It's like Hors D'oeuvre Rage
So, we got in our order of Pathfinder Battles miniatures
today. We don’t get to sell them until the 11th, but I got to take a
look at them and I have to say, I’m not particularly impressed. It seems that
the good folks at Paizo haven’t learned much from the mistakes Wizards of the
Coast made in their own miniatures lines, and in fact are moving further from a
model that would actually be useful to the consumer.
The product is a single random miniature per box, at $5 a
pop, or a larger miniature for $7. The paint job is mediocre, the sculpts are passable,
and the price point isn’t terrible. What rankles is that they’re a single
random miniature per box.
Game Masters, the people who are known to buy the most
role-playing game product, do not want random miniature packs, guys. As a
person who stands behind the counter at a game store, I hear this refrain
constantly. As a Game Master myself, I understand their lament. Game Masters
don’t want random anything, they want a sack full of painted goblins. They want
a sack of Generic Evil Dudes. They want a sack of zombies.
That last is great, because it’s a product that actually
exists, one that was rather popular. It wasn’t for role-playing games, though,
it was (unsurprisingly) for the board game Zombies. And they had their shit
figured out, guys. They made a sack of zombies, and they sold a bunch of them.
Then they made zombie cheerleaders and zombie dogs and zombie clowns, and all
of those sets sold really, really well. They weren’t even painted, and they
flew off the shelves.
And it’s not all that difficult to understand why. A sack of
themed dudes is invaluable in a role-playing game. It means you can buy a
single product and be ready to sit down and play. It means that you can throw
down with a bunch of similar baddies. If you’re going to randomize your
miniatures, why not make it like Chessex’ Pound o’ Dice? Throw a bunch of
random dudes in a sack and sell it as a separate product.
Players don’t want randomized miniatures, either. A player
wants to find that One True Miniature that perfectly captures his or her
character, that one miniature that says “Olgreth.” And buying a crapload of
randomized boxes is frustrating, expensive and generally futile. He or she ends
up with a bunch of miniatures he or she is never going to use.
So the product we actually need, the product we would actually
use, is three different products.
The first is a quarterly-released Sack o’ Dudes, a 100-pc. bag
of plastic miniatures around a theme. You only need about 5 different types of
monsters to make that worth it. Here’s your list for the first three years:
Sack o’ Goblins, Sack o’ Orcs, Sack o’ Elves, Sack o’ Dwarves, Sack o’ Warriors,
Sack o’ Mages, Sack o’ Cultists, Sack o’ Victims, Sack o’ Zombies, Sack o’
Kobolds (dragon-type), Sack o’ Oozes, Sack o’ Generic Evil Humans. You’re
welcome.
The second is a painted miniature with Pathfinder branding
that has a single miniature in it packaged like the pewter miniatures currently
produced by Reaper. Those miniatures will be the player character miniatures,
the Big Bad miniatures, the I-will-only-need-one-or-two-of-these miniatures.
Clear plastic in the front, cardboard in the back, pre-painted plastic
miniature in the bubble. Put out two or three of these every month. I already
bring in the Reaper Pathfinder miniatures, and I would happily put a
pre-painted, plastic alternative right next to them. And people would gladly
buy both. Some people like painting, and others want something they can use out of
the box. Providing both of those groups with good options is just good
business.
Finally, the third product is something akin to the D&D
Beholders and Dragons sets. A single-purchase item for a miniature or set of
miniatures that is fucking incredible. I want Colossal Red Dragons again. Or a
Jabberwock. Or a Bandersnatch.
This isn’t rocket science, and I’m really dismayed that this
product went all the way from design through to my storefront without someone pointing
out that randomized miniatures for role-playing games had been tried, and
failed. And when someone puts out a miniature line that
actually makes sense, you can bet that’s where my money will be going.
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