Nunae

Thanks for the tipps! Since English isn't my first language I gotta ask though: the round split shot is ... fishing supply? And the Hematite beads are gemstones? I only found jewelry with those, in what context are they sold individually?

Well, I did get them all at once for Christmas (my father got a bit overly excited with me wanting to paint minis, since it's the only hobby I have he understands). They all came in one big box, and I don't think they ever froze. What's puzzling me is the fact that the more green a color has, the more problems it has.

Hey there, I've a problem with a few of my paints. I'm using Vallejo game colors and I'm happy with them, but some bottles just keep separating, even though they're all stored the same way. Greens seem to have the most problems. I'm already shaking them quite well, but I don't seem able to get those colors out of the bottle the way I want to. At this point I'd really appreciate some pointers.

I don't know your kid, so what I'm saying might be completly wrong for him, but most elementary school kids I know don't exactly love following instructions. Choosing his own colors and miniatures might be something he really enjoys. That way, he can be creative and proud of his unique end results, instead of feeling like he had to make it look like in the pictures and didn't manage to do so. Or feeling like he has to get good at something or finish the tutorial before painting what he wants to. Getting his own paints and brushes might still be something nice as a gift.

Well, I'm trying to wrap my head (and story) around a player who wants to come back to the campaign. I first started to build a DnD group 2.5 years ago, only with my bf and a friend from high school, who coincidentally moved to the same city as I in tow. The latter was super hyped for the whole idea, he always wanted to play, but it's kinda hard to find groups around here, since DnD isn't translated into our language anymore and so on. Long story short, he brought a friend from his uni, I asked his sister (who isn't really the 'nerd' type but super into fantasy novels) and finally the two guys that know each other from uni brought another of their fellow students. Scheduling was always a huge pain, since my high school friend is super busy and his gf doesn't like him playing DnD with us. She always demanded some sort of compensation for the saturday lost. We ran through LMoP pretty much scheduling around him, but it worked okay-ish. We then started our new campaign in January, and all the players made new characters for the first time. They were all pretty excited, especially the high school friend, since a lot of them never connected with the premade they picked. I took some time to talk each character over, and when I got to that high school friend ... he hadn't even started looking at the books. We created a human sorcerer together, which took ofc way longer than what I'd planned. He promised to fill in the blanks (like a name for his character and some back story elements). Well, he turned up on the first session without a name -.- Which was pretty golden, since he complained about wanting to RP more and people staying in character and similar stuff before. He then decided to drop out after the first session, which was kind of a blow. Sooo, he NOW wants to come back, but his character isn't with the party ofc. It might also take some time for them to come to some sort of hub and join up with him, since they are in the middle of the Underdark right now. I offered to have him play a NPC that is with the party right now, and message me to talk about his character and what had he been up to (and finally a name maybe?). He did not do that. He also let us know in group chat yesterday morning, that he wouldn't be joining us for our session, since he only wanted to play "his" character. Needless to say, I'm kinda annoyed and not really motivated to let him play with us. But at the same time, I do like him, and we're all friends with him. Also, I kinda fear he will bring down the group a bit, which has been developing into a more RP focussed team quite nicely, and he tends to be the type who ridicules and laughs when he is embarassed by a situation (but still demands more role play). I'm kinda at a loss here. Whoops, that got longer than expected. Sorry. /vent over

Mine are in the mail and will arrive Monday/Tuesday. I agree on the white vs grey plastic. As much as I love bones, they photograph rather poorly and I've heard people being disappointed when receiving theirs, bc they don't look like much unpainted. It's a different story painted ofc, but seeing Bones and those Wizkids minis hanging side by side in a store, the impulse buyer type would probably go with the Wizkids ones.

Hmmm, shipping from Germany? I might pick up one of those when they get into general retail, it's nice to not be the one to pay insane shipping fees for once.

Wow, those are better reviews than what I've had hoped for. Has anyone here actually put some paint on his/her? Would be interesting to see. Though I'm not in a rush I guess, since my retailer still states "preorder" and "unknown release date" ...

Since I don't have any childhood collection of miniatures to fall back on to, Bones are pretty much the only way for me to get some sort of monster repertoire build up to throw at my party. We played DnD before for quite some time with just paper tokens, but at some point I couldn't resist the miniatures any longer. We still have some paper stand ins for monsters though. The players where all allowed to pick their miniatures from the website of a domestic retailer, who carries multiple brands. Most ended up with Reaper metals, one actually picked a Bones miniature, one a Darksword one. Though it was mostly about finding the character with the right race-gender-weapon combination, and Reaper just has a lot of options. Oh, and I DO have some older miniatures. My bf had a short Warhammer phase as a kid, and now I own some old GW Orcs and Knights. Not sure how much use the mounted knights will have, but you can't go wrong with Orcs. Plus, 2 of them are actually fully painted, and a lot more half-way. With some minis he even apparently got sick of in the middle of priming.

That may be because their prepainted line looks alot like the MM art, in many cases. I never held one of the prepainted ones in my hands (since I hate booster packs with a passion) but they look not-so-great. But making the same sculpt, just slightly better, would probably be weird.

Are there bigger pictures of the Meanders 1 maps? I was excited about the Cavern/Underdark ones in your original link, since that's kinda what we use most atm. More maps never hurt though ^^

As a DM who just recently started using miniatures (and is still using mostly paper stand ins for monsters) I love that Wizkids is making these. Even if they're not of great quality, they're cheap enough for me to buy the monsters and fill the roster. So far I mostly own Bones, which are great, but it's always nice to have more options. Plus, they might release some of the DnD copyrighted creatures. Since the 5th edition supposedly brought in so many new players, who don't have the traditional "nerd heritage" (and tons of miniatures from previous generations or hobbys laying around), it's probably a smart move to get into the whole "affordable starter line" thing.

Am I blind or is there nothing about shipping costs?

Doesnt Dwarven Forge of a European distributor? Problem with this European distributor is, they don't have nearly everything. For example, right now they just have 1 set of the medieval building stuff, which is prepainted and fairly expensive (85 £). And shipping to a country other than the UK is still pretty expensive. Sadly, they seem to have some sort of exclusive deal, since I can't find Dwarven Forge anywhere in the usual German miniature online shops.

Thank you for your answers! I suppose releasing them in smaller groups each month is healthier for me as a customer as well, since I'm pretty sure I couldn't afford to buy everything nice at once anyway. Now I'll just hope the things I want the most won't be released dead last, and that the local retailers will pick everything up in a timely fashion.

How long did it take with KS1 and 2 to get the Bones into retail? I'm kicking myself over not backing these (well, okay, I wasn't planing on getting miniatures in 2015) and the ones from KS4 will probably take another 2 years. I actually have less than 20 minis to paint left =/