small amount of money on them. The rares were unsalvagable. There just plain weren't enough of them to find a paint job that completely ruin the mini.
Last set there were similar problems, but it wasn't so bad.
If I had purchased unopened boxes, and gotten these minis out of them, I would have demanded a refund from the store I bought them from. I'm going to advise my local comic shop to send back what they have opened and demand quality replacement product.
The product you delivered was not the product you advertised.
You paid your artists good money to come up with amazing sculpts and paint schemes for these minis. In production, they have been butchered.
Unless this problem is majorly addressed in the next release in your minature line, you will have lost my business on them. I'll stop watching the previews, and stop talking to my friends about the cool minis your say you are going to release.
