Have you ever checked out Capcom's Monster Hunter Plus figures? Crazy paint jobs, amazing monster designs, table top scale, and about 8-10 dollars each if you buy a set. Much cheaper on ebay with coupon stacking.
dwarven forge also sells expertly hand painted miniatures. Mostly groups of humanoids. 12 Ratmen (Skaven) for 42 $, for instance. That makes 3,50$ per hand painted miniature. And they have pretty decent paint jobs, actually.
Great video. However, the lighting could have been a lot better to bring out the colour and detail of the minis, that's all. For aesthetics minis in general are great but for gameplay and functionality I don't think you can beat homemade tokens. Just simple flat cardboard tokens (and plastic counters) which you can number and colour correspond. This makes things so much easier and more practical in-game.
Pre-painted are not more expensive than unpainted or other options. They are however more expensive than bulk buying unpainted miniatures through something like a Reaper Bones kickstarter run. I've tried local, I've tried online, i've tried individual and bulk, and the best deal for building a collection from scratch is to buy a booster brick or two of Icons of the Realms or pathfinder equivalent (8 boxes of 4 minis each). Usually this comes out to $2.85 per mini or so, a difficult price to beat considering you're getting a mix of rare and common miniatures of all kinds across each set. As an example, my Tyranny of Dragons booster brick gave me a TON of full size dragons, bought individually these would have been well over the cost I paid.
Good job on the video, interesting to see some of the new/old mini comparisons. We've got full reviews of a bunch of the D&D and Pathfinder sets here: gravengames.co.uk/tag/wizkids/
I like your video! maybe you can check warcraft minis (and mage knight for more options of unexpensive minis. The warcraft minis are bigger but it's not a problem for monsters-
reaper miniatures are a very good price especially if you go for the bones collection which are plastic instead of the usual metal that they use. I bought some PC minis from a seller here in the uk. Specific minis are difficult to find but there are plenty of comparable ones. For instance i used an elf cleric for an elf bard as they didnt have any male ones. No instrument but a simple enough design to pass off
another option for storing minis I've seen is putting magnets on the bottom on the minis and storing them in a metal toolbox or something similar. That way you don't have to worry about them getting damaged or jostled around while you travel.
I think you did a good job overall. I was kind of caught off guard how many times you stressed how high PPMs cost. And yes, some rares are silly dumb. But you can also pick up some for under what a metal figure plus paint would cost you. I think videos regarding other lines such as Heroclix would be worth discussing. I think you should also touch on various toy lines that are out there such as Safari. Anyway, great start.
+Dafrca I should have been clearer that my perspective comes from the market changing recently. Just a few years ago you could get common single minis on the secondary market for less than a dollar. Now the average price is around $2.00 per mini. Very common minis for less than $1 are only available on sites like Auggies that don't offer free shipping. Back in 2011 you get get them anywhere. The old wizards line was about $2 per mini in the blind boxes. Even with the 2 new lines of minis the average price for the new blind boxes is $2.50 - $4 per mini depending where you by them. And getting blind boxes for $10 or less generally requires waiting for a sale or preordering. Even sites like miniaturemarket are now raising the prices of boxes for more that $10 after the release date. Don't even get met started about the insane rise in prices on ebay. You just have to be a careful consumer to get any bang out of your buck nowadays. I will definitely do a whole series on Safari and schleich. Heroclicks is actually something I never actually went into as an alternative because you have to buy individual minis to get ones acceptable for fantasy minis. Mage Knight and Horror clix on the other hand have a ton of potensial.
Check out the Heroclix lines on some of the sellers you suggested. I picked up 28 minis and they averaged out at $1 each. It would have been less but I did buy two that were over $3. I rebased them and they fit right in with no issues.
+Blandco Here are two old photos I took to show some of my rebased minis. Not all are Heroclix but more than half are.i109.photobucket.com/albums/n43/dafrca/RPG%20Images/Rebased_02_zps3b76d7aa.jpgi109.photobucket.com/albums/n43/dafrca/RPG%20Images/Rebased_03_zpsadd22525.jpgBut yes, you do have to be picky. :-)
Not sure why it combines the two into a single odd link. :-(Let me try this again....i109.photobucket.com/albums/n43/dafrca/RPG%20Images/Rebased_02_zps3b76d7aa.jpgandi109.photobucket.com/albums/n43/dafrca/RPG%20Images/Rebased_03_zpsadd22525.jpg
If you are a DM then you could just buy some miniatures and get some things to use as place holders for monsters you don’t have, and then you can make a campaign using the monsters that you have in your collection. Also if you are running a pre-made campaign then you can just switch out monsters for others if it fits.
Generally they are both 28 MM heroic but the warhammer miniatures will sometimes be a bit bigger. Generally they still fit in pretty well. You can google search size comparisons and do a bit of research but I use Warhammer miniatures with D&D prepainted and unpainted miniatues and they all work fine on the table. I did a whole video comparing some of the other wargaminging minis with D&D stuff.
+Jason Umberger I actually just got done making a cast of a Beholder from the Grenadier's Dwellers Below pack! I have a huge collection of lead and pewter miniatures but I will probably talk about the wizards of the coast Chainmail dungeons and dragons minis in a video soon because it's my favorite line of metal minis.
I have recently ordered stuff from both Coolstuffinc and Miniature Market because of the amazing sales they both had during Black Friday / Christmas. I just checked Auggies and they continue to have very competitive prices on single miniatures. So yes. For Prepainted stuff I would say they are still my favorites. Ebay prepainted prices have gone higher so now it takes even more digging to get a deal.. If you know of any other stores let me know.
Troll and Toad is really hit and miss. Awhile back I got some excellent deals on large MageKnight minis. But I have never seen very good prices on anything else because of their high shipping costs. I honestly haven't bought anything from that site in awhile.
Gotta hit Coolstuffinc when they do daily sales on booster bricks or pay more and order the bricks when they first come out. Other than ebay coupons those 3 sites are the cheapest sources for prepainted D&D minis on the web.
Auggies sells out super quick. You just gotta get notified by the larger sites when stuff gets in stock and keep checking for new releases. Auggies is a smaller store so they can't restock as much as other places.
I am not sure what you are referring to. If I mentioned it as another game that uses grids then I am talking about Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Second Edition. That was the best one IMHO and worked well with a grid map. There were never any prepainted Warhammer minis made that I can recall.
