Is it just me or do the Pathfinder minis look really cheesy? When I bust out a new Troll that I bought, it is to be feared, not laughed at...
Because of this I have decided to get my minis somewhere else until Pathfinder's lose their Anime like touch I don't think KI'll be buying these in bulk.
I'm not knocking all of the mini's, some look awesome...The Lich, but others......seriously?
Does anyone else feel this way? Hope this makes it to the right ears/eyes.
I don't get where people are coming from on this. I really don't Several people have commented on this in several places. The only thing I can figure out for most of them is that they use a brighter color palette then the D&D minis used to. Which I personally like. Maybe the ones that people say look cartoony, just look to bright and need an extra ink washing. The troll from the first set is based on the bestiary cover art troll. The only main difference (beside the lack of some finer details) that I can see is the brighter colors. I don't get it. Maybe someone could explain the details to me that they feel make it cartoony. I also don't get the Anime comments and at the risk of making assumptions I'm guessing that at least some of the people using that as a pejorative are doing so because they don't like anime. Could someone from the cheese/cartoony camp spell it out for me since I do not understand the criticism. At least not in the terms that have been presented.
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Also is the first set of mini's wizkids and Paizo did together. Growing pains were gonna happen. I agree with you some of the mini's are rather questionable, such as the troll, the druid carrying the bedroll around, the chimera, and the manticore. Others were amazing, like the wolf, the ettin, and the frost giant.
Having seen what the second set looks like at Gen Con, HUGE strides have been made in the quality of the figures. There are still a couple of screwy ones, but each set will get better as they get experience.
I wonder if you will get piled on for saying this.
Hopefully people around here can let you have an opinion without getting too jumpy?
Anyway, they are very, very unpopular with the people I game with. I bought a bunch of them any way.
Mostly having issues with: The Orcs, The Troll, The Ogres.
Three of the most important figures in the game.
I have mixed feeling about the goblins too. I do like that they are green and not purple and tan like in D&D.
Yes this is my opinion and I'm not paid to have one, I'm just American and I can.
Muhahahahahahahahahahahaha...
At least they did a nice spread of common and essential creatures that I need all the time. That's why I bought a bunch even though I don't like the way they look.
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g0atsticks - The orcs and lizardman were leftover sculpts from a generic fantasy game wizkids was going to put out but didn't (maybe the Mageknight reboot?) if I remember correctly. The Ogres are perfect to the art in pathfinder #3, and the troll would be great if it were sized up 25-50% to correctly fit on the large base.
All in all I agree with XperimentalDM. The main issue is the colors needing to be dulled a bit, nothing a quick brush on wash can't fix
Also is the first set of mini's wizkids and Paizo did together. Growing pains were gonna happen. I agree with you some of the mini's are rather questionable, such as the troll, the druid carrying the bedroll around, the chimera, and the manticore. Others were amazing, like the wolf, the ettin, and the frost giant.
Having seen what the second set looks like at Gen Con, HUGE strides have been made in the quality of the figures. There are still a couple of screwy ones, but each set will get better as they get experience.
I find it amusing that you mention 3 of my favorite minis from the first set and call them out as questionable. The chimera and manticore look great, and the druid, while not great for a druid, is one of my favorite minis from the set because it is a great non-combat character. I don't like the style of the troll, but its certainly not anime, and neither is anything I have seen in any of the pathfinder books or miniatures.
The thing is, taste is so subjective... sometimes it's hard to pin down what it is I like or don't like about something, aesthetically. So, I use the best words I have in my vocabulary for the situation. Sometimes I make no sense. Sometimes people know what I mean, sometimes they don't.
All I can say is, there's a quality I don't particularly care for in these mini's. I'm not sure how to describe it accurately, or technically, but when I'm grasping for a descriptor, I end up saying things like "too comic booky" or "too anime-ish". Maybe those aren't fitting descriptors, but it's the best I got.
Hope this doesn't offend any fans of the mini's. I don't mean to slam them it's purely personal preference. There are some things I appreciate about the line and I did buy 6 or 7 bricks of H&M and I'm planning to pick up some Runelords.
I didn't much like Andrew Hou's vision of the barghest in Bestiary 1, but it was purely a matter of my having a preference for the more predatory (IMHO) D&D 3.x version. I like a lot of Hou's work.
Malfeshnekor on the other hand (advanced elite greater barghest from the Runelords mini set) simply cannot be taken seriously based on his appearance. Scary? Like a 4e gnome. ("Rawr! I'm a monster.")
I use Reaper "Goblin Wolfs" for my Barghests.
I use Reaper "Goblin Wolfs" for my Barghests.
Those are nice, but I'm too lazy to paint. That leaves me with prepainted dire wolves, "vampire wolves" or other substitutes, depending on the line of figures.
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I think ROTRL was 100% from paizo art and not existing sculpts, unlike H&M... the use of clear plastics really helped as well... Things like the spector which looked cool as painted, you could tell it was painted and lost that 'if I look hard enough I should be able to see through it' feeling of real shadows in the dark
Reaper Miniatures
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Working in the industry, I can chime in that the same figure that 5,000 hate and would rather set fire to than own will also be the same figure that 5,000 other people would buy multiple copies of.
Opinions, aesthetic preferences, stylistic choices, and perceptions: everybody has them. No 2 are alike. And it is rare that somebody changes their opinion based on your opinion - although I have seen it when we explain why a piece looks like that, and people go "oh, well now that I know that, it's not stupid, and I kinda like that"
Take Reaper - our catalog of over 4,000 figures. I'd bet if we asked the public to rank them all as * through *****, no two people would select the same exact rating.
I personally like Paizo's aesthetic, although I also like 4e's aesthetic, and very much like Reaper's DHL aesthetic. I'm a fan of many styles, and appreciate miniatures done well, even if they are in a style that is not my preference.
I also think it's awesome that this hasn't gone flame-warry! I see a lot of those, too :(
Speaking for myself I can't say I am thrilled with the look of many of the paizo miniatures. I wasn't too thrilled with the look of many of the old WotC ones either for that matter. The inconsistency of paint and sculpt was the #1 reason i stopped buying cases of DDM and only picked up singles on the secondary market. It is also the reason I only pick up single of the PF minis too.
Of course since I finally going back to my first love (painting my own) I don't buy much pre-painted at all any more.
Long live Reaper!!
I don't get where people are coming from on this. I really don't Several people have commented on this in several places. The only thing I can figure out for most of them is that they use a brighter color palette then the D&D minis used to. Which I personally like. Maybe the ones that people say look cartoony, just look to bright and need an extra ink washing. The troll from the first set is based on the bestiary cover art troll. The only main difference (beside the lack of some finer details) that I can see is the brighter colors. I don't get it. Maybe someone could explain the details to me that they feel make it cartoony. I also don't get the Anime comments and at the risk of making assumptions I'm guessing that at least some of the people using that as a pejorative are doing so because they don't like anime. Could someone from the cheese/cartoony camp spell it out for me since I do not understand the criticism. At least not in the terms that have been presented.
I dont know what anime is, so I cant comment on that (some kind of cartoon?) However, I'm one who finds the figures "cartoony" and what I mean by that is that some of the figures appear to me to be what I would expect from a sculpt of a cartoon character rather than a sculpt of an actual, live thing.
Obviously, it's a subjective thing about art style. I fully concede that it's somewhat silly to complain that "the ogre doesnt look realistic", nonetheless - that's an attempt to sum up how I feel about the sculpt. An imperfect description of my response to that figure (as well as the ogre, the ettin is another which, to me, doesnt look like a monster, but looks like a cartoon of a monster. In my case I dont find the troll is 'too cartoony' I just think it's one of the few examples from H&M which wasnt very good).
Where it's maybe clearer is in sculpts like the venomous snake, the wolf, the half-elf cleric. I think all of those are excellent sculpts and are very well painted. But they look to me like they were based on a cartoon of the respective creature rather than on a living specimen. The iconics give me the same impression - very high quality (especially the paint job) but not my perfect style.
In contrast, a lot of the DDM humanoid/animal figures seem more realistic to me, even though they are inferior figures, in my view - often poorly sculpted and/or painted with only a few steps.
Anime is japanese animation, Steve Geddes.
I commonly hear it brought up as a reference when people I know are trying to describe what they dislike about the Pathfinder art direction. I've drawn on the same comparison but I never felt satisfied that it conveyed what I wanted to convey. Especially since I love anime and comic-books.
Hmm. Well, I guess that makes sense. The figures Wizkids are producing are certainly true to the style of PF art. If that is "anime-ish" (or perceived as such by some) then it would be likely to carry over to the minis, I guess.
One positive thing I would like to say...
With the plastic Pathfinder mini's the distribution of creatures is good. So if you do like the look they have and you want some, you can buy bricks or cases with confidence. You will end up with a useful spread of creatures.
With the WotC plastic minis I always had to by a lot of singles and it got very expensive.
One positive thing I would like to say...
With the plastic Pathfinder mini's the distribution of creatures is good. So if you do like the look they have and you want some, you can buy bricks or cases with confidence. You will end up with a useful spread of creatures.
With the WotC plastic minis I always had to by a lot of singles and it got very expensive.
Well that is a bit of give and take. If you want the more exotic ones, without having to get tons of duplicates, then PF/WizKids model is great. But that means that there are not tons of those duplicates on the secondary market that others can purchase for cheap. PF's commons are running around $2-$3 on most places I tend to shop. Typically commons in other plastic sets run around $0.25-$1.25. That is the flip side of that choice to have cases with nearly guaranteed distributions.
OK I might have used the wrong word when i said "distribution". What I meant is, I didn't get a lot of wierd monsters I would never use.
With WotC's DDM if I bought a case I would get a lot of wierd stuff I didn't need. So I ended up buying a lot of singles.
With the first set from Pathfinder, Heroes & Monsters, I bought bricks from FLGS's, and the duplicates I got were mostly useful for mobs. On the other hand i am concerned about getting duplicates of unique NPC's with the RotRL's mini's.
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The H&M Druid has been so useful. Not as a Druid, but for other purposes. Water bearer at a town fountain, a Riverboat pilot with her charts, and as a non-combatant servant in an encounter that forced the PCs to not use their area effect spells against the BBEG. :)
Personally, I like the Appalachian Ogre in H&M. I never liked the PF Trolls. But then I have always preferred the 1st Ed style Trolls. The Manticore is good. The Chimera less so, but acceptable.
With these kind of things YMMV.
Cheers,
Mazra
I bet the scale issues will only get better going forward. I will just use the chimera as a runt-of-the-litter, with the young template on his stats.
I am now buying just the singles I want. I did the same thing with Magic Cards a while back. I amy get LESS, but i do get what I want. I dont need Greels or or crazy things. We want skeletons, zombies, trolls, goblins.
I don't care who makes them anymore like I did whe I first started. I go for coolness.
Remeber bnack in ad&d when The game had a dark feel to it, I find that feeling lacking by today's standard. This is the reason I do this. I like my dark ugly trolls, or savage goblins....even though they are the lauging stock of most worlds.
HEY! even LEVEL ONE PCs need someone to kill.
So far, I have really only two complaints on the PF minis...
I would be ok with brighter colors/cartoony/etc. if there were some more evident violent mentality with the figures. Tusks dripping with blood or meat kind of thing.
I can't find a good monk mini anywhere that is unarmed. The best that I just found is the Lion Falcon Monk. Looks like he can do damage without looking like an unarmored fighter or without looking like he's simply a contortionist.
Thanks Bryan! Yes, I've looked at these, and there's something about the facial features of the first 2 that really doesn't click with me. Also, the 2nd is a little too "armored" for me.
If I play a Half-Orc monk, though, I LOVE Gungor's mini!
**EDIT**
The 3rd one is OK. I'm just spoiled enough to want unarmed :)
Who said a walking stick is a weapon? To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a walking stick is just a walking stick.
Who said a walking stick is a weapon? To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a walking stick is just a walking stick.
“You would deny an old man of his walking stick?”