Does anyone else think the idea of random miniture packs SUCKS *rude things*?
I mean at $15 a pop can't we have stuff we can build an adventure around? Maybe packs geared towards the published mods? Or at least packs of stuff that is in some way related? Does anyone miss the good old days of being able to see what your buying before you buy it?
Well all card games sell their cards in randomized packs, if you want to buy singles you use a third party market. I don't see why you would expect anything different from a collectible game just because it uses figures instead of cards. Plus would be kind of hard to have sealed games if you knew everything in the pack.
It may SEEM that way, but in reality random miniatures end up cutting the price of each individual mini. At $15 for 8 figures, or even if they cut it to $15 for 7 minis, you are talking about ~$2.00 per figure, pre-painted. That is considerably cheaper than the alternative of pre-painted minis, and much more so when time and supplies are factored in for NON-painted minis.
If WotC wanted to package non-random packs, they'd have to release a lot more individual items, regardless of the release scheme. In other words, instead on one set at random with 8 (or 7) out of 40 possible minis, they'd instead have three or four reasonable possibilities:
1) They can release individually packaged sets of minis with a theme to them. For 40 different figures, how many sets is that to have something even approaching a comparable price scheme? At best, 5 sets of 8 different figures with no more than one copy of each figure. Realistically, many more than that, with each set having many copies of each "common" fig you'd expect to face a bunch of, a handful of "uncommon" figs you'd only face 1-3 of, and one copy of each "rare" or generally unique mino you'd only see one of per encounter. WotC would in turn have to anticipate the potential sales figures of EACH of those sets, and print accordingly (i.e. print up more undead than goblins, or more goblins than undead? Print up more gnolls than aberrations, or more aberrations than gnolls? What about goblins vs gnolls vs undead vs aberrations? Etc, etc, ad nauseum). Then you have the problem of how viable are these sets in game play, and will they turn off sales? For example, do you package 3 goblin cutters? Or do you package the 8-12 one would actually need in the modules/encounters with that many such monsters? Will players get ticked at having to purchase 4 Irontooth figs just to get the 12 cutters they want? Now, repeat that for every other figure.
2) They could also go the individual route, and package each and every figure in its own blister/box. That would add a LOT more cost to each figure. Each figure would likely end up costing double what they do now (i.e. the pretty average $4 per fig you see for most minis on the market sold individually), if not more (due to being pre-painted).
3) Or, they could go with the mixed route, with individual unique and uncommon figures, and multi-packaged common figures. For example, you could buy Irontooth or a goblin hexer individually, or a set of 5-6 goblin cutters, a set of 5-6 goblin blackblades, and so on. Again, you now have much more cost in packaging, especially since you out of necessity have disparate packaging methods: some are blisters, some are boxed sets.
4) Finally, we have the module-centric path. Each time a module comes out, you make a package that gives you enough figures to run that module. Go through a module, and count up the bare minimum number of different figures you generally need. Do you really think players would be willing to spend (at a bare minimum) $75+ to buy the mini set that corresponds to their new module? What about the folks that have no interest in pre-made modules, and instead would prefer to have figs tailored to their home campaigns, who'd be wasting a ton of money on figs they don't need just to get the figs they want?
Here is an example. For H1, here is the list of monsters used, and the number required to run the module as written:
Think about packaging that as a set, and trying to sell it. That is 137 figs, with a handful of them large, but most medium. Being EXTREMELY conservative and saying that they could cut the RETAIL VALUE down to $0.50 per medium mini, and $1 per large, that is still a $75 set. Realistially, you are looking at a bare minimum $100 set. For a single heroic tier module. Even breaking it up into multiple sets that altogether complete the module's minis...wow, that's quite a set. And later sets? Do you account for redundancy of figs, or require everyone to purchase older sets that you keep as evergreen products? This particular scheme is a marketing nightmare.
Regardless, you'd end up paying quite a bit more per figure with all of the alternative schemes. They'd have to package up each set/blister in its own case for shipping purposes, in addition to different case packaging that has 1-2 of each set per new release, assign them all SKU#s, assign each set its own separate time in the factory that packages the sets, and so on. Each of these steps in turn adds to the end cost of the item(s).
Finally, all of those options would make it more difficult for retailers to carry the product you want. Retailers have to each consider: What level of every set/figure do you carry? Do you have the wall space to dedicate? Will these blisters/sets compete with existing lines you carry (i.e. cut into sales space dedicated to Warhammer, Warmachine, etc)? With random minis, they simply decide: Do we carry it? How many cases do we order at once? That's a lot less to consider, and a lot less retail space to dedicate to the same amount of product. Those (few) brick-and-mortar retailers that wish to do singles can do so. The individual non-brick-and-mortar singles sellers can likewise capitalize on that part of the market. Those sellers allow you to purchase individual figures for as low as $0.50, and yes, as high as $50 for some, with the average common being more like ~$1.00-$1.50, the average uncommon being ~$1.50-$3.00, and the average rare being ~$3.00-~$7.00. That is entirely reasonable, and easy to find.
There is a lot more to the decision to distribute these minis than it may appear. Random miniatures actually does cut down on the end price quite a bit more than you might think.
Yay for wizards....they get to cut down on thier end price for minies. Which doesn't help me. The end consumer cause out of the 6-7 minies I just bought for $15 I can only use 2 for my campaign. Why? Becuase i can't use the chaindeamon for hmmm....15 levels yet. I can't use the fire drake for 10 nor can I use the grimlock...etc...
How about releasing them with some common sense principles? I mean these guys MAKE D&D they should know that no one uses 1 goblin in an encounter. Or 1 kobold. if you put in goblins kobolds skeletons etc. you put in more then 1. 3 would be minimum for any creature with the tag "minion" anywhere in their creature types. this makes sense since even if your hero was a 12 year old halfling rogue he isn't going to face 1 skeleton minion in the sewer. As far as the others we'll go off of common sense. party faces gnolls. Not a gnoll. gnolls. Party faces an ogre. Now I can see releasing these guys 1 at a time. A party could concievably fight 1 ogre at a time (at 1st level).
I guess what is really irritating me is the ridiculous disparity in the minies that are packaged together. How about a level range? How about a tier range? Heroic tier minies packaged together. Paragon together.
In turn, this lets the singles sellers sell YOU a single at, again, a lower average price. The average price of a D&D mini single is less than the price of an average non-randomly packaged D&D mini. By a fair bit, too.
So, you want a few kobolds, go buy a few kobolds at a couple bucks each, prepainted and ready to go. Or, alternatively, go buy them twice as much apiece, unpainted, and buy paints, and buy primer, and buy brushes, and spend the hours it'll take to paint them up (else just play with the silvery pewter figs).
ANY other packaging scheme WotC chooses will have you paying more for the figs you actually want. The more you head towards straight-up individual figs, the more it will cost. If you don't want to buy random, don't buy random. There are plenty of dealers who will sell singles from the set at a reasonable price. A reasonable price they COULDN'T sell at if the figs WEREN'T random.
You still sound like you want a "kobold pack" with three skirmishers, a wyrmpriest, etc, or an "encounter" pack. That'll not only cost more, because of the packaging, extra time at the factory to package them, the separate shipping, the more careful distribution as retailers and distributors have to essentially wager on how many they can sell, etc, but will also be riskier for, and therefore less likely to be purchased by...retailers. I'm flat out telling you, having been on the retail side for over a decade: retailers will be very reluctant to stock miniatures released with such a scheme for D&D. By comparison, you are talking enormous sales space dedicated to that product line, at an increased price point, with more risk of stock numbers. It's a bad idea.
Now, your last suggestion, that the minis correspond a bit more in the random packaging? THAT is reasonable, and a good marketing strategy. Having all heroic tier in the same set, or better yet having a set that has figs from, say, the H1-3 series of modules, or even just the H1 module? That is a good idea, and completely workable within the framework of their random packaging scheme. That can alleviate some of your frustration. I mean, sure, you might not be able to use the rage drake now. But you will use it eventially. You might not use the red dragon now, but you probably will. You might not use the mind flayer now, but you are likely to at some point, at which point you'll want to buy it anyhow. At a likely higher price, especially pre-painted.
Asking them to go with individual figs, or packages of figs of the same creature type or an encouter? That is not reasonable, and seriously, it will dramatically raise costs per figure you'll end up paying. You could buy the same encounter for a lot less now than you will with such a scheme.
It may be inconvenient, but it allows for the best price point possible, especially for pre-painted figs.
Merric's Law of Miniatures: Non-Random Packaging, Cheap Prices, and a Large Range of Figures: Choose two.
If you're looking for just packs of goblins or whatever, the secondary market (ebay, auggies, just trading with people who are serious collectors) is extremely cheap and easy if you choose wisely. I've only needed to a couple times for older sets, but when I wanted big handfuls of commons, I was able to get them at like a quarter a piece. It's really hard to complain about that.
Yay for wizards....they get to cut down on thier end price for minies. Which doesn't help me. The end consumer cause out of the 6-7 minies I just bought for $15 I can only use 2 for my campaign. Why? Becuase i can't use the chaindeamon for hmmm....15 levels yet. I can't use the fire drake for 10 nor can I use the grimlock...etc...
How about releasing them with some common sense principles? I mean these guys MAKE D&D they should know that no one uses 1 goblin in an encounter. Or 1 kobold. if you put in goblins kobolds skeletons etc. you put in more then 1. 3 would be minimum for any creature with the tag "minion" anywhere in their creature types. this makes sense since even if your hero was a 12 year old halfling rogue he isn't going to face 1 skeleton minion in the sewer. As far as the others we'll go off of common sense. party faces gnolls. Not a gnoll. gnolls. Party faces an ogre. Now I can see releasing these guys 1 at a time. A party could concievably fight 1 ogre at a time (at 1st level).
I guess what is really irritating me is the ridiculous disparity in the minies that are packaged together. How about a level range? How about a tier range? Heroic tier minies packaged together. Paragon together.
Why would you be upset about getting higher level monsters. Unless you never complete your campaigns your players will eventually be high enough level to take on a chain devil for instance. You'd want them eventually. Yeah, there are minis in each set that you probably don't want but WoTC can't please everyone. Warforged are a great example here. Some folks hate the fact that they are included, some use the Eberron setting a lot and like having them.
As for selling sets of 'common' monsters, yeah they could do that but as mentioned before it would probably raise the price. Personally, I'd rather find a secondary market retailer and buy my skeletons, goblins, etc. for $0.25-$0.50 each rather than pay more for a set that's already pre-packaged. And what if I only want a few minis from a set like that? I'd then be stuck buying the whole thing and paying more for minis I don't want anyways.
Releasing sets based on tiers or level ranges would be nice, but considering the release schedules and how often the older sets can be kept in stock by retailers could you guarrantee that every tier or level range of minis would be avaiable all the time? It would be even more frustrating I'd think to go into the store looking for level 1-3 packs for instance and find out they are only have the higher level stuff because they are sold out. Plus WoTC would have to release all those level ranges at once and find a way to get retailers to dedicate shelf space for the entire level ranges of them at each new release. And since most D&D groups would be buying lower lever minis only once during any given D&D campaign that means that once a money-spending customer's D&D group moves past the lower levels that customer will not be buying any more low level minis until they start a new campaign - something that usually does not happen very often in established D&D groups (at least that has been my experience anyways, ymmv). This wouldn't be very encouraging to a retailer to convince them to keep carrying a whole range of level-based packages.
Some folks don't like spending money on random packaging, but honestly that is the beauty of the secondary market. Many retailers I've found carry a good range of D&D minis - especially from the newer sets. Honestly, WoTC/Hasbro doesn't care who buys cases of their minis - you or a secondary market seller - so why not just go buy the singles you need? Personally, when a new set comes out I buy a some packs to support my FLGS and the rest in singles. I trade anything I don't want or need (which understandably isn't for everyone but I find it fun to trade with folks) and I've been satisfied with that arrangement so far. If you don't like trading extras, consider selling them on eBay or asking your FLGS owner if you can put them up on consignment.
Buying this line of minis are the cheapest way to get minis for your games and they come pre-painted which is a bonus since a lot of GMs don't have time to paint all the minis they would use in their games.
I'm actually a fan of going back to completely random-based minis with more minis per package. The visibles were nice, but after a bit I found myself not wanting to pick up new packs since I knew that each pack contained one mini that I just didn't need anymore.
WoTC seems to be quite hush-hush about the future of the minis line recently other than the fact that the PHH line was canceled and that there are definately more D&D minis being released this year. Perhaps they will go to a non-random packaging, who knows what they are doing to the line. If that's the case I sincerely hope it doesn't raise the price too much. Many folks would wind up buying less if that is the case simply because of budget constraints, though perhaps the lure of pre-painted minis will still be enough to keep folks buying into them at some level.
There are two competing groups looking at the DDM product line, on the one hand there are the people who are playing the miniatures game - random minis at low cost suits that fine, on the other hand there are those of us focussed on the RPG use of the minis, and the random model actually equates to high cost for us for very limited use of many models.
I'm not that worried about the random distribution model... but...
I'm an RPG DM and like the OP I find the DDM lines to be nigh on useless to me for trying to make meaningful collections of miniatures for use at my table (and I own a pretty good amount of this stuff I would probably own more if it wasn't so hard to make it useful). There are a number of factors that lead to this:
Common monsters are hard to get in useable numbers
They keep putting random new monsters in rather than producing stuff actually in existing products (Psychic Sentinel leaps to mind)
The packaging arrangements make no sense towards the useability of the product for gamers of any stripe (I'm looking at you Unicorn, and Human Outrider).
The rareity scheme is completely insane, especially for trying to collect any meaningful number of specific miniatures for use in RPG play.
See for DDM it is always nice to have a bunch of the right mini, but the fact is that it isn't necassary, you can make up your army from the whole range, in comparison for RPG use you will generally want 3-6 copies of a lot of the minis, with a very small number you want only 1 or 2 copies of for boss types.
So while Random is preferable for keeping the cost of the miniatures down, I don't think the level of randomness that they have been using is as necassary. Consider that Dangerous Delves had 40 miniatures, and 8 of them were Uncommon, 8 were Visible, 16 were Rare and 8 were Common. For a start the number of rares is wrong from a collectability perspective for RPG use, make it 8, and make them only monsters with the solo designator in the rulebooks (currently 213 monsters many of which are dragons of various sizes admitedly). The in packet uncommons are pretty much right as they are but should be focussed on monsters that appear as leaders and elites (371 just from rulebooks). Then the remaining 16 commons should be drawn from monsters that already exist (no inhabited corpses) and that are likely to be used in numbers. Further commons should be split into two groups of 8 a "theme" group and a group similar to the current common selection. The "theme" groups should be based on monsters that are going to be used in numbers and regularly in a range of poses armaments etc - and focus on humanoid types that have such variation.
Consider that there are 130 "standard" undead listed in the books, so you could easily have: 1 Skeleton Warrior type, 1 Zombie Warrior type, 1 Etheral Undead type, then pick 5 other undead from the "medium, standard, undead" (81 monsters) or "small, standard, undead" (11 monsters) groups to fill out the 8. If an uncommon is an Undead, and a Rare is one, you now have a good "Undead" theme to the set so that RPG players buying it are going to pull things they want, and get them in quantity.
There are 37 different stnadard orcs in the compendium, 167 standard fey, 90 standard goblins, heck there are 12 different standard Angels already. So doing these sorts of themed sets should be possible for a good while, while still also providing a good selection of "random stuff".
Further if you are going to roll the PC minis back into the generic boosters they fit in the Rare and Uncommon slots. DMs buy the most boosters, and they want things that are useable as monsters. PCs also do not need to be broken down by power source, but rather by gear: a Paladin in Heavy Armour and a Fighter in Heavy Armour are practically identical miniatures, a Whirling Barbarian and a Tempest Fighter are identical miniatures, and they can even be a Ranger easily enough. There are a number of flexible things like this (which is why the arrangement of the PHH minis was a poor resource allocation from the get go (individual minis at $4 a shot in a standard blister pack would have been much better) - further when producing PC miniatures the ones that people really need are the ones only WotC really produces - Dragonborn, Tieflings, Genasi, Goliath, Warforged, and Wildlings soon enough. Things like elves (including Eladrin and Drow), dwarves, and humans are readily available from a number of sources (painted or not).
Now some people are going to go "but the rares drive the sales" that is only true if your target audience is the no longer directly supported collectable miniatures game audience. If your target market is RPG DMs and players making something hard to get means less motivation. Why does a DM need the exact miniature? No real reason, it isn't like the players will care as long as the space taken up on the map is right (or close to it), so making it hard (ie expensive) to collect the rares is not going to make RPG players buy lots of the product. Making it easier to get a "set" of the rares and get certain common monsters in reasonable numbers is going to be much more friendly to DnD (and other game) DMs.
Now some of you will point towards the secondary market and say "you can get 5 of that mini you want there" and that is true, but the bottom line is that it is better for WotC is I feel confident buying 5 boosters will get me 5 of that miniature I want (or at least 3 or 4). The secondary market is handy for customers, but not so great for WotC - WotC wants every DM to buy 5 or 6 boosters first, and they have yet to produce a rareity scheme that is going to support that sort of purchase rate by DMs (or even get 1/4 of that much of the potential market) - because their distributions and miniature choices have been entirely to random. Yes the secondary market does mean sales for WotC, and really they do not care who buys them, but the purchases of the people who create the secondary market stores is a much smaller market than the primary market, and always will be a small percentage of the market. It is much, much better for WotC to have all of us buying multiple boosters than even 1000 people buying 10 cases each (and I doubt the stores of the secondary market account for that much of the sales of a product).
Unfortunate as it may seem, they are in this to make money not just please individuals. I'm sure if they could make money selling visual packs of related minid they would do it. As it is, I'm sure they sell more boosters as people try to get what they need or want. I'd be willing to bet you would buy JUST the 2 or 3 boosters you need and then stop (as people I think are doing with the latest visual packaging). Yeah, it would be great to get just what you need (that's what Ebay is for), but in the end they need to make money or we won't have any choice at all.
The packaging arrangements make no sense towards the useability of the product for gamers of any stripe (I'm looking at you Unicorn, and Human Outrider).
Well, I can understand the complaints about the unicorn. But what's wrong with the human outrider? That's the kind of mini I've been waiting for for ages. Just like the goblin wolfrider that's a mini that will see lots of use in my game.
Am I the only one playing in a campaign that uses mostly wilderness encounters?
