New Minis Day

The new miniatures set from WTOC was released last week on April 4th, but around here we don't get things into our FLGS for nearly a weekk after the release date.

I broke my boycot and ordered three cases, which should arrive late this afternoon by FedEx.

The boycot after the last set was because the quality was so horrible in the minis, and the miniatures themselves seemed to have taken a much bigger step toward "toy" than "miniature" in the sculpting. It was not over the transition to DDM 2.0, since I never played DDM anyway. I used them to support my 2nd Edition RPG sessions.

I'd been looking at the previews of the new set on the WOTC website and decied I would give it another try. You can see the gallery here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mg/dxd

Judging by the gallery images, there is less detail, poorer paint jobs and a more cartoonish feel to the miniatures than previous sets. Still, there are some interesting miniatures that I know I can immediately find uses for in my game. I am done worrying about collecting complete sets, but there are some minis in this set that I'm very eager to have on my shelf and then incorporate into play.

These include:

• Ascendant Hellsword
  
• Balhannoth
  
• Deathjump Spider
  
• Dwarf Warlord
  
• Eye of Flame
  
• Giant Centipede
  
• Gargoyle
  
• Oni
  
• Young Red Dragon
  
• Vrock
  
• Young Silver Dragon

These, in spite of their paint jobs, are all interesting minis. I am also very glad that the centipede and the spider are commons, and hope I get a pile of them. I think that I will use the deathjump spider as a Retriever.

I should probably wait to see the minis in hand, but judging from the gallery, the following minis from the new set look terrible. I am at a loss as to what goes into the decision making in terms of what miniatures to make in each set, these are either ones that we've already seen, and seen done better, or will require me to spend hours inventing a reason to have them in my monstrous ecology.

• Angel of Valor
  
• Bulette
  
• Champion of Baphomet (how many minotaurs do we need????)
  
• Dire Wolf
  
• Grick
  
• Griffon
  
• Hook Horror
  
• Ice Archon
  
• Runecarved Eidolon (this piece of crap is a RARE??? Hopefully I won't get one.)
  
• Spectral Magelord
  
• Troglodyte Bonecrusher
  
• Wyvern
  

So, there you have it, more WTFs than WOWs, and the rest are yawns. I didn't mention the orc, the bugbear, the gnoll, and the mind flayer because I can find use for them and might repaint them...but man, they suck. I just can't get over how much they feel like toys instead of game pieces...meaning, made for a demographic who doesn't care about detail, quality, or artistry. These are a lot closer to Marx playsets than Ral Partha figures.

I know, I'm so hard to please. And the days of highly detailed renderings of 2E artwork are gone, gone, gone.

Still and all, I'm actually excited about the delivery of the cases, and with a modicum of luck, I'll be thrilled rather than disappointed.

I'm also planning to pick up a starter set and actually learn how to play DDM 2.0. I think that having a non-randomized set of miniatures exclusive to the DDM 2.0 starter sets was a brilliant idea. Since I never played the first DDM game, I don't have a problem with transition, and since I have to buy the starter set anyway, I might as well try out the game system. That was never something that occured to me with the original game, because I never had any motivation whatsoever to buy a starter set.