Hello, I just got into Dnd and I'm trying to get a couple of friends into it as well. Since I am an unexperienced DM, I would feel a LOT more comfortable in combat, adventuring, interactions, etc., if I had some minis, and I'm sure my players would feel the same. I've been looking everywhere, HeroForge, Miniature Market, WizKids, but I can't find nice and affordable townsfolk or monsters, such as goblins or something. Where do I find them? Am I searching in the wrong places or is there no such thing as what I'm looking for? Help would be much appreciated.
Miniature Market is probably your best bet for getting more affordable stuff, but there's not really a good place to just get a lot of generic tokens at a cheap price that are of good quality. If you don't mind lower quality, you can buy packs of toys online at places like Amazon. Like, here's a simple pack of 56 low-quality minis.
I mostly play digitally, but my brother swears by Meeples (here's a link to some on Amazon). They are just tiny little barely humanoid-shaped wooden figures, but you get a ton of them for fairly little money and they come in a variety of colors. You could, for example, have a goblin raid set up, and just declare that all the Yellow Meeples are townsfolk and all the green meeples are Goblins, and maybe toss in a few red Meeples and declare them to be Hobgoblins. Or if the party is getting ambushed by a group of bandits all with different skills and abilities, you can use a different colored meeple for each one so the player could basically say, "I'm going to cast Sleep and aim it to get Green, Blue, and Purple all in the area of effect".
If you've got a printer, you could also invest in some thicker printer paper and print out some paper minis. These can be made relatively simply... there are resources online for some, but they're not hard to make on your own just by folding paper and maybe using a bit of glue or a stapler.
You can get nice minis, or you can get reasonably priced minis. There is really no such thing as a reasonably priced nice mini. (You get what you pay for.)
You might find something nice enough and less expensive if you try looking for minis intended for a game called Age of Sigmar (formerly called Warhammer Fantasy). That game is by a company called Games Workshop which is owned by Hasbro, the same company that owned WotC. It’s a miniature war game so it requires a loottt of minis, and GW’s stuff is really nice and really expensive. (Like, $35 for 20 unassembled, unpainted goblins, when you would need closer to 100 minis to start half of an army.😱) So there are lots of smaller companies that make pretty nice yet less expensive minis “absolutely not intended to infringe on GW’s IP at all” (wink, nudge, hinthint).
Also, Mini War Gamers are plastic crack junkies, so in order to partially find their hobby habit lots of people buy the models to make an army (for somewhere around $500-$1,000 no joke), assemble and paint them to standard (which is a requirement RAW), and play it until they decide they gotsta have something else. Then they take that army which cost them another couple hundred dollars in supplies and likely a couple hundred hours of their time to assemble and paint, and sell it on eBay for half of what they spent on just the models.
GW also makes a LotR mini war game called “Middle Earth.” I’m less familiar with the 3rd party and secondary markets for that game, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you found whole armies of those minis dirt cheap on eBay too. Plastic crack junkies are just like any other addicts. It’s a sickness after all.
No kidding, over the years I have heard of at least 2 or 3 people who either defaulted on their mortgages and/or had to file for chapter 11 because of their mini war gaming addictions. I know recovering heroine and crack addicts who kicked the monkey off their backs easier than that.
It's hardly "affordable" for everyone, but I work almost exclusively with Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures. One of my cost mitigation strategies is to chose a few versatile minis that I'll leave unpainted, and then paint "exemplars" for when I need a specific boss/NPC.
So, for example, I have 3~4 unpainted goblins and 3~4 unpainted kobolds which both fill the role of "small humanoid", which makes it easier to run small mobs without having matching minis for each and every monster. They're detailed enough to look like "creatures", but low enough contrast to be hard to identify without picking them up and looking closely. Then, I'll use token bases or dice to represent background characters.
It's kind of like the principle of Foveated rendering. High resolution where the user is focusing, and decreasing resolution toward the periphery.
For small/medium creatures, you could also consider smaller chess pieces, which are tailor made for symbolically representing an army.
It's hardly "affordable" for everyone, but I work almost exclusively with Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures. One of my cost mitigation strategies is to chose a few versatile minis that I'll leave unpainted, and then paint "exemplars" for when I need a specific boss/NPC.
So, for example, I have 3~4 unpainted goblins and 3~4 unpainted kobolds which both fill the role of "small humanoid", which makes it easier to run small mobs without having matching minis for each and every monster. They're detailed enough to look like "creatures", but low enough contrast to be hard to identify without picking them up and looking closely. Then, I'll use token bases or dice to represent background characters.
It's kind of like the principle of Foveated rendering. High resolution where the user is focusing, and decreasing resolution toward the periphery.
For small/medium creatures, you could also consider chess pieces, which are tailor made for symbolically representing an army, and about the right size.
Plus if you don’t glue the little round bases on them, you can just use a pen to write a number on the bottom. Helps keep track of which mini has what hit points as you go thru combat
I make my own paper minis, but I also sunk a lot of time, effort, and money into doing that.
For player characters, if I don't find art that matches the character, I create them in Heroforge and take a screenshot (PRO allows a capture with transparent background, which makes it a lot easier).
I then use GIMP to touch up contrast and color brightness for the print, and add a black border around the edges. Then I import the character picture into my Cricut software and add a base, mirror the figure to have front and back. Then I print-and-cut on the Cricut and glue the mini together (gluestick is much better than 'wet' glue).
If you already have access to a cutting machine, this is really nice and the minis come out beautifully.
Alternately, tokens are a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to make a good representation of monsters and PCs. I just use Word to size and print out the art, and a 1-inch paper punch gets the cut perfect every time. If you want to upscale your token, you can use 1-inch domed epoxy stickers, that are usually used to make bottlecap jewelry. It's simple and effective, and even looks good on the map. (works best if everyone is using tokens, if someone uses 3D minis, they look a bit 'flat' in comparison ;)
Skinny Minnis are pretty awesome. I bought into the Kickstarter and they worked really well. They are very good quality, pack up super easy, and look very nice. They are pretty cheap as well. 10 USD for 12 figures in a single sheet set.
Downside. They are flat. They are 2D figures with a different front and back image.
They will take care of your needs and you can get a variety of figures for about 1/5 of the price for cheap miniatures. 11 guards + 2 dogs is 9.95 USD. That would be about 60 for a good quality pack. The really good part is you can get Large & Huge miniatures for not much more 8 large is about 20 USD.
I'm a fan of pieces of paper or card and plastic stands. They are cheap and easy to use. Once you know you are gpoing to do this hobby seriously then you can start going for plastic minis, and maybe even get into painting them yourself.
Minis can tend to be pretty pricey, especially if you are looking for a good variety.
Some options
1) You can get cardboard minis with plastic bases. These are basically a colour picture folded over in a plastic base. The pictures often look pretty good. They are typically both plentiful and inexpensive. They also don't need painting.
2) Game stores both online and neighbourhood will have a wide selection of miniatures for varying prices. However, most come unpainted, require a lot of work to finish nicely and still are not inexpensive. The pre-painted ones on the other hand are usually truly expensive.
3) One source of minis are the D&D boardgames. There are several of these out there, each comes with a significant collection of reasonable quality painted minis. I know of people who have purchased the games just for the minis since it is relatively cost effective and since they are already painted - additional work is not required. Some of the games are actually pretty good too though I haven't played any myself. (If you can get these games on sale it can be an even better deal just for the minis).
4) Some folks 3D print their own. I'm not sure what the per unit cost works out to be - they still need painting but if you already have access to a 3D printer it might be an option.
Hello, I just got into Dnd and I'm trying to get a couple of friends into it as well. Since I am an unexperienced DM, I would feel a LOT more comfortable in combat, adventuring, interactions, etc., if I had some minis, and I'm sure my players would feel the same. I've been looking everywhere, HeroForge, Miniature Market, WizKids, but I can't find nice and affordable townsfolk or monsters, such as goblins or something. Where do I find them? Am I searching in the wrong places or is there no such thing as what I'm looking for? Help would be much appreciated.
Affordable assumes you have a budget, and my question is what is affordable to you? Mini's for Dnd can indeed get to be pricey if you are trying to get a whole tribe of orcs. It costs about $60 US for a set of townspeople from Wizkids deep cuts. For decent quality, unpainted mini's sets like that are a good start...if 60 is your price point. But as pointed out, sales on Amazon Prime can help here.
Another option is to build it over time, which is what I did. If you don't mind randomness you could look at a service like Magic Mini Mystery Box, but its reasonable for my budget. They also have a store if you are looking for something specific. Magic Mini Man also has a store. I took this approach, and I have more than enough mini's. But it is random, but 35
I would only use Heroforge for key characters you care about; its probably the most expensive way to build a collection.
3D printing has a large up front cost, and does take some finishing work to do. I'm not convinced its a cheaper method with the cost of materials, but I'm not an expert on it. I value my time enough that I will do the painting, but I don't want to do the printing.
While this isn't as expensive as a Warhammer army, it can get pricey. Is it necessary to have fun? Nope. I played in a campaign where all the opponents were plastic circular tokens.
Pathfinder (another ttrpg) makes huge boxes of hundreds of cardboard "pawns" for their monster manuals (which they have a TON of) a DM that I play with uses them for everything
What sort of price range would you say is affordable to you?
I've always been quite fond of the stuff from Reaper Miniatures - their prices for unpainted plastic figures generally range from $2.00 to $10.99 depending on what you're after - you can search their Fantasy category by race, weapon or clothing. They have a few packs with multiple figures, like packs of Townsfolk containing 3 minis for $5.99 - $8.99 or six goblins for $3.99
If you don't mind having lots of odds and ends, you can also buy tons of jumbled boxes of miniatures on placed like eBay - I've frequently picked up a box of 50-100 miniatures for bargain prices. Usually containing a mix of painted, unpainted, a few that need arms and legs glued back on and other strange bits.
If you have Car Boot sales where you live, those can also be a good place to pick up bargain boxes of random miniatures... and books!
Pathfinder (another ttrpg) makes huge boxes of hundreds of cardboard "pawns" for their monster manuals (which they have a TON of) a DM that I play with uses them for everything
This is what I use—or used when I was playing in person rather than online. I also stole the pawns from our Sorry! Game and used those.
An alternative to minis is to use something like roll 20, you can move around the map. If I am playing in person I have a monitor the party can all see, or I lie a flatscreen TVs on its back so they can look down at it.
Nolzur’s Marvellous Unpainted Miniatures are fairly cheap; for 5 bucks you can get 3 small, 2 medium, or 1 large minis. You will have to paint them (just use cheap acrylic paints from your local art store), but they are affordable (in relative terms), and pre-primed. Most of my minis (they’re in the hundreds) are Nolzur’s. Reaper Bones are also pretty good, and there are several board games that come with lots of minis, Wrath of Ashardalon being the best, as it has a lot of really nice, classic creatures. Legend of Drizzt is good for an Underdark campaign, and I don’t know what Temple of Elemental Evil is like, since I don’t have it. As well as getting a lot of minis, these board games also come with a lot of dungeon tiles, so I’d definitely recommend getting one (again, Wrath of Ashardalon is the best). Normally, I just buy minis a week or two before I need them. All of this should be available at your local game store at an affordable price. Hope this helps!
I'm actually quite a good figure painter, i'm really good at it. But yes, nolzur's is best. Also, best store to get them at is Atomic Empire. I don't think it's national though. It might only be in Durham.
Noble Knight Games has a large selection of loose, second-hand minis for sale. You can find some that are really cheap, especially if you go for some minis to old games that nobody's really into anymore: nothing wrong using cheap Mage Knight or Heroclix figures on your table.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Probably not everybody’s cup of tea, but I kickstartered skinny minis (https://skinny-minis.com/collections/monsters-villains) for filling out my non player tokens. i was very happy and it looks like they are selling direct now. Works out to about 80cents per humanoid. Great artwork, but they are 2d on stands.
Pathfinder (another ttrpg) makes huge boxes of hundreds of cardboard "pawns" for their monster manuals (which they have a TON of) a DM that I play with uses them for everything
I have four boxes of the Pathfinder Pawns, plus half a dozen of the smaller packages and they really make a difference on the tabletop. The price was reasonable enough, I think I spent a total of $300 or so over a couple of years and now I have about 3000 figures I can field at any one time.
Another option is ArcKnight--they make flat plastic minis but are a bit more expensive than the Pathfinder Pawns.
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Hello, I just got into Dnd and I'm trying to get a couple of friends into it as well. Since I am an unexperienced DM, I would feel a LOT more comfortable in combat, adventuring, interactions, etc., if I had some minis, and I'm sure my players would feel the same. I've been looking everywhere, HeroForge, Miniature Market, WizKids, but I can't find nice and affordable townsfolk or monsters, such as goblins or something. Where do I find them? Am I searching in the wrong places or is there no such thing as what I'm looking for? Help would be much appreciated.
Miniature Market is probably your best bet for getting more affordable stuff, but there's not really a good place to just get a lot of generic tokens at a cheap price that are of good quality. If you don't mind lower quality, you can buy packs of toys online at places like Amazon. Like, here's a simple pack of 56 low-quality minis.
I mostly play digitally, but my brother swears by Meeples (here's a link to some on Amazon). They are just tiny little barely humanoid-shaped wooden figures, but you get a ton of them for fairly little money and they come in a variety of colors. You could, for example, have a goblin raid set up, and just declare that all the Yellow Meeples are townsfolk and all the green meeples are Goblins, and maybe toss in a few red Meeples and declare them to be Hobgoblins. Or if the party is getting ambushed by a group of bandits all with different skills and abilities, you can use a different colored meeple for each one so the player could basically say, "I'm going to cast Sleep and aim it to get Green, Blue, and Purple all in the area of effect".
If you've got a printer, you could also invest in some thicker printer paper and print out some paper minis. These can be made relatively simply... there are resources online for some, but they're not hard to make on your own just by folding paper and maybe using a bit of glue or a stapler.
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You can get nice minis, or you can get reasonably priced minis. There is really no such thing as a reasonably priced nice mini. (You get what you pay for.)
You might find something nice enough and less expensive if you try looking for minis intended for a game called Age of Sigmar (formerly called Warhammer Fantasy). That game is by a company called Games Workshop which is owned by Hasbro, the same company that owned WotC. It’s a miniature war game so it requires a loottt of minis, and GW’s stuff is really nice and really expensive. (Like, $35 for 20 unassembled, unpainted goblins, when you would need closer to 100 minis to start half of an army.😱) So there are lots of smaller companies that make pretty nice yet less expensive minis “absolutely not intended to infringe on GW’s IP at all” (wink, nudge, hinthint).
Also, Mini War Gamers are plastic crack junkies, so in order to partially find their
hobbyhabit lots of people buy the models to make an army (for somewhere around $500-$1,000 no joke), assemble and paint them to standard (which is a requirement RAW), and play it until they decide they gotsta have something else. Then they take that army which cost them another couple hundred dollars in supplies and likely a couple hundred hours of their time to assemble and paint, and sell it on eBay for half of what they spent on just the models.GW also makes a LotR mini war game called “Middle Earth.” I’m less familiar with the 3rd party and secondary markets for that game, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if you found whole armies of those minis dirt cheap on eBay too. Plastic crack junkies are just like any other addicts. It’s a sickness after all.
No kidding, over the years I have heard of at least 2 or 3 people who either defaulted on their mortgages and/or had to file for chapter 11 because of their mini war gaming addictions. I know recovering heroine and crack addicts who kicked the monkey off their backs easier than that.
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It's hardly "affordable" for everyone, but I work almost exclusively with Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures. One of my cost mitigation strategies is to chose a few versatile minis that I'll leave unpainted, and then paint "exemplars" for when I need a specific boss/NPC.
So, for example, I have 3~4 unpainted goblins and 3~4 unpainted kobolds which both fill the role of "small humanoid", which makes it easier to run small mobs without having matching minis for each and every monster. They're detailed enough to look like "creatures", but low enough contrast to be hard to identify without picking them up and looking closely. Then, I'll use token bases or dice to represent background characters.
It's kind of like the principle of Foveated rendering. High resolution where the user is focusing, and decreasing resolution toward the periphery.
For small/medium creatures, you could also consider smaller chess pieces, which are tailor made for symbolically representing an army.
Plus if you don’t glue the little round bases on them, you can just use a pen to write a number on the bottom. Helps keep track of which mini has what hit points as you go thru combat
More Interesting Lock Picking Rules
Skinny Minnis are pretty awesome. I bought into the Kickstarter and they worked really well. They are very good quality, pack up super easy, and look very nice. They are pretty cheap as well. 10 USD for 12 figures in a single sheet set.
Downside. They are flat. They are 2D figures with a different front and back image.
They will take care of your needs and you can get a variety of figures for about 1/5 of the price for cheap miniatures. 11 guards + 2 dogs is 9.95 USD. That would be about 60 for a good quality pack. The really good part is you can get Large & Huge miniatures for not much more 8 large is about 20 USD.
I'm a fan of pieces of paper or card and plastic stands. They are cheap and easy to use. Once you know you are gpoing to do this hobby seriously then you can start going for plastic minis, and maybe even get into painting them yourself.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Plastic-Game-Card-Stands-Multi-color/dp/B01N4OGX2F
There are many places on the web to get papercraft minis, both free and paid. For example https://printableheroes.tumblr.com/
Minis can tend to be pretty pricey, especially if you are looking for a good variety.
Some options
1) You can get cardboard minis with plastic bases. These are basically a colour picture folded over in a plastic base. The pictures often look pretty good. They are typically both plentiful and inexpensive. They also don't need painting.
2) Game stores both online and neighbourhood will have a wide selection of miniatures for varying prices. However, most come unpainted, require a lot of work to finish nicely and still are not inexpensive. The pre-painted ones on the other hand are usually truly expensive.
3) One source of minis are the D&D boardgames. There are several of these out there, each comes with a significant collection of reasonable quality painted minis. I know of people who have purchased the games just for the minis since it is relatively cost effective and since they are already painted - additional work is not required. Some of the games are actually pretty good too though I haven't played any myself. (If you can get these games on sale it can be an even better deal just for the minis).
4) Some folks 3D print their own. I'm not sure what the per unit cost works out to be - they still need painting but if you already have access to a 3D printer it might be an option.
Affordable assumes you have a budget, and my question is what is affordable to you? Mini's for Dnd can indeed get to be pricey if you are trying to get a whole tribe of orcs. It costs about $60 US for a set of townspeople from Wizkids deep cuts. For decent quality, unpainted mini's sets like that are a good start...if 60 is your price point. But as pointed out, sales on Amazon Prime can help here.
Another option is to build it over time, which is what I did. If you don't mind randomness you could look at a service like Magic Mini Mystery Box, but its reasonable for my budget. They also have a store if you are looking for something specific. Magic Mini Man also has a store. I took this approach, and I have more than enough mini's. But it is random, but 35
I would only use Heroforge for key characters you care about; its probably the most expensive way to build a collection.
3D printing has a large up front cost, and does take some finishing work to do. I'm not convinced its a cheaper method with the cost of materials, but I'm not an expert on it. I value my time enough that I will do the painting, but I don't want to do the printing.
While this isn't as expensive as a Warhammer army, it can get pricey. Is it necessary to have fun? Nope. I played in a campaign where all the opponents were plastic circular tokens.
Good Luck and happy hunting!
Pathfinder (another ttrpg) makes huge boxes of hundreds of cardboard "pawns" for their monster manuals (which they have a TON of) a DM that I play with uses them for everything
What sort of price range would you say is affordable to you?
I've always been quite fond of the stuff from Reaper Miniatures - their prices for unpainted plastic figures generally range from $2.00 to $10.99 depending on what you're after - you can search their Fantasy category by race, weapon or clothing. They have a few packs with multiple figures, like packs of Townsfolk containing 3 minis for $5.99 - $8.99 or six goblins for $3.99
If you don't mind having lots of odds and ends, you can also buy tons of jumbled boxes of miniatures on placed like eBay - I've frequently picked up a box of 50-100 miniatures for bargain prices. Usually containing a mix of painted, unpainted, a few that need arms and legs glued back on and other strange bits.
If you have Car Boot sales where you live, those can also be a good place to pick up bargain boxes of random miniatures... and books!
This is what I use—or used when I was playing in person rather than online. I also stole the pawns from our Sorry! Game and used those.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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I suggest the one inch bingo/mini poker chips from amazon at around $6.
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An alternative to minis is to use something like roll 20, you can move around the map. If I am playing in person I have a monitor the party can all see, or I lie a flatscreen TVs on its back so they can look down at it.
Nolzur’s Marvellous Unpainted Miniatures are fairly cheap; for 5 bucks you can get 3 small, 2 medium, or 1 large minis. You will have to paint them (just use cheap acrylic paints from your local art store), but they are affordable (in relative terms), and pre-primed. Most of my minis (they’re in the hundreds) are Nolzur’s. Reaper Bones are also pretty good, and there are several board games that come with lots of minis, Wrath of Ashardalon being the best, as it has a lot of really nice, classic creatures. Legend of Drizzt is good for an Underdark campaign, and I don’t know what Temple of Elemental Evil is like, since I don’t have it. As well as getting a lot of minis, these board games also come with a lot of dungeon tiles, so I’d definitely recommend getting one (again, Wrath of Ashardalon is the best). Normally, I just buy minis a week or two before I need them. All of this should be available at your local game store at an affordable price. Hope this helps!
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I'm actually quite a good figure painter, i'm really good at it. But yes, nolzur's is best. Also, best store to get them at is Atomic Empire. I don't think it's national though. It might only be in Durham.
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Noble Knight Games has a large selection of loose, second-hand minis for sale. You can find some that are really cheap, especially if you go for some minis to old games that nobody's really into anymore: nothing wrong using cheap Mage Knight or Heroclix figures on your table.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Probably not everybody’s cup of tea, but I kickstartered skinny minis (https://skinny-minis.com/collections/monsters-villains) for filling out my non player tokens. i was very happy and it looks like they are selling direct now. Works out to about 80cents per humanoid. Great artwork, but they are 2d on stands.
I have four boxes of the Pathfinder Pawns, plus half a dozen of the smaller packages and they really make a difference on the tabletop. The price was reasonable enough, I think I spent a total of $300 or so over a couple of years and now I have about 3000 figures I can field at any one time.
Another option is ArcKnight--they make flat plastic minis but are a bit more expensive than the Pathfinder Pawns.