Anyone have any experience buying from SPM direct?
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$10 a mini is pretty much standard.
Maybe the bones range from Reaper will be cheaper, but that's about it.
$10 a piece is certainly NOT standard!
Reaper sells the medium-sized humanoid Bones for about $3 each. Soda Pop selling single, unpainted minis for $10-11 a piece today is just a money grab - their sets of 4 pre-painted iconics have a retail of $40, per Miniature Market (who is pre-selling those for $30-ish).
I'm very disappointed Paizo went with these guys and not Wizkids...
Speaking of Wizkids, they have unpainted lines for DnD 5 and Pathfinder as well. They offer, on average, 2 medium-sized, unpainted minis for $4 retail.
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I buy miniatures from a lot of different companies. $10 works about standard for what I see from many different companies.
Now quality might be coming in to play here. I haven't seen these new ones in actual solid form yet so can't really comment.
Reaper bones minis - I have a large number of theses, simply because their cost is low. But so is their quality, even in relation to the same miniature in metal vs plastic.
Wizkids - I have some of the two mini plastic sets of these ones two. Better cast than Reaper bones.
But they're the cheapest ones in the market.
For regular Sci Fi stuff, particularly with a range of mini options available, I'm looking at mantic games, games workshop (not an option for casual gamers, ooof), Infinity table top game, gates of Antares (drones everywhere in these).
Space ship wise - Star Wars (armada etc), Firestorm armada (though they just went under), planetfall.
All of those work out at about $10 a mini or more. Their quality is pretty good. I buy minis to paint to a good standard though, so the sculpt and final cast is quite imortant for me, even for ones I use in roleplay games.
If that's not what you're specifically after then cheaper minis are available for sure. Wizkids in particular have never impressed me with their plastic range. But these new unpainted sets of theirs might be ok. I haven't painted any up yet, so can't comment that way.
Soda Pop minis have produced a nice range of detailed minis that paint up really well though. So I'm going to give them benefit of the doubt here. Maybe after I pick up one of the Starfinder ones and give a lick of paint I'll have more to say. Until then, I'll stand by my previous statement.
They're also going to have a Kickstarter in the near future for unpainted ones too.
Looks like they start shipping on the 21st.
Looks like that these are unpainted resin, if you want pre-painted plastic miniatures, they'll be out later in the year.
Link'd
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$10 a pop IS high for metal figures, but not for resin, it is the low end of premium. I'll reserve final judgement until I can hold and paint them myself.
$6-8 per figure is about average for metal 28mm sci-fi individual figures that are not troop-pack/same-sculpt.
There are massive amounts of sci-fi mini companies out there to choose from, you're not limited to Soda Pop Minis. I've been looking at Beyond the Gates of Antares and Warpath figures in particular, though they are high-end cost-wise. I'll use Star Wars figures and repaint them myself to fill out NPC roles.
There are tons of spaceship mini's as well - Shapeways is an AWESOME site for generic and not-so-generic 3D printed space vessels that, depending on perspective, they can be used as drones or vessels at different scales.
The only time I might be stuck (possibly) is with the Starfinder-unique (somewhat) races, but I can alter or add-to... Wire makes fine antennae for lashunta or shirren.
I hope wizkids will sell the prepainted versions...
Why? WizKids will have nothing to do with these miniatures. If they were to get a license from Paizo, they'd need to do all new sclpts/moulds/etc.
Sticking with pawns for now. Will not spend that money without seeing quality first hand.
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I had a friend of mine pick up a few of the Ninja Division Starfinder resin miniatures at GenCon for me last month. As an avid miniature collector/painter/hobbyist, I have purchased miniatures from across a wide line of suppliers - from "low end" miniatures like Reaper's Bones to "high end" custom-designed and made miniatures - and can say that the Ninja Division Starfinder minis are exquisite. At $10 a piece, when compared to other, like-quality resin miniatures, they are actually priced at the low end. Most resin miniatures of this quality sell for $12-15 a piece.
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The Starfinder and Iron Gods pawns work pretty well and are cost effective for most people. If you want minis, Reaper Bones (Chronoscope line) has some great models for the Starfinder characters under $5 per mini. If you want more detailed minis Reaper has the metal minis (the same sculpts as the Bones) for $6-10 dollars. Unless you want the Bulldog, think X-Com mechtrooper, who is $20 in metal. Warmachine has a few factions that would look good in the Starfinder setting, Convergence and Retribution mostly. They aren't cheap AND you need to assemble them. I'm thinking a Tactical Arcanist Corp leader model would be fun to base a PC on.
I personally hate working with resin minis. I don't know about Ninja Division, but other resin models I've worked with have pits and bubbles. If you want to kitbash there is a potential toxic dust problem. At $10 each, I am much less willing to hack an arm off to switch gear and repaint the thing.