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Post by quinntheviking on Feb 17, 2015 14:35:50 GMT
So I've been going the route of taking cheap dollar store toys and painting them up convincingly and attaching them to a base. Even taking cool generic looking figures and turning them into statues for map embellishments. But you can only have so many plastic spiders and dinosaurs before you want something more. Now, I doubt that I could actually make a convincing mini by carving it myself. I'm good at making maps, terrain, etc. so far, but I wouldn't be able to make something convincing enough to look alive from scratch with my current skill level. So here's my noob question. I own no minis as it stands. I've thought about buying a bulk pack of minis from E-bay or somewhere else like that. Before I go spending the money to do so, however, I wanted to ask the cheapest places you guys have found minis. What's a good route to go about filling in the gaps? Do you have a favorite brand? This question has probably been asked 1000 times by now, and if so, sorry. I'm a budding DM and crafter just looking to start a good, solid collection of minis. I also wouldn't mind paying a bit more for PCs. But I still have very little money to work with. (I just had a kid, so of course my wallet is thin. Which is fine. ) Any advice would be appreciated.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2015 14:38:55 GMT
Reaper bones minis are decently priced and fantastic looking. Coolstuffinc has some there. You can rebase mage knight and heroclix for sure. It all depends what you're lookin for. I'd go with reaper first.
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Post by quinntheviking on Feb 17, 2015 15:01:18 GMT
Took a look at Reaper and they have some AWESOME stuff. Like that most of what I see is stuff I can paint myself, too. Good prices, but I still have a dream of getting dollar a piece minis. That being said, I'll pay any price for this upcoming Lich... The moment I saw this all the pleasure centers in my brain started firing off.
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Post by quinntheviking on Feb 17, 2015 15:17:18 GMT
Just got another little idea for generic filler. These are mini figures from Toysmith. It's on Amazon for about 5 bucks. They look decent and you get 36 pieces. Not bad for generic figures.
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Post by Alexis on Feb 17, 2015 15:27:38 GMT
I just bought my first minis last week. The choice where I live is very limited and I didn't want to order online because I didn't want to wait for anything. I'm very impatient sometimes. So I went out with a friend and we got some Warhammer minis and some Hobbit minis. We chose Warhammer stuff like skeletons, wolves and gouhls since they can easily serve as monsters in our D&D adventure. The Hobbit sets we got to take some of the minia out for the PCs. They are all rather expensive but I am very happy with them. They are very nicely detailed. You just have to assemble them yourself. I actually like that since that gives you some different options on building the minis.
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Post by AnarchyDice on Feb 17, 2015 16:08:33 GMT
Caesar Miniatures also has numerous fantasy lines of 1/72 scale miniatures. They are close, but are on the small side compared to 28mm minis, but if you've got nothing they are very cheap, $10-12 for a mixed set of 20-30 minis. www.hobbybunker.com/products/caesar-miniatures-116/mfg
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Post by sgtslag on Feb 17, 2015 16:10:59 GMT
To save money, there are a few options which can drop the price, per figure, to below $1: Prince August Fantasy Molds (set-up costs are high, but the 'per figure' cost just keeps dropping...); Mage Knight (prices vary considerably, on e-Bay, and elsewhere; scale fluctuates, but typically in the 25-30mm range); 1/72 scale Caesar Fantasy; and 1/72 Dark Alliance fantasy. For Prince August Fantasy Molds (true 25mm), the start-up costs include the mold sets (good for around 500 castings each, before the molds deteriorate to the point where they need to be replaced) at around $15/mold set; a smelting pot, with heater element, around $30-$40; metal to melt and pour into the molds (tire weight lead is free, from auto repair shops; Model Metal gives much better detail, but it is around $6.75/bar, which yields around 35-40 figures). It is fun to cast your own figures, but it's a lot of work. The 1/72 scale (23-25mm tall) fantasy miniatures are all injection molded plastic. They average around $17 per set, delivered to your home, for typically 36 figures per set, or $0.47 per figure. I've purchased several sets of both Caesar Fantasy, and Dark Alliance figure sets. I love them! They are incredibly affordable, very easy to paint, and you can build armies with them, for less money than any other option, barring Prince August molds and casting free lead. Here is a link to Caesar Fantasy mini's sets (Dwarves, Elves, Undead, Orcs, and Adventurers set). Here is a link to some of the Dark Alliance sets available: Elves, Orcs, Orc Warg Riders, Dwarves, and even Undead are available. The advantages of PA molds, or the plastic 1/72 figures, aside from cost, is that they are smaller: easier/faster to paint; terrain is smaller; and, storage is easier. Cheers!
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Post by adamantinedragon on Feb 17, 2015 17:16:46 GMT
A few years ago I went on a quest to attain large numbers of miniatures. Prior to that quest I had about two dozen miniatures, mostly 25-28mm "hero" miniatures I used for my PCs, with a few NPC or monster miniatures. Part of my quest was to do it on the cheap. Within about six months I had close to 2,000 usable gaming miniatures. Here's how I did it: 1. I got some "Sculpey" polymer clay and just made some crappy miniatures, threw a half-ass paint job on them, and PRESTO, kobolds and goblins by the dozen, followed by beholders, trolls, etc. Almost all of the miniatures below are miniatures I made out of Sculpey or Super Sculpey: 2. Ebay is your friend. Or it was mine anyway. I did searches for "RPG miniature lot" or "D&D miniature lot" or "Mageknight lot" or similar searches and found people selling scores of miniatures from MageKnight and other miniature game systems (HeroClix, etc.) for a song. I ended up purchasing almost a thousand Mage Knight miniatures for a total investment of around a hundred bucks. 3. I found a source of "Ceaser" brand miniatures where I could buy sets of 25mm armies for about $7 a box, and I bought all of these for about $50 or so, as I recall. 4. I found a toy store that sells bags of dinosaurs, bugs, wild animals, sea creatures, etc for ridiculously low prices. I go to US Toy ( their website is here) because they have an actual brick and mortar close to my house. I use the miniatures I get there (usually for a quarter or less per miniature) for summoned animals, for woodland creatures, etc. But I ALSO do what I call "Frankensteining" where I take different parts of animals and use epoxy putty to create mythological creatures or my own custom monsters like these below: 5. I repurpose on-sale promotional miniatures for gaming, like these "How To Train Your Dragon" minis I bought for a song from Target when they were clearing out their inventory after the movie had faded from the box office: Finally, here is a photo I took about a year ago of my collection as it was then. If you look closely you can see that I use just about anything I can think of, including, on occasion, origami. I guess the best advice I can give you is just to let your creativity flow.
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Post by sgtslag on Feb 17, 2015 18:29:05 GMT
Here is another blog site, dedicated to inexpensive miniatures for fantasy gaming: Cheap Fantasy minis! Cheers!
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Post by rane on Feb 17, 2015 20:34:41 GMT
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Post by veracocious on Feb 17, 2015 22:10:53 GMT
Reaper bones minis are decently priced and fantastic looking. Coolstuffinc has some there. You can rebase mage knight and heroclix for sure. It all depends what you're lookin for. I'd go with reaper first. Coolstuffinc all the way!
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Post by DnDPaladin on Feb 17, 2015 22:14:45 GMT
i stayed with d&d official figurines and found out that you can get a lot of them for less then 2$. i built myself a good base army for like 50$ ! goblins, bugbears, hobgoblins, orcs, Gnolls. some of them were in the 99cents bin they had at my store. and the others were like 1,5$ so i seriously got a good base.
i'd check that out if you can, but when it comes to monsters they are usually cheaper then heroes. the heroes is what costed me a lot. but monsters from the original d&d and pathfinder figures are worth it. now anything size large and higher may cost a lot more then 2$ they range from 2$ all the way up to 20$ and the huge creatures and above are all 5$-50$ so they are not worth it. so like me go for reaper bones and the lkes.
i have about 500$ worth of figurines. i also got a lot of sales off the black friday which made all figurines 50% of their values. so that was definitely something for me. and seriously im at a point where i should start checking for toys and hero clix and stuff like that. but even the official figurines are worth it depending on what you search for.
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Post by quinntheviking on Feb 18, 2015 1:25:22 GMT
Good advice all around. And amazing collection, Adamantine. Bought a little bag of pirate and ninja figures from Wal-Mart today for five bucks. 90 pieces total, think I might repaint and rebase them tonight. Gotta' start somewhere.
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Post by adamantinedragon on Feb 18, 2015 4:09:19 GMT
I highly recommend picking up some Sculpey or Fimo polymer clay. That stuff is amazing. You can do a lot more with it than you might think. You don't have to sculpt from scratch, you can use it to do simple mods of your existing minis as well.
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Post by Alexis on Feb 18, 2015 6:23:21 GMT
I highly recommend picking up some Sculpey or Fimo polymer clay. That stuff is amazing. You can do a lot more with it than you might think. You don't have to sculpt from scratch, you can use it to do simple mods of your existing minis as well. I absolutely love Fimo for crafting. I have never tried making miniatures though. Sounds kind of hard making something so tiny look good.
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Post by halloweenville on Feb 18, 2015 12:32:20 GMT
$10.00 Bucket of fantasy Characters they also have Pirates & Skeletons, Dinosaurs, medieval, and a few others
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Post by curufin on Feb 18, 2015 13:47:18 GMT
MegaMiniatures was always my go to for cheap pewter minis. Although there were 25mm scale, they were super cheap ($1.50USD or less) and many were from the old Ral Partha and Grenadier mini lines. Not to mention they had animals, carts, and all the dungeon décor you could possibly want. Of course, DM Scotty and DMG have shown us how to make much of that for far less money... Sadly, a couple of years ago, MegaMiniatures closed its doors and sold off many of their master molds.... Doing a little Nancy Drewing, I found out that Turnkey Miniatures is now offering much of what MegaMinis was. Minis are still less then $2.00 a piece with free shipping over $50. Also, the guy from MegaMiniatures has been doing some Kickstarter(ing). I just backed his latest one: Dungeon Decor 2. Already funded and many of the stretch goals already met (come on measuring scale!) I have been looking for those sitting patrons for several years...
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Post by runningwolf on Feb 18, 2015 14:38:18 GMT
for the cheap end I have found a semi-local place that has the common heroclix for 50 cents each. It might be worth trying to look at some of the ccg places nearish you if they have a bin like the place I go to. With a repaint or a simple mod you can turn the minis into fantasy, modern or sci fi ones usable for games. I went that route because it is hard to find sci fi minis.
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Post by bloodchoke on Feb 19, 2015 0:56:59 GMT
Adamantine, your owl bear is perfect! I would have guessed it was an old ral partha era sculpt, not a frankensteined toy. And thanks for the link, Rane. Been wanting several of the Wrath of Ashardalon minis, so gonna be ordering from there soon.
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Post by adamantinedragon on Feb 19, 2015 3:01:17 GMT
Thanks bloodchoke. I crafted the arms out of green stuff. If you look at that middle horse frankensteined into a pegasus, you'll find that owl's wings.
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