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Help Me Make An Episode on Finding Miniatures for Cheap! (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-23 15:49:58
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hi all. In past years I have made two very popular videos on how to get minis for cheap. It's time for a new one. Do you know of any board games besides Return to Dark Tower that offer a wide range of minis for a cheap price? I mentioned Massive Darkness and Hate in past  videos but those games are no longer available.

I am already mentioning the D&D stuff at Ollies. I am not going to talk about Kickstarters, Cardboard standees, or Print on Demand. I just want to know about board games that already exist and where to find them.

Thanks!

--PDM

P.S. Going for my medical procedure in 1 hour, but I am working until the last possible moment. Because I'm nuts that way.  

 

Comments

Phillip Dettmer

Although not for everyone, I have switched to using 15mm miniatures instead of the usual 28mm. I really like the miniatures from Alternative Armies, Splintered Light Miniatures and Ral Partha the Demonworld/Blighthaven range, which cover most of the Dungeon Master's needs! As a bonus, regular 28mm can be used, they're just really big: a wolf becomes a worg, a regular humanoid becomes a half giant, etc. For the fraction of the cost you get a load of cool and still distinct miniatures which surprising are a breeze to paint.

Lobster

Age of Mythology has loads of figures, from the product description, "600+ professionally sculpted plastic playing pieces representing the warriors, heroes, and mythical creatures of Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythology." Not all of the minis are great mind you and some have some odd bases/dimensions but most work well in my games. Honorable mention is the Dark Souls Character Expansion as well as the base board game, lots of great figures in those two.

David Ford

Good luck. Remember to ask for the good drugs

James Taylor

1) 3d printing 2) Avalon hill heroquest

Basil Cahill

Reaper Miniatures has some awesome deals and super nice sculpts. They have really upped their quality in recent years

Bill Carroll

Orcs must die! Arcadia quest 3d print patreons: 1 page rules, the printing goes ever on

Frank Lee

I'd say for DMs, Heroquest is probably the best choice right now. You get plenty of Greenskins and Undead, plus the game has quite a few expansion boxes with minis that are regularly found on sale. And it's definitely meant to have a D&D friendly aesthetic.

Adam

print out, glue to posterboard cutout and stick in a stand if you want . https://printableheroes.com has some for free but you could totally find an print anything you like.

Rob Bent

perry minitures has some good ones though they are all human from history but can work great as town guard and other such things.

Kevin Kelleher

Check out Magic: the Gathering's short-lived tabletop wargame spinoff, "Arena of the Planeswalkers" (and its two expansions, Battle for Zendikar and Shadows over Innistrad). The game was only so-so and not well supported by Wizards, so no one ever heard of it, both helping it to fail as a game but also to lower the cost. You can find them for less than $10 online, or for about $20 most places. Each comes with about 2 dozen extremely durable plastic minis, most of which are molded as a solid color of plastic, but a few of them are fully pre-painted. This means they are ready to go right out of the box, and I find that the solid-color monsters actually help to differentiate them from my PC's figures (and even other important NPCs) in that they are easy to visual distinguish at the table. By far the best value I've yet to find. Also, I am not a painter, so the fact that they are not just dull gray right out of the box is critical for me. Plus their generic color schemes make them extremely versatile.

Paul Volpe

The problem is that games are expensive, so buying them for minis is not effective --- unless you're getting them second hand from like Good Will or similar places. That said, here's a short list: Betrayal at Baldurs Gate (figures and tokens) Betrayal at House on the Hill (figures and tokens) Hero Quest Any Gloomhaven game or expansion

Raymond DeAncona

What about inexpensive sets on Amazon, some have repeat figures but the cost is less than a dollar per mini

Masterhit

If you are OK with 1/72 scale then the sets from Caesar Miniatures Fantasy line are nice. They used to be cheap - not sure anymore. You can make a TON of minis from each box. Not that varied though - like humans, orcs, trolls, elves, goblins, ratmen, undead, and lizard folk mostly. Definitely inspired by LOTR - in fact the adventurers are quite obviously so. Reaper puts out kickstarters every so often but they take a year to show up (at least). They are incredible bang for the buck and you can customize your pledge. I like the frostgrave/oathmark,stargrave sets. They mix and match and you can get very creative. They are just essentially humanoids. This is a rambling answer - lol and not to on point. I have bought two of the reaper KS sets and have more minis than I can ever imagine using or painting. I ended up selling a lot of them on eBay pretty cheap - so that's another place to check :)

K Ryz

Dark Souls board game

shaolinpunk

Blood Rage has a good selection, including a Frost Giant, Norse troll, Efreeti, and Norse Dragon as well as roughly 40 Viking styled of differing animal clans,

James C

I’m just waiting for a PDM garage sale. I kid. Sorta. Amazon has some cheap stuff but I don’t like buying them because they are generally knock offs and even though they cost a bit more, I like to support actual creators.

Todd Sharp

Anno Domini (if you can find it) has some cool miniatures for games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Think musketeers..

Todd Sharp

I've also had good luck just going to conventions and looking through the 'junk' bins that some vendors put out. Mismatched or orphaned miniatures from games can be found for a steal that way. Iron Wind used to see loose mini's by the lb in plastic bags..

Sinister Gaming

The old D&D board games like Wrath of Ashardalon. I bought all of those for cheap on Amazon and I'm still painting them. This box is going for 50 bucks right now and has dozens of mini's. Not mention named hero's in some of them like the Legend of Drizzt has Drizzt, Brunor, Guen. The whole lot.

Lobster
>>127728414

One other mini trick I like is to get bulk heroclix cheap, freeze them then use a knife to pop them off their bases (freezing makes the glue brittle) and then reglue them to cheap 28mm bases.

Chuck Thorin

OK here's my spiel. Reaper Minis. Good sculpts and decent prices. And you can order direct. $40 get a free "mini of the month". $50 Free Shipping. Also, I've gotten free overstocks of older Bones minis. Also, if order in October you could get (while supplies last) a Ghoulie Swag Bag. Free paint and Candy! Griffinco: They do 3d licensed printing. I got minis from them but was a little underwhelmed. They may have gotten better. But they do have some dirt cheap scatter terrain pieces. And I liked what I got. https://www.griffonco.com/ Tomb Guardians: Also do 3d but their own sculpts. Some are pretty cool like their cultists. The vampires had some pretty spindly arms. Some of the minis do have some pretty small contact points when try to glue them together. https://www.tombguardians.com/ Only Game (A My Mini Factory Co): Licensed 3d prints for a wide variety or artists and wide variety of prices. I just did my first order so haven't gotten the minis yet but did grab a up 30% off coupon so that saved some cash. https://only-games.co/ Also, find out when you FLGS is having a clearance sale. Like mentioned before, old Mage Knight minis are pretty good. That's where I got a bunch of them.

Jay

The Ravenloft Board game had dozens of minis and when I searched for it on Amazon several other D&D type games popped up with minis as well. Not much help I know but I don't have as much time these days. Happy hunting.

Declan Riordan

Amazon has HeroQuest "Quest Packs" for the $33-35 range. Each has 15 minis making them around $2 each with bases included.

Declan Riordan

WildSpire has several boxed sets on Amazon for $35-50 with 29-68 miniatures with a pretty good variety of races, monsters etc.

Declan Riordan

If you don't mind a bunch of repeats (which is sometimes what you want) there is House of Bodian on Amazon. 93 miniatures in 16 poses (durable plastic, if not greatly detailed) for $40

Declan Riordan

DRUNK'N DRAGON has a store on Amazon with minis for about $1 a piece and though it is limited I believe more sculpts are on the way.

Declan Riordan

Also, Mastic Games has miniatures for just over $1 each but you have to invest up front because the collections are $80-120. The quality is very good though.

Jesse Stanley

There are a few Descent board games all with good miniatures. Lots of cool boss monsters and packs of smaller monsters.

Graham Kane

Zombicide: Black Plague is a good one. You can get loose minis from the game chariot from China off EBay.

Trent Thompson

Mythic Battles Pantheon, with Pandora's box, and the new Ragnarok, is a great value for lots of super nice mini's. And its a great game to boot! You can find them on Kickstarter, their store, or on Ebay. Now you def can go down the rabbit hole with the expansions... but the minis are high quality. They just released Conan on Kickstarter and they are working on the Gods of Egypt next! I think the base MBP and Pandoras box came together with over 250 minis and terrain pieces for like $119 US. Some great Greek type monsters and PC minis! And the Deities and some of the big bads are twice the size of the standard 32mm models. Then there are the Titans! Absolutely HUGE! And everything includes a base with it. Something that is often left out. I highly highly recommend looking into it!

Larry Vieira

Dream Blade minis on eBay already painted lot sales can go for 1-2$ a mini

Joseph Blondino

The sequel to Massive Darkness is still available on Amazon.

Frank Lee
>>127830005

Yeah, Massive Darkness 2 is a great place to go now, especially if you got Massive Darkness 1 already.

NØKKEN_WAITS

oh man, I got seriously back into painting as stress relief and I am SO EXCITED to find some more lil adventurers and monsters to get table ready

Joshua Slavin

If you go the 2d token route, sly flourish has a nice post on making generic monster and tokens, it book ends well with the board game Othello where you can use Dry/Wet erase markers on the light side of the pieces to track monster/npc HP and Conditions. GW does put out occasional Boxed Board games like Cursed City (lots of undead and some unique BBEG), or Blackstone Fortress (Sci fi) . Alternatively if we're avoiding the 3d printing (a hobby in itself). FLGS may have other companies like Northstar Miniatures. I think Frostgrave, and some of their other lines are fantasy. Some even remind me of the Ray Harryhousen myth films like their Ancient Sekeletons box (bronze age hoplite shields and swords for Skeletons).

Frank Matthews

I don’t drink anymore but if you have fancy liquor bottle caps, save them! For example a noble NPC is a Crown Royal cap.

Firstspear

Tongue in cheek - find someone who is pissed at Mythic games after they screwed up their Kickstarter and wants to dump the stuff.

Christopher Gauci

Hey Prof!. As usual. Thanks for everything. I hope you are healing well. If you ever need advice let me know I'm a doctor, (anaesthetist, intensivist and expedition doc). Anyway.... So so curious to know more about your all at once initiative system. Once, a while back I play 5e like that a bit after watching one of your older episodes about not needing initiative. It mostly worked but at time I as the DM got confused. I mainly use the box d6 side initiative at the moment. Works well. Another way I tired back then (after my 5e no initiative phase ) was something I invented. Every round one player (different every round) rolled against the DM. (With mods (I used Dex +int) ) the winner goes and chooses the direction round the table. This was faster than listing initiatives in order., added a tactical element and also the randomness of whentm the monsters went. It worked well. I liked it but it's not as fast as the simple 2d6 side Initiative. I wonder what your thoughts are and on this ...as till this they I'm not settled on an initiative system I love. I tried many.. many more than the ones listed above. Those are just my table's favourites

Christopher Gauci

PS Prof. I want to thank you one day I person as thanks to you I learnt about so many other creators and Kickstarted many products one of which I got to write for (a DCC one) and although I constantly think about d&d ever since the 80s.. I never published anything.... I never thought it possible. It just did not occur to me. It's a little thing but I'm so proud of it and it's all thanks to you!

BrianV

Hey PDM, I think you hit it on the head with Ollie’s, but if you go into the board game isle, I found a 3 pack of models from Golem Arcana for 3.99! Minimal clean up and lots of uses. The board game isle has lots of other board games with minis. Also, CMON older games like Rum and Bones, Blood Rage, and Zombicide.

Erin Claxton

I just took a chance and purchased some wargame mini boxes from Red Box Alliance https://theredbox.com.ua/alliance.htm. Bought from an ebay toy soldier vendor. I think they are a Ukrainian company, you can find them in hobby shops that sell trains and other wargame stuff. Minis are 25mm scale, but do ok against my 28mm ones. Dwarves are really small compared to GW, elves are ok, but larger figures like the cyclops set and the knockoff LOTR trolls and balrogs are perfect, and best prices I ever found for fantasy minis. A little hard to clean up the trim before priming though.

Trevor Strugatsky

Eureka minis in Australia make cheap, original metal minis and have branches in US and UK. I know that's not the same as buying a boardgame to get super-cheap plastics, but for those looking for higher quality and originality, Eureka is at a great sweet spot with their low prices.

David Hoover

Local game store had 75% off on the expansion pacts for Song of Ice & Fire. 6-13 minis for $9. Not sure if just local or other places cutting the price. Starter set has a 100 minis for $60. Detail on minis is like the older Reaper Chinese minis.

Eric Mason
>>128338434

The ones on the website are 1:72 scale, so as you mention, a bit small compared to 25 mm. It's better described as 20 mm. If you stick to 1:72 scale miniatures for your collection, then it will all match, and it is much cheaper. (FYI 25-8 mm is about 1:76 to 1:64 scale depending on manufacturer, closer to the latter the more modern the sculpt.)

Stefan

I know you specifically asked about minis in games, but I think you should look at the frostgrave and oathmark sets. Roughly $1 per mini, if you don’t mind glueing pieces together. Yes, it’s a little extra work, but so is painting. You can personalize them somewhat, and have a few extra pieces left over for decoration. You can check out the selection at northstarfigures.com