A poll: What do you do for miniatures?
- A: I have proper miniatures for most monsters
- B: Only some miniatures - I do a lot of "pretend this orc is a mummy"
- C: I use a minis alternative (tiles, tokens, software)
- D: Don't use 'em
(Can someone rig this as an actual poll?)
I currently use software, but before that we generally had no minis. When we did, we would use a lot of stand-ins, since it's hard find minis for every D&D monster and expensive to buy minis that won't see a lot of use, especially if they're rare or large. We once used a fishing reel as a red dragon.
Anyone have interesting miniatures stories?
D. Don't use 'em.
When I have used them, I usually went the paper chit token route, as that was quick, easy and cheap.
C. My group uses the spare dice at the table for most miniatures, with one "dedicated" die per player (such as a green d12 for an orc barbarian or something; it's typically the character's Hit Die). A d12 placed on a grid intersection works as a large creature pretty well, and larger creatures are represented by whatever items we can scrounge up that fill the appropriate space.
Of course, in the first year of playing, we used a lot of Mage Knight figures. Then we got tired of seeing that same orc over, and over, and over...
I have a growing collection of plastic miniatures, but I used to paint pewter ones. Now, though, I don't use them. I've found that they slow things down and just marking a piece of graph paper in pencil and using that is faster and more efficient.
If I did go back to using them, which isn't out of the question, I would make a lot of substitutions.
my group uses the minis when avaible we use the correct one , or one that sorta is the same when it is not.
it is helpfull to get a idea of where everything is at with the mins and its hard to say no i wasnt that close when well you placed the mini and moved it so you where.
using the minis and a roll up hexmap with wet erase helps also in keeping track of where you went and or where spell effects are .
sure it adds time but it helps keep things clear
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
|
My answer was C for many years until I finally got out of my parents' house and started making enough money to play around with. I've started buying miniatures to represent the PCs in the campaigns that I run but monsters are still represented by dice (like Saern, we usually use the hit die of the creature). As these campaigns end or retire and new ones (with new PCs) begin, the miniatures collection will grow. I don't even really intend to purchase anything other than humanoid miniatures, though, since I don't really see the need in having 30 orc minis, 24 gnoll minis, 50 kobold minis, and 12 stone giant minis. Dice work just fine for monsters. Having minis for the PCs makes them stand out and easier to find on the battleground.
So I'm really like an A/C hybrid. I buy the mini AFTER the PC is created, looking to match the mini as close as possible to the character (and I always buy pewter singles, either by Reaper or Privateer Press). Everything else is dice.
A.
I've had a fierce addiction to minis for over a decade now, with nary the budget to afford it.
As far as quality and quantity are concerned, you can get a lot of mileage out of the plastic LOTR miniatures by Games Workshop. That whole line (metal included) is perfect for the style of my average game, but metal gets expensive. A box of Moria Goblins is cheap enough to provide you with enough bogeys for a healthy skirmish (and it costs about as much as 2 Wizards boosters...).
Sure, they're unpainted, but anybody can paint. Practice makes perfect.
Reaper Minis also rock. Hard.
But you know you've got a problem when you're scouring E-Bay for out of production minis (specific, mind you) from the 1970s.
We usually do a lot of substituting one mini for another, but dice and MtG counters, make a good fill in. I also liked using gummi (bug)bears, M&Mummies, Orceo cookies. Not only do you kill that monster, but you get to enjoy the sugary goodness as well. O:)
I hire high school kids from the local theater troupe to dress up and act like the monsters and the PCs. Dice results and a quick hand signal to the appropriate burgeoning thespians and the troupe act out the adventure in the living room before the gamers. Regrettably three of my "minis" have been destroyed over the last two years. One fell to the jab of a faux sword that, despite its weak steel, was apparently strong enough to pierce an eyeball and kebab the brain along with it. The second fell to a power word death spell laced with an atrocious gust of garlic breath (a rare allergy was blamed). The third just tripped over my cat and broke her neck on the side of the gaming table. Thanks to the Gods, my cat suffered only a ignoble mussing of the fur.
My way is a little more expensive than buying figgies from Paizo but it is so much more entertaining.
|
A
I've used miniatures since the late 70's/early 80's. The minis, coupled with a large (2'x4') Chessex grid battlemat and a handful of overhead projection pens, are a great addition to any combat in that it removes the "no I was facing the OTHER way" or "I was on the other side of the room" arguements.
It also gives an evil DM an additional tool in the "play mind games with the PCs" arsenal by having them place themselves outside a room with a benign encounter.
I like the plastic pre painted minis. But I ussually have to pretend with the (OK this orc is a mummie). I also will make paper stand up cut outs for large and huge monsters. My players like these for some reason, I think because they have personality. I have only two huge minis, tree beard and sorcerer on black dragons.
my group and i all chipped in 20 or 25 bucks to buy a case of boosters each time a new set of pre-painted mini's came out untill we got tired of all the none MM monsters and repeats of the same character posed differently. now we just use what we got from that (a small plastic drawer about half full) we painted numbers on the repeats so that we can tell orc archer number 3 from number 8. we used the dire boar for our large creature for months untill we got more its still our favorite for when we dont have the real deal. we have tiny, small, md, large, and huge covered with just three, maybe four, sets. it cost me about $100 over a couple years. I'd say it was worth it though.
|
I have a pretty decent collection myself, and what I don't have, two other guys in my group can get.
Incidently, this past weekend I was at Wizard World here in Philly - won a free War of the Dragon Queen booster pack, and a book on the Star Wars minis game. I also got a free 64 MB flash drive, a Dark Talon lizardman mini, and a Shadow mini from (I'm pretty sure) the upcoming Night Below series. Thanks WotC.
Star Wars Minis Rule.
Definitely A. We started collecting minis about 3 years ago. For the first year it was Reaper metal minis. Wow, did I get sick of painting orcs. Then we started buying the prepainted plastic. I love it. I no longer have to paint all the shades of brown on all the almost universally brown monsters. I still buy metal minis for specific PCs though. We have an entire wall of our living room covered with shelves used for mini storage. We pretty much have minis for whatever we happen to be running, although occasionally we have to substitute. Honestly, it really does help keep track of where everyone is and which bad guy is who, plus it's pretty cool to see exactly what you're fighting.
Of course, we have no life outside of d&d cause we spend all our money on minis and books and stuff... :)
Definitely A. We started collecting minis about 3 years ago. For the first year it was Reaper metal minis. Wow, did I get sick of painting orcs. Then we started buying the prepainted plastic. I love it. I no longer have to paint all the shades of brown on all the almost universally brown monsters. I still buy metal minis for specific PCs though. We have an entire wall of our living room covered with shelves used for mini storage. We pretty much have minis for whatever we happen to be running, although occasionally we have to substitute. Honestly, it really does help keep track of where everyone is and which bad guy is who, plus it's pretty cool to see exactly what you're fighting.
Of course, we have no life outside of d&d cause we spend all our money on minis and books and stuff... :)
I can sympathise!
We have a lot of nasty unpainted miniatures giving me a headache that will probably never even be de-flashed and undercoated never mind properly painted! Literally hundreds of Warhammer, 40k, Celtos, Reaper, Heresy and Rackham miniatures haunt our dreams! We have boxes and boxes of fantasy figs from all those old armies, warbands and gangs we never got around to painting just sat in a cupboard and under a desk in our office.
I used to be totally snobby and against pre-painted plastic minis (such as DDM) but tried them out (after finding a few boxes cheap in a sale) and soon a ‘necessary evil’ turned into another enjoyable hobby in itself –although I’m not as into collecting DDM figs as some people seem to be –I have the gargantuan black dragon and use the box she came in to put the other ones in, which is about two thirds full of DDM figs so far. I’d love a DDM beholder but wouldn’t pay the silly money they charge on ebay for one.
I am/was a perfectionist and obsessed over things stupidly at first; I wanted a beautifully painted mini for everything in our games (everything had to be just so) but I had to wake up; we now only take the time to paint and convert our PC models or maybe sometimes important NPC’s (I am doing models of Vanthus and Lavinia for our STAP for example and might even knock up something weird looking from old dragon bits, chaos spawn and Tyranid parts for Demogorgon if I can be bothered) while other thugs, monsters and what-have-you will just be represented by DDM figs, random miniatures or cardboard tokens.
Trying to come up with painted figs for everything in the Shackled City campaign we did nearly turned me off painting for good so I’m never doing that again –I really enjoy modelling on the rare occasions I have time to) and don’t wish it to ever feel like a chore ever again (that’s why I don’t collect Warhammer armies anymore!)
I do think PC models should be well crafted little works of art and individuality and absolutely love helping the players find just the right model (or the bits they need in the case of a conversion) so they can fully appreciate their character in miniature the way they imagine it to look. One player recently made a charging goliath fighter with a massive sword, using a large reaper barbarian, some greenstuff epoxy resin and a bald chaos warrior head then made lithoderms all over it! Although yet to be painted, its effort like this (to make something truly unique and great looking) that is totally inspiring/rewarding for me as the DM and shows just how much the player is willing to invest time and creativity into their character away from the table. I gave him a big healthy xp bonus for doing so of course. ;)
We use anything that looks cool, D&D minis, Horrorclix, Dreamblade, McFarlane toys (Alien Queen as an Aspect of Kyuss), etc.
I'd love to get my fingers on some of those Dreamblade minis! And I have to agree with you about McFarlane toys, they are brilliant. I got a couple of the demon ones (Violator etc) for use as baddies, they're big, imposing and really put across the horror to the players! :)
I'd say A combined with C. I only recently got into D&D minis (end of last year). Prior to that I had a copy of Counter Collection Digital by Fiery Dragon Productions. It has images of all the SRD monsters.
All I would do was paste them into Word, resize the picture to whatever size I needed and then make as many copies as required. I would print them out in colour, cut them out and laminate them. That gave me sturdy reusable counters.
Now that I have collected a rather large amount of D&D minis I don't need to do this as much anymore. However I still use them if I don't have a mini of a particular monster or I need more than I have.
I find that using actual minis rather than counters adds a certain "coolness" factor though.
Olaf the Stout
B.
I have a decent sized collection of D&D minitures but certianly not everything that is needed.
|
A. Painting minis is a hobby unto itself. I've supplemented my collection with plastics, bought mostly as singles for exotic monsters when I could, and done lots of substitution with similar monsters when necessary. Once your collection is filled out, whipping out a fig you haven't used in years is liking bumping into an old friend. Last session I got to use a Wyvern that has been sitting in the bottom of a tackle box for at least 15 years. Of course I rolled terrible and he went down like a chump.
Back in the tackle box with you!
A and B. I found aplace that has bins of animal minis at almost the perfect scale, so I now have a decent menagerie of summonned critters, plus i buy bulk packs of DDMs on the bay, cuz if you're fighting an army of gnolls, you should HAVE an army of gnolls. But personal PCs for long term campaigns I get metal minis form reaper or where ever. They rarely get painted, but if I'm gonna lug him around for the next year, I want soemthing cool.
|
|
A- I am a prop master! I have a ton of minis from old metal Ral Partha stuff to newer metal Reaper minis to plastic D&D ones to any toys that could be glued to a base to create a mini and I am looking forward with much anticipation to Reaper's line of prepainted plastic minis that is soon coming out! I build lots of the important scenery that is used in-game, including houses, huts, bridges, and I have several different styles of modular dungeons that I made from Hirst Arts molds to play about with.
I like handouts, the more realistic, the better. I take paper, crumple it up, burn the edges, soak it in tea or coffee, hang it to dry, fray the edges once dry, and then draw the bit of map fragment that the skeleton in the room is holding.
Props Rock!!!
FH
Sharpies and pebbles, that's clever.
I heard of a group who used tiny one-inch bathroom tiles and fine board markers to draw on monsters they didn't have minis for. If not that my game is currently online, I imagine I'd use that. I know another group that uses Lego.
B.
"All the above" haha.
I have hundreds of minis - so usually I've got what I need. But, more often than I would like, I'm missing something. If it's something simple, I'll try to substitute (like use an orc for a hobgoblin, etc. Especially if it's only one out of a dozen). When all else fails, I try to make my own counters. I'll get the image from the WoTC art gallery, then size it properly with GIMP (or photoshop), then print. You can by foam backing sheets (adhesive on one side) that stick to the paper, then cut them apart. You can get a lot of 1inch counters on a single sheet. My most recent problem like this was belkers - I needed 6 of those guys.
A. Okay, maybe a splash of B.
I have hundreds (over 500) miniatures, mostly DDM with a dozen recent Reaper minis in various stages of painting. About 90% of the time, I have the mini I want/need for a scenario. If not and I know it's coming pre-game, I sometimes make my own from sculpty or order it specially from Reaper. If I just can't find the appropriate monster (or it's outrageously priced) I will substitute a (hopefully) similar creature. For a couple years, the only thing I had in any real volume were orcs/goblins and skeletons/zombies from the old HeroQuest game. They still see frequent use, especially representing "hordes".
In my AoW campaign, for instance, I only had one actual grimlock mini so my generic orcs pulled double duty. But I actually purchased 30 lizardmen for the EaBK seige scene. The scene I was able to create was worth it.
Sometimes toys are used to represent things (i.e.small dolls for giants) but I never use two-dimensional stuff. I never liked tokens, no matter how cheap and easy they are.
Mostly A, but I've had to go with B from time to time...
I will even go so far as to find matching minis for my players and paint them for them. Making them from scratch if need be.
-Kurocyn
In my longest running group we use A for the PC's and C for the monsters. A usually being our lead figures, ocasionally we use something else like in the case of one guy he started using his small collection of Hommies. C for monsters is Pente peices. To the extent we know we're in for a fight when the GM reaches for the hex map and the bag of evil Pente pieces. If we have a mix group of monsters we color assign them. Like "all the reds are orcs and these green ones are ogres with this black one being the ogre mage".
In another group I used my collection of Mage Knight figures.
C. I typically format pictures of the monsters I want with photo editing software, then print them onto sticker paper. This gets applied to a sheet of 3/8-inch architect's foamboard and cut into the proper size. I used to make stand-up minis with similar methods, but I find flat counters are much more durable and transportable.
I sometimes use minis to represent BBEGs, but only for dramatic effect.
I collected all WotC's minis, but I've since changed my mind about them. It's too much of a pain to get the specific monsters you want, and they choose what minis to make based on their marketing strategy rather than on what players actually use. I can't wait 'til that other company (I forget which one; I'm thinking Ral Partha) starts producing individual plastic minis in bubble-packs.
Combination of B and C. Collected some Harbinger, Dragoneye, and Archfiends stuff when they came out but the minis I got weren’t always ones I particularly wanted aside from Lion Falcon Monk (2 copies), Druid of Obad-hai (ditto), Dwarven Werebear, Human Blackguard (could make a decent knight of some sort) and Med. White Dragon. Probably a couple others as well but can’t think of them at the moment. Mostly in groups I’ve played with we used Lego pieces, chess pieces, other board game pieces, and all time favourite stand-ins, coins. Pennies, nickels and dimes for mooks, and, being Canadians, quarters, loonies and toonies for bosses. We don’t use dice simply because if somebody throws a die or dice and it hits other dice, the encounter would get shot straight to the Nine Hells of Baator.
Actually, I also have Gargantuan Black and Gargantuan Blue. Not using them in game, but are impressive and I decided to collect them just for collectings sake. Not planning on getting the colossal red though, no good place to put it. For now.
Only recently have I gotten a respectable number of minis, but I haven't had much of chance to use them yet though. Before that I used dice to represent players and coins for monsters. When I had the chance I used Starbursts as minitures, letting the players have them after they were killed. Then there was the time I used a 12-pack of soda as a colossal miniture.
I used to use graph paper and a pencil, but around november of this past year I started buing the prepainted minis. I've bought quite a lot of them, but I got tired of buying booster packs and getting the same commons that I didn't really want. I've since come up with a new strategy. When a new set comes out I buy 4-6 booster packs for fun and then I go on minature market.com and buy what I want from the set in singles. I find that website is pretty easy to use, their shipping is reliable and the prices are reasonable. They are a lot cheaper than the paizo store and easy to use than ebay. I highly recommend this method if you are sick of buying booster packs. I like the reaper minis for PCs, but the dnd plastic ones are more affordable and have a much better variety of monsters available, especially in the large and huge sizes.
I also sometimes repaint the plastic minis for kicks. For instance I got a couple of maraliths and repainted them because I hated the paint job, which works well. You don't really need to prime anything (it might help though), but I haven't found it necessary.
I'm running Savage Tide right now and my players just got to the isle of dread, so yesterday I went to toys r us and bought a bucket of plastic dinosaurs for a decent price. They are about the right size for use with minis and I even got some plastic palm trees in the bucket to use for my jungle.
However, since I started buying minis I've spent way more money on gaming than I ever used to. And now when I think about playing a different game (like say Shadowrun or Call of the Cthulhu) I get a little turned off because I start thinking that I don't have any good minis for those games.
I am somewhere between A and B; I have uhm; a lot of minis meaning I could completely cover a kitchen table and still have many boxes of them left. Most of my friends also have hundreds to thousands so we can really do just about anything though some obscure mobs like a beholder, hehe might just use a behold o pumpkin, are not in high demand so we really dont have them laying around; easy to make a figure for them if needed though after seeing the Dragon advertisement using a can of Spam for a white dragon; I am leaning toward using various cans of wonderful and delicious SPAM for all of my dragons and leaving my real minis on the shelf.
C. I don't buy or in any other way obtain or collect minis. In my own games, I use buttons, risk pieces, glass beads and whatever else is handy. If I'm playing in someone else's game who has minis, I borrow one from them (it often changes from session to session, because I'm just not interested in searching thru 500 minis to find the one I used last session).
If its only one or two bad guys I usually don't bother. Any more and I use game tokens, dice ,rubbers(no - not that kind)and coins - the higher the denomination the bigger the bad guy.
B & C
I prefer 3D mini's, but I don't have enough to always fill out my hordes the PCs encounter. Barring horde encounters, tho, my group tends to think I belong in the A category! I love mini's.....
Speaking of!! I need to start assembling the mini's I need to run the upcoming Shattered Gates of Slaughterguarde...figure out how many of whats I need and see how many I already have on hand.
D; we used to use the prepainted plastic minis but now we just have a small map. We no longer use the battle map except for in extremely complicated combats and then we'll use what minis I have and little paper tokens.