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I'm not sure if this topic has been posted before but I didnt see it if it was. I would like to see a bag of unpainted, solid color minis for Pathfinder of similar quality and make as the ones in the old Dragonstrike box or the Descent: Journeys in the Dark board game. I think it would be a more cost effective way to produce and purchase miniatures and better than tokens or cardboard pieces. Pre-painted and do it yourself minis are just too expensive and you never can have all of the monsters you need. Descent: Journeys in the Dark is about $90 and comes with 80 minis so Id imagine if you were to just have a bag of 80 minis without a board and rulebook it would be much cheaper. Bags of NPCs and PCs can be released eventually as well like Bag-O-Elves for example. I would be interested on other thoughts and opinions.
Cool. I'd buy something like this.
I think the one problem would be how to divide up the Bestiary into packs, Perhaps by CR but there are varying numbers at different CRs. Another problem might be size categories of creatures. If you did a box set of every creature in the Bestiary you would have over 350 monsters, but what good is just one goblin? maybe release two big box sets each with 50% of the book in it with multiples of small and medium creatures.
At the very least, a bag-0-minis of themed dudes would be nice, especially dudes you'd be likely to use a lot. Like, a bag-o-goblinoids, a bag-o-undead of various sorts, a bag-o vermin, a bag-o-dinosaurs.
Maybe just a bag-o-chumps, that contains a bunch of goblins, kobolds, orcs, and human thugs.
lol bag-o-chumps, i like it. That is probably the most reasonable lumping together similar type creatures. Maybe a bag-o-minis per adventure path and module would be good to start. I would definitely buy that.
Yeah. I'd buy it too. Like a bag of army men..
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The other guy in our group who DMed moved away a few months ago and since he had been in charge of the minis for many years and I no longer had an idea of what ones were mine vs what ones were his I let him take all the minis with him, so suddenly our group is in a void for minis to play with as well.
Its funny that you mentioned descent, because after a first game where we realized we had no minis and ended up using a bunch of my little pony figures that just happened to be the right size one of the girls happened to have from when she was little, we began using figures from descent and hero quest and they work great for small and large creatures though we'll still be at a lurch for anything larger.
Another option that can be useful is the 'bag of zombies' for the card game 'zombies'. There are a few different versions of them, man zombies, women zombies, dog zombies, even clown zombies, but each bag has something like 50 minis in it and while they are identical they work really well for mook monsters.
Bag-O-minis just sounds awesome...I picture this bag full of defected nearly perfect plastic minis, that didn't make the quality control to be pre-painted. Who knows....may be it could become a product.
They do that for the zombie games. Our local hobby store had bag-o-zombies with 50 or 100 zombies (don't recall the number 'cause I never bought them).
As to pre-painted versions of painted minis, Mage Knight offered those. They were not only not painted, they weren't on the dial bases. You can still buy those online by the box for around $5-6 per booster box. They're called, not surprisingly, "Painter's Edition".
lol bag-o-chumps, i like it. That is probably the most reasonable lumping together similar type creatures. Maybe a bag-o-minis per adventure path and module would be good to start. I would definitely buy that.At the very least, a bag-0-minis of themed dudes would be nice, especially dudes you'd be likely to use a lot. Like, a bag-o-goblinoids, a bag-o-undead of various sorts, a bag-o vermin, a bag-o-dinosaurs.
Maybe just a bag-o-chumps, that contains a bunch of goblins, kobolds, orcs, and human thugs.
Look at the Pathfinder Paper Minis: Ashton, CJ, and Crystal have done a ton of paper minis already: The first 5 chapters of ROTR (BO, SSM, HMM, FOSG, and SOTS) have almost every single villain done as a paper mini. There are also sets of Goblins, Gnolls, Ogres, and Hellknights.
Battle Studios and Super Genius Games have done sets of paper Adventurers (BS) and Undead/Giants (SGG) as well.
Some of these sets have over 80 minis themselves!
Chief Technical Officer
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Descent: Journeys in the Dark is about $90 and comes with 80 minis...
An awful lot of the cost of plastic minis is the cost of making the molds. Note that though Descent comes with 80 minis, that's comprised of multiple copies of just a dozen different monsters in different rarities, along with about twenty unique hero figures, for a total of only 32 different molds.
In short, you get a mix that's pretty similar to what you'd get if you bought your 80 figures as boxes of random minis... but by selling them in boxes of 6 or 8 or 10, that would also allow people who weren't able to drop $90 to get something too, so sales would be higher.
And sales would also be higher if you painted them. A *lot* higher.
Paizo is not in the business of making plastic minis, and I can't imagine any licensee thinking that a giant expensive box of unpainted plastic would be the best possible product to make.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark is about $90 and comes with 80 minis...An awful lot of the cost of plastic minis is the cost of making the molds. Note that though Descent comes with 80 minis, that's comprised of multiple copies of just a dozen different monsters in different rarities, along with about twenty unique hero figures, for a total of only 32 different molds.
In short, you get a mix that's pretty similar to what you'd get if you bought your 80 figures as boxes of random minis... but by selling them in boxes of 6 or 8 or 10, that would also allow people who weren't able to drop $90 to get something too, so sales would be higher.
And sales would also be higher if you painted them. A *lot* higher.
Paizo is not in the business of making plastic minis, and I can't imagine any licensee thinking that a giant expensive box of unpainted plastic would be the best possible product to make.
What if someone licensed sculpts that already existed to have molds made from a mini that is already glued together? There would be no need to pay for a new sculpt - that would defray the initial costs right there.
For what the product would be (and now Descent is all I can think of) the sculpts would not have to be vast and varied, just a passable filler for what it's taking the place of.
Orcs: Use one sculpt. Zombies: Use three or four sculpts (if only because there are going to be so many out at once). Goblins: One sculpt. Don't use sculpts with weapons visible, so then the mini remains neutral in purpose.
Using preexisting sculpts for molds, I would think (and I have no insight to the market beyond what Vic posts on these forums), would defray the cost of having new minis sculpted. And after the initial cost, that should diminish. Like the aforementioned Bag-o-Zombies, I don't think there should be a huge focus on making hundreds of different minis, just a few that are frequently used in bulk, starting with the stuff that are sure-sells, like goblins, orcs, and zombies. People want other things, too, but those three seem to be what I hear most. Elves are popular too, for some reason, but I just can't see that selling quite as well.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark is about $90 and comes with 80 minis...An awful lot of the cost of plastic minis is the cost of making the molds. Note that though Descent comes with 80 minis, that's comprised of multiple copies of just a dozen different monsters in different rarities, along with about twenty unique hero figures, for a total of only 32 different molds.
In short, you get a mix that's pretty similar to what you'd get if you bought your 80 figures as boxes of random minis... but by selling them in boxes of 6 or 8 or 10, that would also allow people who weren't able to drop $90 to get something too, so sales would be higher.
And sales would also be higher if you painted them. A *lot* higher.
Paizo is not in the business of making plastic minis, and I can't imagine any licensee thinking that a giant expensive box of unpainted plastic would be the best possible product to make.
Well i figured there were reasons as to why this has not been done already. What about instead of miniatures just plastic bases with a sticker picture of the monster on one side. That would be cheaper because you don't have different molds and you still get every monster available and it is better then paper or cardboard. Or punch out high quality cardboard for most cost effective. maybe 6 of each small creature, 4 medium, 2 large, 1 of each beyond. It would look like it does in the Core Rulebook (pg 196 is a good example). The PDF ones that have been released by other companies are good but A.) incomplete and B.) printing and cutting them all out on cardboard is expensive and just regular paper doesn't work as well as id like.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark is about $90 and comes with 80 minis...An awful lot of the cost of plastic minis is the cost of making the molds. Note that though Descent comes with 80 minis, that's comprised of multiple copies of just a dozen different monsters in different rarities, along with about twenty unique hero figures, for a total of only 32 different molds.
In short, you get a mix that's pretty similar to what you'd get if you bought your 80 figures as boxes of random minis... but by selling them in boxes of 6 or 8 or 10, that would also allow people who weren't able to drop $90 to get something too, so sales would be higher.
And sales would also be higher if you painted them. A *lot* higher.
Paizo is not in the business of making plastic minis, and I can't imagine any licensee thinking that a giant expensive box of unpainted plastic would be the best possible product to make.
What if someone licensed sculpts that already existed to have molds made from a mini that is already glued together? There would be no need to pay for a new sculpt - that would defray the initial costs right there.
For what the product would be (and now Descent is all I can think of) the sculpts would not have to be vast and varied, just a passable filler for what it's taking the place of.
Orcs: Use one sculpt. Zombies: Use three or four sculpts (if only because there are going to be so many out at once). Goblins: One sculpt. Don't use sculpts with weapons visible, so then the mini remains neutral in purpose.
Using preexisting sculpts for molds, I would think (and I have no insight to the market beyond what Vic posts on these forums), would defray the cost of having new minis sculpted. And after the initial cost, that should diminish. Like the aforementioned Bag-o-Zombies, I don't think there should be a huge focus on making hundreds of different minis, just a few that are frequently used in bulk, starting with the stuff that are sure-sells,...
Part of the fun of using minis is the look of the mini. Neutral Poses without weapons makes for a bland character. If that's the case, why not just use colored pawns. If I'm going to bother investing in plastic minis, I want something that looks at least somewhat decent.
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Chief Technical Officer
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What if someone licensed sculpts that already existed to have molds made from a mini that is already glued together? There would be no need to pay for a new sculpt - that would defray the initial costs right there.
For what the product would be (and now Descent is all I can think of) the sculpts would not have to be vast and varied, just a passable filler for what it's taking the place of.
Orcs: Use one sculpt. Zombies: Use three or four sculpts (if only because there are going to be so many out at once). Goblins: One sculpt. Don't use sculpts with weapons visible, so then the mini remains neutral in purpose.
We have zero interest in minis that don't look like our art. Somebody else can do that.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Well i figured there were reasons as to why this has not been done already. What about instead of miniatures just plastic bases with a sticker picture of the monster on one side. That would be cheaper because you don't have different molds and you still get every monster available and it is better then paper or cardboard. Or punch out high quality cardboard for most cost effective. maybe 6 of each small creature, 4 medium, 2 large, 1 of each beyond. It would look like it does in the Core Rulebook (pg 196 is a good example). The PDF ones that have been released by other companies are good but A.) incomplete and B.) printing and cutting them all out on cardboard is expensive and just regular paper doesn't work as well as id like.
You might like the pawns that will come in our Beginner Box.
We have zero interest in minis that don't look like our art. Somebody else can do that.
I meant to imply that. Sorry if I insulted you.
O convince me anyone at Paizo is NOT eager to do a Bag o' Goblins - Pathfinder style?
O convince me anyone at Paizo is NOT eager to do a Bag o' Goblins - Pathfinder style?Goblin Warriors
Goblindog Warrider
Goblin Warchanter
I think they have their Bag o' Goblins well under way, and the 4-packs are about what you would pay for decent plastic ones. You could go much cheaper quality, like the decent/castle ravenloft boxes, but then you lose out on a significant market audience.
Vic, have you guys looked into/considered color 3D Figureprints? It seems like you could get at least 500 goblins, for example, per print run. Quantity and cost will would obviously vary depending model size but if you could find a company in China that could do the printing you could keep the post printing labor costs down.
It's possible to get pretty decent detail now days with 3D printing, though this isn't in color:
http://www.shapeways.com/model/42614/archer.html?gid=sg21803
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I would be interested on other thoughts and opinions.
They're not minis, but they're nice: Relevant link.