It was then that I went into the toy aisle to look and realized that there are simply a lot of classical fantasy toys out on the market. Ninjas and Pirates have pretty much taken over where for my generation robots and knights once stood. I am sure that just like the generation before me, looking for cowboy toys, I was annoyed to see the small part of my childhood no longer sold in stores. I have been searching on eBay and found a great deal of the D&D miniatures, that are sadly no longer sold in stores, and wish that there was someone out there making the fantasy version of M.U.S.C.L.E.
I love painting my PCs in detail and choosing the colors they wear and customising the weapons they are using, but for Al, the bandit who simply wants to steal enough money to afford a nice farm and then ask Rosie to marry him, I just want a bandit who can take a few hits and then be recycled at a later date. If I took the time to do that I would not be able to prepare the encounters of the rag tag bandit crew loosely based on the A-Team, and my players would grow bored at being delayed because the giant rat figures are not done.
Someone may be asking, "Why not use tokens?" And to them I say that is like playing chess using checkers with little stickers on them. I actually used little beads from a craft store colored green for a whole host of orcs and it worked perfectly. But, I still miss the hordes of little guys charging into battle and I am glad that I kept my Hero Scape figures for so long in a little ziplock baggie.
I would LOVE to be able to buy adventure packs complete with miniatures like what I see in all the D&D videos online, and I do applaud dungeon command for allowing my to run into a store and buy a pack of drow and a bag of chips, but we will need to have more of them. I know they are new and I am very happy with what I have seen so far.
Well, time to go off and build some more treasures for tomorrows game, we are flipping back to 4e from Next and that means the magic item pinatas needs to show up to make the game balance better.
