Accessory Week Day 1: Icons of the Realms vs Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- I touched on this in an earlier video, but I thought I'd go into a little more detail as to my thoughts on the Icons of the Realms miniatures versus the Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures
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I'm mixed on buying the booster packs in general. One of the big downfalls is that the paint jobs in some of these sets are horrible. I'm not a master painter by any means, but I can do better than some of their sets. Aside from that, I feel like I generally only buy them in hopes of getting a rare dragon, a rare giant, or something along that line. Otherwise, I can pick most of the other ones I want off Ebay without spending what I would spend on a booster. I still haven't pulled anything really rare or expensive, so I might give up on the boosters at some point and just pay a bit more on Ebay. I do like the Marvelous Miniatures I have picked up so far, but my backlog in miniatures to paint has me holding off on buying more unpainted ones unless I find an amazing deal or something hard to come by. Now, that Beholder might change my mind. Thanks for sharing your opinions on this matter.
Without even listening to this in full, it's Nolzurs over the pre-packaged and randomized "boosters" every day all day.
The boosters can be pricey and unsatisfying. Their scale is very small, and the painting is poor at best (often with odd colour choices). There was little chance of getting heroic miniatures (things the players could use), so that meant that many players STILL had to go out and buy single figures to get something they could use.
Nolzur's take more work, but their scale is better and the detail is outstanding. I would rather use a grey and unpainted Nolzur's over the pre-painted crap.
Still struggling to find a male Teifling that's NOT a sorcerer (or equivalent) outside of ONE Reaper mini. Good luck finding a Gnome that not a Wizard or a Halfling that's not a Rogue.
Nolzur's, however, seem to be expanding beyond the tropes. I was challenged with finding minis for my new group of players, some of which were not the standard choices for character class and race combos. Despite that, Nolzur's were there for me, and I found a female Drow with a LIGHT (not hand) Crossbow for my daughter and an Elven Bard with a Lyre for my friend Darren (whom you MIGHT know...). Good Warlock minis are hard to find, but one of the two Sorcerer minis had what was supposed to be a "catapult spell throwing rocks", and I painted it as a purple tentacle with eyes. Worked well.
Overall, the selection is still small but growing, and if the quality continues, I will likely always take this route on minis in the future.
I have tried ordering Reaper in bulk in the past, but they screwed up my order...ask me if THAT got resolved... Still, I may have no choice in some cases when it comes to certain minis. Their selection of Giants is far superior to WoTC, as are their Ogres and such too. My Dragonborn (Dragonmen) are all Reaper as well (which is fine by me, as they actually have TAILS...which I think is awesome, as well as logical). Their dragons (especially in Bones) are cheaper than anything Gail Force Nine will offer and are a fraction of the price with a better scale than the WoTC assortment.
My local shop put the price up on everything lately, so the Nolzur's went from $6.50 to $9.00 each. Will still collect Nolzur's...just not there anymore.
I should also add on that I always paint my own minis, and tend to repaint even the WoTC ones
I really want to get back into painting, one of these days I buy some paints. I did find my brushes recently.
@Mike Gould
An understandable choice. Personally I'm glad that Reaper and Nolzur's products do exist for everyone that's eager to grab a "Hero" Figure they can use for their games. At this point its practically recommended seeing as how the pre-packaged boosters are a really expensive option. However! I want to make myself clear, if you can't paint your stuff, then don't... And Don't bother Buying Loads of Unpainted Miniatures that your not going to get to!
Believe me, its a pain in the ass for a guy like me to even try and finish up what I've started painting up! I've never painted Miniatures before, and finding professional help on the matter adds to this chore that I've needlessly dug myself into.
On that same note, if your a DM, than getting the pre-painted boosters are your best bet in getting a mixed bag of monsters to add to your games, pricey as hell but effective, especially if you don't have time or the skill to paint them miniatures, still...if you have the means to look online for most of these Miniatures, than do so. Cause when it comes down to you and the money your willing to spend, you should always seek the cheapest products for D&D.
@@danielramsey6141 yep I agree completely. Painting isn't something I have the patience for. Even though unpainted is better, it's just too much work. I personally recommend Pathfinder Pawns. Cardboard cutouts. It's cheap and there's plenty of options.
Damn! Our shop sells Nolzur's for 4.95 a piece!
comic book store in my city sells those unpainted ones. lol, I just picked up the mindflayers and the beholder. I love these figures too!!!
I sometimes like to buy the randomized ones, for the "thrill of the hunt" or whatever you wanna call it... but i usually found the paintjob to be disappointing, to say the least... then I found out about Reaper Bones and Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures... I LOVE 'EM! I can't wait to paint my puppy: the rust monster!
my only gripe with the DeepCuts/Nolzurs miniatures is i wish they'd give you a male and female variant in the same package instead of two of the same in different poses.
That is actually a really great idea.
The other minis is suppose to represent the same pc at higher lvls
There's a very easy way to get the best of both worlds concerning pre-painted booster boxes. A number of sites offer all the Icons of the Realms and Pathfinder Battles miniatures but they are sold singly. The shop opens the booster packs and sells off the miniatures. No randomness, no lucky dip, you know exactly what you are getting! My favourite site is Miniature Market, the awesome thing about them is that shipping for these miniatures is $0.99. I've ordered a ton of them from the UK and the International Shipping is still only $0.99 per package. As an example, I order 4 to 6 miniatures (to avoid Import Duty) and it comes to under $18.
Prices range from $1 for commons and up to $20 or more for some rares but you can get a huge selection for just $2 or $3 each. Some of the Large miniatures still only cost $2 or so.
why not open them? People are way to obsessed with collecting for value. Open, paint and enjoy.
I'm keeping the Beholder sealed because I want that just as a collectible, as for the others I don't have any paint, so until I do I don't see a point in opening them
yeah I use to collect them back in the early 80's and 90's when they were all lead and pewter I'm sure there worth a ton now but fuck that I loved having to put them together prime them and paint them. That was half the fun was finding a badass mini than painting that fucker up :)
WARNING do NOT paint these straight out of the box. that goes for the deep cuts and reapers as well. they may be primed, but they need to be washed with soap and water first. the sculpts can contain a release agent that keeps them from sticking to the mold and this will make your paint scrape off!
That is very good information, thank you for sharing that.
wash right out of the package? You'd better wash them gently in soapy water before you paint them.
I'm about to run storm kings thunder soon so I bought a brick of random on amazon. (8 of the 4 in a box, 32 total) for $100. That comes to 3 bucks each. Was fun to open, I pulled 6 giants, and all are ready for the table. Just saying sometimes the bulk buy works out.
I dont think ill even find players here , and still ordering few just for the hobby painting side of it.
Can i bring my own minis to help my DM make stories if i find one in time ?.
Where im at, most games, including mad mage are ~ in 60-90$ max.
Books cost more than the actual games in some stores..weird
I totally agree with the Nolzur's mini's (and their Deep Cuts siblings) being the better value. My preference for collection is orcs and I find the random boxes tend to be way too hit or miss on getting any orcs plus when I do "strike gold" the prepainted orcs generally look pretty poor quality in sculpt and painting.
Your soooo right the Invisible minis are such a fucking scam, they used to do the random minis alot better back in the 2000's
I get it you can get some awsome choice of creatures and characters than for the price they want for randoms and you may never get the more rare ones like with my luck with waterdeep hiest series
Just curious do you know of any Canadian online retailers who sell these DND miniatures? I have been trying to find alternatives to Miniature Market and Coolstuffinc. Thank you!
I don't personally order much online, but I do know that 401 Games based out of Toronto has an online store store.401games.ca/collections/miniatures-pawns I hope this helps.
I both different sets but the nolzurs are way cheaper
I'd be genuinely happy to pull that frog. Otherwise yeah, randomization sucksa dn Nolzur's are better.
I guess one problem with the booster packs these days are that the wage of the painters/workers have risen. So to keep the price down they put less in the boxes. They use the same tactic in Denmark with packs of candy :-) I have never been a fan of boosters, be it cards, figures or computer games. Otherwise I would have bought a lot of miniatures, just to avoid all that painting. I don't care that they is not painted that good, since it mostly half dark, and people are rolling dices and shouting galore, so they do not admire them close-up anyway. It is the 'you know what you are getting' that make all the difference.
Well done sir! Thanks for your feedback and we agree the unpainted ones are the way to go. Now to make time to paint :). Be blessed - Frederick & Jennifer
My icons are like 12 dollars
I agree with everything you said. I've bought 2 boosters in my life and will never buy one again. The two boxes I got had the same 4 miniatures in each of them! I love the Nolzur's line, plus I get the joy of actually painting them!
I agree with what you said. I will be getting the unpainted from now on. I paint better than Wizkids anyway.
They really only seem to put effort into their ultra-rare figs, like Acererak, and even then they are not much better than what I can do (and I am very basic when it comes to painting)
This is the one area of DnD I have not touched yet, preferring to use dry erase maps instead of minis. I would love to do minis, but the cost is quite expensive, especially since I can't paint so I normally am stuck with pre-colored ones if I wanted to pick them up.
Use pawns from Paizo. much cheaper. about $50 for 300 monsters from small to huge
I like both lines a lot. I like painting Nolzurs. But when I get Icons minis I don't tend to buy too many blind boxes. I just buy the singles I want from Troll and Toad.
That is a much better way to do it. I bought two blind boxes so far and only pulled one mini I would have wanted
The unpainted miniature are phenomenal! The detail is amazing, truly.
Yea, I got a Wizkids beholder!
Nice! It is still had to find in my area.
@@DravenSwiftbow hard to find everywhere
I think there's a happy balance between random minis and the unpainted ones. Now, I buy and paint the unpainted ones all the time. A majority of my minis are now ones I painted, but I still occasionally get the random boxes. In a perfect world I'd buy one random box for every four unpainted packs. Why? Well, a good example I like to bring up is one time a day before I ran our weekly game, I bought a random box. Inside I got a mimic. My players were a low enough level that i got the idea of having a mimic encounter, and I did the very next day. That encounter was the highlight of that evening! Ok, sure, you can get unpainted mimics, but with unpainted ones I generally grab stuff I know I need as well as heroic minis. Of course too be fair I wouldn't use the random boxes to get all the goblins and heroic minis I need either, though I'm happy when they show up.
Long story short, I think they serve different purposes. Even though I paint a majority of my minis, I still like getting the random boxes to get stuff I normally wouldn't or couldn't with the unpainted minis. Why just last week I got a frost giant and got a lucky Triton warrior mini. I still can't find unpainted Triton's or tabaxi, maybe soon though.
I agree, but for me the price of the random minis is too high for what is in the box, especially since the previous random minis were the same price, but had twice as many figs in the box. I think they could easily include six minis in the box for the same price. If they did that then the random minis would be a lot more worth me spending my limited resources on
I think the difference in prices between Canada and the USA aren't helping things either. The random boxes here are generally $16, which comes to $4 a mini (or about $5 canadian), which I think is more on the reasonable side for a prepainted mini. Especially considering buying that Triton miniature online would cost at least double that right now. But that's neither here nor there.
Edit: Actually, looking at prices online, if I were to turn around and sell the minis I got from my last random box, I'd make more then what I paid. I'm NOT reselling them, and I know that's not typical and was just a fun fact I noticed.
The difference in price is a major issue, here in Nova Scotia they retail for $22-23 plus tax which is 15% making each mini putting the cost of each around $6.30. On the other hand the non random minis are usually $6 for a pack which often has two minis in it
Yeah, that's.. less then great.. I also forget about sales tax (I live in a state without sales tax, so I guess I'm spoiled). Wont argue that the unpainted minis are a better cost per mini though, but you have to take into account the time it takes to paint them. Though even with the cost of paints and time, it's still probably less then $6.30 a mini at that point.
I shudder thinking of all the money I spent at Cool Worlds on random D&D minis.
The Wizkids unpainted minis are a great value. Some nice sculpts also.
Wait, Cool Worlds as in Wolfville NS?
DravenSwiftbow
Yes.
We used to play minis every friday, and I was in a couple of your sunday night d&d campaigns.
Hey man, it's Kristian.
Oh shit! Hey Kristian, how have you been?
DravenSwiftbow
Good man, How is life in the city?
I really like it, we are in Dartmouth and the part that we live in feels more like a large town than a city. Plus Giant Robot Comics is only about a 20 minute walk.
Lucky you, I want that Beholder haha!
That seems to be the single hardest mini to find. There are four game stores where I live and none of them can keep the Beholder in stock. I was luck to go in when I did since they just unpacked their order, but even then they only had two left
Me and my son bought 2 booster packs a couple of weeks ago. Got a Mindflayer and a Beholder. :)
Awesome! I've been trying to find a second Beholder, but no one has any more where I live
I finally found one and am in the process of painting it
If only the miniatures in Boosters came with Dungeon Command or D&D Adventure board games cards, at least it would add some value. Even with the old DDM cards. DDM boosters now are like overpriced/not worth the money, better buy singles online, or those in Nolzurs collection.
You say miniatures funny