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I hope this is the beginning of an ongoing relationship between Paizo and Wizkids.
I hope that one day we will see Pathfinder Ogres and Trolls and others. I also would love to see the major NPCs of the adventure paths.
I already see a problem for me and is the same with other items to support adventure paths. The new minis will not come out fast enough for me. Say a new adventure path is released and a plan to do minis for the new path's major NPCs. Unless I am in the middle of running another campaign those minis will never be done by the time I wanting them.
I am very much looking forward to this and hope it becomes a new subscription. I love that I do not have to find things but am subscribed to everything I want.
Will we see any expamples of this at Paizocon?
Loving it all in Washington.
Froghemoth!
Oh yeah:-)
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The stuff about '3-D' minis in the press release and the separate nature of these minis leads me toward the expectation of 2-D minis for the beginner box.
Someone already suggested that they could be similar to Kill Doctor Lucky.
In any case, these look cool.
This is the thread I was looking for.
Oh man, SO stoked. Thanks for making this happen, Lisa, Erik, et al! I can't wait to hear and see more!
Hell freaking yeahhhh!
I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannitI wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit I wannit!
I'm very impressed. (by both the minis line and Ogre's rather bold "Awesome")
I think Ogre said it best.
I'm stoked about this and the possibilities it presents, especially since my painting days seem to be over (damn psyche).
I'm just worried about having to import these to Europe. I fear they'll get too expensive with all the VAT and similar extra costs.
Unless they'll be sold by Amazon.co.uk?
This is great news. I only buy pre-painted figs and the price of the singles through the resellers like miniature markets and toad and troll/ebay stores already have significant price creep on certain singles, such as the otuygh which has doubled in price. I hope Reaper also expands its pre-painted line, having two sources for minis is certainly better than one!
Paizo going to WizKids with this while Reaper, who have their own pre-panted miniature line and who also make the metal unpainted official Pathfinder miniature line, makes my one eyebrow arc.
Could Legendary Encounters just not match Wizkids' bid, or can we expect to see Reaper and Paizo parting ways in the near future? I certainly hope not, but either this doesn't bode well for Reaper, or for Reaper's LE line. Either way it makes me kinda sad, despite my elation at this announcement.
Awesome. I'm definitely getting this. I don't think I'll actually need these characters, but thy Kyra picture looks great, and we need to tell Paizo to make more of those (for example for AP support!), so that's reason enough to buy them for me!
Chief Technical Officer
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Paizo going to WizKids with this while Reaper, who have their own pre-panted miniature line and who also make the metal unpainted official Pathfinder miniature line, makes my one eyebrow arc.
Could Legendary Encounters just not match Wizkids' bid, or can we expect to see Reaper and Paizo parting ways in the near future? I certainly hope not, but either this doesn't bode well for Reaper, or for Reaper's LE line. Either way it makes me kinda sad, despite my elation at this announcement.
Reaper has known we've been interested in prepainted plastics for a long time, and if they'd come to us with a plan for a prepainted line that they felt could succeed, we'd have been very inclined to let them try. As we've said, this agreement with WizKids is for one product only, and while its success (or lack thereof) may well create implications for the future, for now, that door is still open.
Either way, it doesn't change anything when it comes to Reaper's unpainted metal minis line.
Beyond awesome. And beyond this, boxes of high quality, pre-painted, non-random minis would be a very, very welcome product line. Organise them by adventure path, like paper minis are doing, and I'd subscribe. Brilliant stuff, Paizo. You're gamers: you know what we need!
Thank you! <crying with joy at my keyboard>
LOL...
<hugging monitor>
I LOVE YOU TOO WORDS ON THE SCREEN!
I'd buy this if I had some disposable income and I would keep buying pre-painted minis if the quality stays high and they aren't ever randomized.
One thing I'm wondering is the type of plastic that will be used. I have D&D minis, Mage Knight minis and HeroClix minis. Both the MK and HC minis are a less flexible plastic than the D&D minis, which means they tend not to get bent into odd shapes as easily, but also means they tend to break more often than my D&D minis.
Will these new minis be made of the same harder, but more brittle, plastic?
I've been a Clix fan for quite some time ... my only hope is that we NEVER see random blind boxes for the minis. I'd like to be able to buy the figures I need rather than get stuck with 87 copies of the same useless mini ...
Reaper has known we've been interested in prepainted plastics for a long time, and if they'd come to us with a plan for a prepainted line that they felt could succeed, we'd have been very inclined to let them try. As we've said, this agreement with WizKids is for one product only, and while its success (or lack thereof) may well create implications for the future, for now, that door is still open.
Either way, it doesn't change anything when it comes to Reaper's unpainted metal minis line.
I know that Reaper has had some issues getting waves approved and back from their overseas manufacturers, and that's a shame. But in any case, I'm quite relieved that the metal minis line isn't going anywhere!
I've been a Clix fan for quite some time ... my only hope is that we NEVER see random blind boxes for the minis. I'd like to be able to buy the figures I need rather than get stuck with 87 copies of the same useless mini ...
Yep, for sure.
The problem is that this provides incentives for the mini producers to produce a lot of duplicates of the same mini and sell them dirt cheap, which means their margins are tiny. It also means that the buyer doesn't get much other than goblins, kobolds, human fighters, etc.
To create a market that provides a wide variety of different miniatures, the producer has to come up with a way to get people to buy them, and at a margin that makes it profitable to pay the sculptors and painters enough to have that wide variety of minis.
Since most individual purchasers don't want to buy a whole bunch of individual minis of different subjects, and the overall market of mini purchasers is tiny in a corporate market sense, there is no real incentive for the mini makers to create a wide variety of minis.
In a nutshell this creates a conflict between the purchaser's best interest and the publisher's best interest which is why there are so few companies that service this market.
The random box approach is the Harvard Business School approach to solving that conflict by creating an artificial demand for blind miniature purchasing either by convincing the purchaser to buy them for the collecting value, or else to buy lots of unneeded minis to get the ones they want. The second approach then creates an after market of "common" miniatures sold that people like Sketchpad can benefit from. But that means that you have to have a whole lot of people willing to buy a whole lot of minis they don't want or need. And that's a market that dries up fast.
It's a real conundrum that is fundamentally caused by the limited market for the product.
I will be very interested to see how Paizo/WizKids decides to try to solve this marketing problem.
Yeah, Ogre and Kruely: my reactions exactly.
Between the clarification from Erik and the input given by Vic, my interest dial has gone to eleven. :-D
...non-random...
In a way I kind of like randomness, or even better: partial randomness. It's a great way to build up armies of goblins and fill the streets with city guards and commoners. But then I'm sure you guys have discussed this.
Anyway, I'll do my part to keep this in the black.
While I like the news of more plastic in the market, I fear it is going to be priced similar to the D&D Player's Handbook Heroes sets. Which will probably mean there will be sets of 4 for between $12 and $16. I hope they end up being substantially cheaper, otherwise I'll have to hope some get a lot more demand than others, so I might be able to get some cheap(ish).
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Very excited by this. I'd really like to see a non-random sales model. When I buy minis, I buy them with certain adventures and encounters in mind. I don't need random, I need specific. I tend to buy all my minis individually from the sites that bust open the boxes and sell them individually. But I always notice that the re-sale sites have dozens of certain common minis available and never enough mooks like goblins and orcs. I don't mind paying more for bigger and rarer (i.e., less frequently encountered and, thus, less in demand) critters.
...non-random...
In a way I kind of like randomness, or even better: partial randomness. It's a great way to build up armies of goblins and fill the streets with city guards and commoners. But then I'm sure you guys have discussed this.
Anyway, I'll do my part to keep this in the black.
ARRRGH!!!!
::Starts choking Kruely Homer Simpson-style::
Sweet.
If packs of multiple Orcs, Gobbos and other mooks are made I'm soooo sold.
Glad this avenue is being pursued. I don't paint. I just buy ;)
Same here- I have scores of WotC minis that are cool looking I guess, but can't be used to represent some guy that our group talks to. It's silly to have some tentacled horror mini being used for a shopkeep.
I want to be able to buy a pack of orcs or whatever, and the option to buy one made up of total randomness.
LOL, the harsh reality is that right now the mini collection that I would spend real money for would be a collection of peasants, merchants, tradesmen and nobles all just doing normal non-combat stuff.
That's the biggest hole I have in my mini collection. And it's a pain to make that many minis when I also want to beef up some of my existing factions of combatants...
GIVE ME SOME BORING NORMAL PEOPLE!!!
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LOL, the harsh reality is that right now the mini collection that I would spend real money for would be a collection of peasants, merchants, tradesmen and nobles all just doing normal non-combat stuff.
That's the biggest hole I have in my mini collection. And it's a pain to make that many minis when I also want to beef up some of my existing factions of combatants...
GIVE ME SOME BORING NORMAL PEOPLE!!!
The problem is that this provides incentives for the mini producers to produce a lot of duplicates of the same mini and sell them dirt cheap, which means their margins are tiny.......It's a real conundrum that is fundamentally caused by the limited market for the product.
I will be very interested to see how Paizo/WizKids decides to try to solve this marketing problem.
Linking production with Adventure paths and PFS scenarios would help a little as would 'warband' packs. I've just started running Kingmaker so Kobold, Mite and Bandit warbands would be handy as would a Monster pack of say a Troll, Owlbear, Shambling Mound, Giant Frog and Boggard.
Producing models that people will need (when they need them) is the way. A splash release in a big Kingmaker Box (for example) and then they can be cycled into generic packs.
Well, it's an idea.
Cheers
Mark
I never bought the WotC minis because of the randomness! However a few of my younger players and more financially solvent players bought a boat load.
They are handy, however it's very frustrating when you need 5 fire giants and only have 2 so the green slaad, blue dragon and djinni mini make an appearance just to fill in until the next mini box yields another fire giant model! :(
However if the minis were packaged as a full set of critters to cover each AP module and priced accordingly I'd definitely purchase them!
Imagine all the Carrion Crown villains available to place upon the combat map, as the Haunt mini in the corner activates just to create confusion in the midst of battle.
Want the splatterman? Just happen to have him in this box here.
Need a group of pallbearers and coffin for the first encounter? It's in the box!
Want a judge and jury? It's in the box!
Dungeon dressing tied to that encounter? Yep it's in the box!
And to satiate the collector itch, for those that do enjoy the random element. Offer boxes of themed minis. Arcane set, Divine set, Martial set, Outsider set and so forth.
This way you get specific sales tied to a product line, AP's and provide a further choice for consumers to purchase minis.
So to reiterate, I'd buy specific but not random. But would accept random boxes of themed sets.
LOL, the harsh reality is that right now the mini collection that I would spend real money for would be a collection of peasants, merchants, tradesmen and nobles all just doing normal non-combat stuff.
That's the biggest hole I have in my mini collection. And it's a pain to make that many minis when I also want to beef up some of my existing factions of combatants...
GIVE ME SOME BORING NORMAL PEOPLE!!!
Try these and these too. I got both of them last month here and they really suit the need.
Just a pipe / day dream - but a set of pre-painted non-random minis that is tied directly to the Adventure Paths would be incredibly awesome.
Every month as a subscription, you get a pack of 20 odd minis tied into the AP that allows you to use minis for the main NPCs / iconic enemies.
I know that it would have many many issues, but one can dream can't he?
Edit - heh just noticed I'm parroting bodrin from two posts up :)