Pre-Painted Pathfinder Miniatures from WizKids
May 25, 2011 by beerogre
So Paizo Publishing have teamed up with WizKids to make some pre-painted fantasy miniatures for Pathfinder!
Does anyone remember the old pre-painted miniatures from D&D?
I do, I have 5 bins full of them after my brother used to win all the local D&D Minis tournaments at the local gaming shop. But what happened to them?
Well, the story goes that D&D pulled the plug on production when the change to 4th edition caused the minis game (which effectively became the combat system for D&D 4th edition) to lose a stack of competative following, leaving it in a state where only really collectors were interested in the figures.
If you take the time to look on eBay you can still find them, but they can be a silly price for some of the most basic models.
So why the move back to pre-paints... we'll we discussed in TURN 8 how Reaper Miniatures are doing some good work on the pre-painted miniatures front... and lets be honest. This miniature actually looks pretty good.
But this is only one image and it's no doubt a master copy.
How will the rest of the range fair?
... and more importantly... will you be interested in buying any of it?
Needs Dip! 😉
All miniatures need dip! 😀
Looks like Disney’s Aladdin.
Considering where that character’s from (a nation that seems a bit based on Persia), it’s no surprise:
http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Kyra
didn’t wiz kid go under years ago?
and why no work about youtube?
@tookeywhy The recent events concerning YouTube are still being looked into. But in the meantime we are pretty much up and running at full strength again hurrah!
Wizkids almost went down, but didn’t – they were bought by another company. They are responsible for Heroclix which is still going strong with Marvel and DC comics figures they also do Halo figs and will be doing Gears of War figs. I note it doesn’t say if these will be random packs or not. Wizards of the Coast experimented with non random prepainted minis and it was a bit of a disaster. Nowadays if you are looking for DnD minis try out their boxed games like Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon which have plenty of unpainted figures in… Read more »
Don’t really like random boxes.
Unless you have a bunch of mates to do swapsees with, it can be very irritating for the customer, if a good way of selling more boxes for the makers.
Interesting to know whether the fact that the non random boxes bombed due to the minis or that they were non random. Probably answered the question myself ie swapsees with mates = more sales
Actually the stylisation of the figure and the colouring suggests a graphic style (like Lloyd suggests)
Personally I would not dip this model (depending if other figures are similarly styled)
Then again I like anime, Japanese woodblock prints and Persian miniature paintings. The aesthetic is somewhat reminiscent of those.
Andy is still gonna dip whatever I say! lol
Hell yeah. I finished running my D20 Iron Kingdoms campaign a few months ago and in that time I used nothing but IK / Warmachine figures.. so when I got the chance to play “vanilla” D&D, I was looking forward to checking out what Reaper and the WoTC D&D figure line had to offer. One of those sources was ultimately disappointing. Much like the Star Wars miniatures, the D&D figures looked pretty good at a distance but only had a serviceable paintjob.. but if you’re a GM you probably aren’t going to care about that if you need a pool… Read more »
PS – Aladdin totally needs a dip 😉
Noooooo! Dip ye not Aladdin 😛
Looks like I am on my tod on this lol
I hate boosters. I prefer to paint mine and be of metal than to have one in cheap plastic at random.
I got a box full of the “old” D&D miniatures. For me they are a good source for the monsters where I can’t find good alternatives (especially very unique monsters like the boneclaw).
Although there are some miniatures I have because I like them.
As a GM, I would probably want each player to try and get a nicely detailed and painted metal mini for each of their characters. If they don’t know how to paint then they could pay someone (like my friend Sam) to paint the character for them. However, I would LOVE to be able to buy five and 10-packs of skellies, orcs, kobolds and etc. in pre-painted plastic for the NPC hordes. I don’t know why no one (except Reaper) seems to get this. I just Reaper would work quicker.
I’m not into pre-paints but this does look pretty good. I’m sure a great many gamers will enjoy using these pre-paints and more power to them. I can certainly see how this would save a lot of time for a GM.
I tend to repaint my prepainted mini’s when i do by them. I always like the Japanese prepainted mini’s of animes. They seem top quality compared to some of the other prepainted I see over the years.
I’ve bought mountains of pre-paints, both from WizKids and WotC, so I pretty much know the lines. The image above is a guide for the Chinese painters to work from, and the finished product will not look anything close to that. They’ll be just passable, at best. Don’t expect that high a level of quality (and that level isn’t very high, so you can see where I’m leading). Also, from the statement, this is just a test arrangement. The minis WizKids makes are for one product. Paizo may continue the deal after the release of their boxed set, but they… Read more »
Erik Mona of Paizo has a little bit more information about the figures: “Erik Mona (Publisher) To clear up a couple of points, the announcement covers a single set of non-random preprinted plastic minis that will be sold as a separate item from the Beginner Box. The minis are designed to be used for the Beginner Box, but are not included in the Beginner Box itself. I certainly hope that the set is a big success and we do more products with WizKids, but for now we are talking about a single set of non-random minis. I have seen the… Read more »
I’m off the opinion that you can’t spell prepaint without repaint 😀
You are just taking the p! lol
I’m a bit confused. Reaper has the license to make metal pathfinder models right? and reaper makes nice prepainted dungeoncrawl models already right? So why did they give the prepainted license to wizkids??
My experiences with wizkids models has been less than stellar and I know reaper makes top quality stuff so I am firmly on reaper’s side. Plus, I dont want them to lose the license to wizkids before I can afford that dragon.
As to why not use Reaper pre-paints… slow production. Take a look at the number of releases per year…. decent enough models, but not nearly enough of them, for how many years of work?
Reaper is keeping their metals license, but the pre-paints are being moved over to a company with a much smaller turn around time.
With regards to reaper, Vic Wertz (Co-owner of Paizo) had this to say: “Vic Wertz (Technical Director) Reaper has known we’ve been interested in prepainted plastics for a long time, and if they’d come to us with a plan for a prepainted line that they felt could succeed, we’d have been very inclined to let them try. As we’ve said, this agreement with WizKids is for one product only, and while its success (or lack thereof) may well create implications for the future, for now, that door is still open. Either way, it doesn’t change anything when it comes to… Read more »
As some who really enjoyed the D&D minis for there easy of use I am really loving this!
That and have the Iconics as charaters fantastic!
The sculpts, everything, I have nothing but praise for this!
I like the idea of prepainted stuff to get out on the dungeon floor straight off the bat – no messing and it doesn’t look odd having plastics wandering around, breaking immersion…but I have to say I wasn’t too impressed with the WotC models and their paint jobs. This one looks alright, will be interesting to see more of them.