If you are a big Dungeons and Dragons fan and enjoy using pre-painted miniatures in your game play, you better get to the store and stock up now. Wizards of the Coast has announced it will no longer release Dungeons & Dragons miniatures sets. There may be collected sets available in the future, but for now, it looks like Wizards is relying on the game tokens found in the new Essentials and Red Box collection.
While miniatures were probably never a big seller, having a plethora of figures to pull from for your weekly gaming adventure made things more interesting.
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Online Character with less features than the previous one, and we are told to like it.
Now they tell us that tokens are better than minis. Really getting sick of Wizards new crappy product/marketing decisions.
It does seem like a strange decision. At least the MTG department knows how to make an exciting product. The past few years they have really been rolling. I wonder how this will affect the price of minis at retailers (like Gatekeeper Comics, Huuuunton and Gage Topeka, Kansas)… will there be loose minis in a cheapo bin because it’s not a supported product, or will they become more and more pricey because they will eventually get more and more rare?
Lucky for us there’s lots of other mini companies out there. Wizards is competing with companies who make minis as their main product, both painted and unpainted. They probably weren’t making enough money on the minis to keep them going.
Luckily I play Gamesworkshop fantasy warhammer, I can field armies of orcs, goblins, dwarves, knights, knights on horseback, lizardmen, dragons, pegasus, elves, dark elves, giant spiders, trolls, giants, giant eagles, tree men, ect. They look much better than those cruddy pre-painted ones and I know a chinese child didn’t paint them by hand while rolling cigarettes with his toes.
I’m going to say this is a good thing. I think that switching to tokens will make the game more affordable to the young/new player and might dissolve a bit of the geek-game stigma that would keep someone from breaking it out for their friends.
Not trying to offend anybody here, honestly, but i’ve always perceived miniatures as a niche-product in what is already a pretty small niche-market. I used to roleplay _tons_ and never used minis. When necessary, we’d just improvise with dice/coins/board game tokens/whatevers. Minis were just “one more thing to buy”, and i never did (buy them, that is).
:{ tokens suck
minis really help you visualize if you have taken the time to find/paint one that represents your character.
Thankfully our Dm has several cases about 5 feet high and 5 feet wide full of Figures acquired over the last 15 years.
I’m of two minds on this. I do like the tokens (and love the ones that turn over to show bloodied status). That being said, nothing beats a mini dropping on the table at the right moment. I think the issue with the minis was the price and (at least the majority of the time) you only knew what one of the minis you were getting was going to be. Maybe Wizards should have tried selling predetermined monster packs (goblins, skeletons, etc) and then individuals of the less common monsters. I am even more concerned at the number of books that have been delayed or canceled and the major slowdown on the online content that we have paid subscriptions for. On top of the Character Builder fiasco I am rapidly losing patience with a game that I really want to love.