Icons of the Realms Minis

I finally picked up ten boxes of the Icons of the Realms minis sets, and if you've been on the fence about whether these are worth your time, here's some opinions from a "mid level" minis collector....someone who doesn't expect to devote a princely sum to securing a complete set, but does want a nice range of interesting minis to use at the game table when the time comes for it. Although I'd prefer to never use minis, many of my players like them and it can be useful at times. So....some comments:

First, the paint job in the Icons of the Realms starter set wasn't nearly as nice as the actual regular boosters. The six iconic heroes were fine, but the effort clearly went into the regular boosters.

There are 44 unique minis, and a range of exotic rares, including clear plastic "invisible" figures. Each box includes four figures, one of which will be a large figure. In my boxes I managed to get a pretty decent range of figures, and a couple rares. I snagged one invisible figure (invisible Drizzt) which my cohort at the gaming table (who IS a "gotta have it all" minis collector) did not have.

Because these sets include 4 figures per pack it is much harder than in the old days to get large numbers of the commons....so the idea of amassing large numbers of orcs, goblins, kobolds and others for which lots of commons are handy is simply not feasible from buying the boosters, or at least not as easy and definitely more costly.

The paint jobs on the figures are very nice. The sets often include separate stands, clear tubes for the flying figures, and these require a bit of perseverence to properly mount. Glue might be handy to have.

I felt like I got a decent range of figures out of ten boxes. Of the ten boxes, two had errors: one came with five figures (nice) but one was missing a clear stand tube, so the wyvern it came with was grounded.

Will I get more? Maybe. Hard to say, honestly....after a discount from the FLGS I still spent close to $150 on the ten boxes which worked out to about $3-4 per figure. You might be better suited to perusing Ebay if you just want to collect singles, and if you want hordes of certain commons. I might pick up a couple more boxes at random just to see what I get, but I have to say, I think they should put more medium and large figures in these boxes, and stay are from the very large figures, maybe reserve those for special non-collectible sets. Six to eight normal figures feels like a more useful investment for my game table, sort of how the older sets (i.e. Harbinger) did it. But...this is Wizkids doing it under license for WotC, and Wizkids knows what they are doing, I suppose. They might have the volume:value formula down right for their primary audience, and honestly, I'm a bit cheap when it comes to buying minis.

For the paint jobs and range of figures over ten boxes I give this a solid A. for the dollar value and the likelihood you can get a complete set without spending a lot of money? Definitely a C-.

Off the Grid

I posted the following over on rpg.net a couple days ago but expect it will be buried deep in the middle of a long thread on why we all hate the grid/mini mechanics. Started, of course, by one of the 4E fans who doesn't understand why people might have issues with the 4E methodology, or why a system which gives you an immensely elaborate combat system and then skimps on everything else might seem a bit weighted toward a certain style of play. Anyway....to preserve my response, I offer it up here:

I never, ever used minis for any game prior to D&D 3.5, and only then it was because I started a group with an emphasis on minis gaming that went back many years. It was my first experience with a group of D&Ders who saw minis as an essential component of the play experience in 2003, and it was quite a contrast from the way I had played the game for two and a half decades, in which the only time I ever gamed with or knew anyone who ever used minis for anything was an occasional old crusty DM at a convention using his ragged tape-bound 1E AD&D manuals. Still, 3.5 seemed to need it, so I worked minis in to the experience and even got into collecting the prepainted ones.

My experience from that period (2003-2005) was a mixture of fond memories of the overall game coupled with what I considered an unavoidable slowdown of the actual game experience due to the time and energy that setting up and carrying out the grid combat took. Battles were no longer a part of the story, they were a separate deal unto themselves. Still....I got used to it, even though I felt like I had migrated to a different universe where my favorite game was strangely different and a bit hostile toward the way I wanted to enjoy it.

I threw myself wholeheartedly into 4E because it made the grid combat more fun (at least for the first few levels of play) but it was a "solution" to a problem that was artificial: it "fixed" 3.5 grid based combat by getting rid of the possibility of gridless combat entirely and making every rule, ever, about the grid. I could still do gridless with 3.5 so long as my players were up for it; I couldn't do it in 4E without serious house-ruling and chucking out entire swathes of the game design.

Still, 4E worked great as a grid/minis RPG but it became apparent after a while that the game's focus on elaborate combat was at the expense of everything else; it was a game about combat, with other stuff getting lip service. It had a minimalist skill system, few rules or guidelines for how anything worked outside of battle and a ritual spell system that was onerous in its application, discouraging players from using it to resolve conflicts. It was a game about providing all sorts of solutions to 3.5 problems that were only problems in the first place because 3.5 ignored the more pragmatic older edition methodology in favor of its own codifications.

As a non grid/minis example of how 3E chucked out old design limits that were effective: the spell caster as all powerful quadritic wizard phenomenon was created because of this. One of the reasons wizards got so tough in 3E was because the game effectively stopped paying attention to preparation times and the real, actual cost of spell ingredients that had been a requisite to casting so many spells in 1st and 2nd edition. These were in-game story limits, so they didn't fit with the design theme of 3E, but they were very, very good limitations when correctly enforced.

Anyway.....I am now of a mindset where I am used to a map and minis and we play Pathfinder fairly fast and loose, using the board when it makes sense and resolving other combats when it does not. However, the prospect of a 5th edition D&D where I can run the entire game the way I used to do AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, without ever once seeing a solitary miniature except for general tracking purposes, has me utterly smitten. I can hardly wait!