All my scoop sources just lit up with this announcement: D&D Miniatures, after the next set, will no longer be sold in completely random boosters.
According to the release, there will be “D&D Heroes” sets that will be sold in packaging that makes all the figures visible, so you already know what you’re getting. Each one contains 2 Male and 1 Female models. Two worrisome pieces: one, getting only 3 figures for $11 (back when they started you could get a full booster for that much, darnkidsgetoffmylawn), and two, each one contains:
3 unique power cards featuring brand new class powers.
Yeah, as much as I love 4e, that seems to fall into the criticism that it’s like Magic: The Gathering. I assume that these powers will show up in the D&DI Compendium, but it’s still a fairly dirty pull to have powers only available through these packs.
The other product announced is for just monsters. Each pack of the Monster Manual: Dangerous Delves contains:
5 minis: 1 visible figure, 1 rare figure, 1 uncommon figure and 2 common figures
for $15 (again, fewer minis than the current packs for the same price.) How the visible figure is determined, and what this means for Huge critters, is yet to be revealed.
The only way I buy miniatures is individually, so this doesn’t bother me. I do wonder how visible figures will change the market for rare miniatures, though.
I can’t say that I’m really a fan of this, what I’ll call half-assed, change. I don’t hugely mind the 100% random minis, except in cases where an entire PC race is only represented in rares as with the Dragonborn. But going to less minis for the money, that aren’t random, and throwing in quirky little things like power cards or half-random half-visible packs just doesn’t sit right with me.
The optimal way I foresee is to have random packs available, but to also release a large percentage of sets in pre-determined packs like you’d find for Warmachine or Warhammer. I think that kind of approach would really appease both types of customers they’re going for in this.
It’s better than random minis in my opinion, but only by a step. I dislike this move of releasing powers out with minis. Not because of any marketing gripes or comparisons to other games – but because it presents another source of weird iffyness for DMs to greenlight. Right now we have, from what I’ve seen, a sort of trust heirarchy with Dragon Magazine stuff at the bottom, then splats, then the Core at the top. Now we have another different possible source of material to throw in there.
Wyatt´s last post: This Just In, Pantsless Is The New Black
Well, these changes just encourage people to just publish powers online (pirated) from the set until they’re released for real. I think its a pretty cheap ploy to sell minis. The decision to buy D&D products is in many ways a vote for the company, with the easy availability of illicit options. For the most part, internet savvy people can just grab these sort of things for free without any real threat of capture, and tacky stunts like this practically begs for… alternate means.
As a note to all, I sent some followup questions to WotC, and I’ll post them when I have the answers.
I’m not sure how i feel about the minis including a power only available if you buy that pack…
rpga players, do you need to carry that card with you wherever you take your pc?
or at home, do i have to allow it at the table if i’m dm’ing? it’s not in the corebooks, it’s on a card…
i’m not sure… they are blurring lines here methinks…
newbiedm´s last post: Non-Randomized D&D Miniatures
For me it just seems like a muddying of the whole thing. Purely random minis has a purity to it: you can buy boosters and get random ones and hope for luck, or you can buy singles from tons of sources. It looks like the visible minis are basically going to be the same as if you’d bought 3 single minis from random sets. Actually it’ll be more expensive, because the visible minis won’t have a big price as singles because they aren’t random OR rare.
Purely visible minis would also be good, because the economy of it is determined and set much like the other tabletop games people play. Imagine what would happen to the prices of Warhammer figures if they started selling some army pieces in blind / random boosters? The existing visible ones would be devalued because there’s a chance in a random booster of getting a super rare piece, and the random market would be crippled because not everyone would be required to buy them so there’s immediately a smaller market.
I’m okay with the heroes and monster sets. They are showing what you are getting and you can decide from there whether or not to buy it. Also, with the less minis for the money, I’m hoping they will have high quality paint jobs (like the rares currently enjoy, but the commons of the last few sets obviously do not).
As for the 1 visible, rest random packs? Not sure I like it. Random has worked well so far and spawned a whole resale and trading market that is going strong. Going fully non-random would work as well if they did it like warhammer (as someone suggested above). Then you could go buy a pack of Gnolls or Goblins or Drow and not wind up with a handful of Ethereal Marauders, Catfolk, and Crucians that you have no use for. Don’t get me started on the medium astral construct and protectar!
Lastly, the power cards…. as someone said above, they will wind up appearing elsewhere and if wizards was smart (I know…) they would release this stuff and then after a year re-release it in a sort of compilation/compendium (remember the monstrous compendium binder?) at a low price and peopel would buy it for convenience sake. Seriously, they’d be selling the same info twice and you absolutely know that a good number of people would buy it (sometimes I’m one of those suckers, sometimes not). But then again, now with the compendium online, everyone would just subscribe to that and get the same info for their monthly fee. So, the power cards don’t worry me as DM. I just wish wizards had better marketing sense.
Rauthik´s last post: Session 11
What an underwhelming product. I can get three non-random, higher quality, metal figs for less.
Even if you like 4e, the power cards have no value. Consider a power is for a specific class, level, and type. The cards you get will be so diluted that you may never get a chance to use them, even if you wanted to use them.
“Oh look, a Level 15 Warlord Utility power that’s so generic as to be functionally identical to powers available to other classes.”
How about just not, in essence, raising the price. Is it really that much more expensive? Or is it worth that much more to see what you’re getting.
Thanks, I’ll continue to buy from friends and online when I need a pack of dwarves.
But then again, it’s not like I’ve purchased packeged minis in months. I got tired of playing the random game and didn’t want to invest enough to get hordes of goblins, kobolds, whatever through the fickle fate of packaging.
@Jennifer
Actually, it is worth more to see what you’re getting.
In a random pack, they can pad it with cheaper, smaller figures, and still ensure people buy it for the chance of getting something nice.
But when you can see everything, you need to see you’re getting good figures before you’ll spend money on it.
As such, each of the Heroes minis will need to be a pretty good quality mini in order for there to be a market for it.
Additionally, there is the chance that a pack will not be as popular, and thus will not sell as well. With the random packs this was mitigated, as there was always the chance of getting something you want, meaning no set would ever do extremely poorly. But with non-random sets, people will pick and choose which sets they buy, and poorer-selling sets won’t earn as much, or may actually lose money.
So the price increase is partly to cover a higher minimum quality, and partly to cover potential losses from other sets.
–
To use an analogy, because I love them so, let’s pretend I was a produce company, and I sold oranges.
I can sell boxes of 20 oranges, for $15 (75 cents per orange). If you bought that box, and a couple in the bottom were squished or rotten, you wouldn’t be too upset, because you still got, say, 17 decent oranges for $15.
I could also sell the oranges individually, for the same price, but one of two things would happen.
a) You would only buy 17 oranges, since that’s all you need anyways. In this case, I only got $12.75, instead of the $15 I got before.
b) You buy 20 good oranges, giving me $15 again, but leaving me with all of the crappy oranges left over, which I can’t sell. Each orange you pass by is 75 cents I don’t get, despite the effort of picking the oranges.
In order to account for the differences, I need to do two things.
I need to make sure that fewer oranges are crappy, which costs money.
And I need to sell the oranges for more, to make sure I get a similar profit.
If you are currently buying 17 oranges for every 20 you used to buy, the price per orange goes up to 90 cents each just to break even.
If I’m trying to minimise crappiness of oranges, the price goes up a bit more, say to $1 per orange.
–
So, yeah, the price jump should really be expected in this case.
Yeah, it’s just under 2x the price per mini, for the heroes set (about 1.5x for the monsters set), so the jump is a bit higher than my orange example, but when you consider the demand that existed for a “PC set” (and the current economic crunch), I can hardly blame them.
Graham´s last post: Pathfinder 24-25 – Speed Run!
Or, y’know, there’s this:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4news/20081023
Graham´s last post: Pathfinder 24-25 – Speed Run!
Frankly, if the quality is up to par with the minis I’ve been seeing in their previews for Demonweb and the ones used in the examples in the Combat chapter of the PH then I’m fine with this change. Yeah it stinks that I can’t get as many minis, but I’ve had to comb through miniature stores for a certain mini before and with the “Heroes” line I won’t have to do that anymore.
Quality and control, I’m willing to pay more for that. And for those of you who need a lot of monster minis (minions for instance) I suggest paper counters. Quite a few companies are putting them out, and one company (Fiery something or other) has produced a set of minis for the entire Heroic tier as well as each H-line module for less than ten bucks each. I’ve been using them and it works out really nicely for minions and such.
I’d like them to take it a step further. I’ve always wanted DM-friendly “special edition” adventures, where for an extra $20 bucks or so, you can not only get an adventure, but all the monster minis that appear in that adventure (they could even throw in non-painted ones as minions).
I’ve felt this way for a while, but 4e’s determination to make it impossible to play without the minis now makes this an even better idea.
Erm, hi (moves tentatively into the thread, feet echoing on the cracked, dusty black & white tiles that once graced this palace of high thought) is anyone here? I have a crateful of my dad’s old D&D miniatures (all sorts, but from no specific game). He was a dungeon master back in the 80s and when he died all he had to leave us was these, a set of Star Trek Fact Files and all his recorded STOS and all the first six films on VHS.
I need advice on whether they are any good now, and if anyone would be interested in buying them…
(there is no reply from the echoing, looming walls, so the traveller retreats, hand on hilt of dagger should a shape-shifter suddenly lunge out of the shadowed walls…)