New Player’s Handbook Heroes Minis
2009 April 22
Martial Heroes 1
Originally uploaded by stupidranger
Dante & I received some of the new Player’s Handbook Heroes minis this week. There are six total packs, and we got four to enjoy: Martial (1), Arcane (1), Divine & Primal.
What I Like
- Each pack has three minis, and one is a female; it’s great to have some feminine representation in the new minis. And they are mostly dressed sensibly, which is a bonus.
- The Arcane set has a bard. It’s been really hard tracking down a bard mini.
- Each mini has a unique power card, giving you a great opportunity to jazz up your character.
What I Don’t Like
- The minis are obviously mass-produced; not all of the painting is clean and neat.
- While I appreciate they are trying for some variety, some of the race/class combinations don’t really seem to fit: Dragonborn Rogue wasn’t high on my list of character options… I like my rogues a little more unnoticeable.
- I realize there aren’t a lot of Divine or Primal options, but seems to me like they could have put in a third class instead of have two Clerics or two Barbarians. They could have had an Avenger for the Divine pack and a Shaman or a Warden for the Primal pack, which would have eliminated the duplicates.
Overall
The Arcane set is currently high on my list since it has the Female Eladrin Wizard. Now I can use that for Eaerenel instead of the Male Human Wizard mini I’ve been using. And even though the Bard is a male, I’m probably going to use that Half-Elf mini, which will be significantly better than the Dwarf Fighter I’ve been using. I’m very happy to have minis that mostly represent my characters.
Saw these in the FLGS yesterday. The paint jobs are bad…just messy looking. I’m no expert, but I can certainly do better than that on my own. I’ll stick to painting my own for my PCs.
I've not played around with the D&D plastic minis, but can you soak them in Pinesol to remove the paint? Works well for metal minis. You test this on a mini that is OK to lose if the plastic gets too soft or distorts.
I haven’t gotten into painting minis yet. We just started with minis in 4E; in 3.x we never used them.
It might be possible to repaint them… for the talented out there, I would recommend it because the paint out of the box is really not good.
For someone who doesn’t paint their minis, like myself, I actually like that they come prepainted even if it is bad. However, I imagine if someone enjoys painting their own miniatures, they probably look at the horrible painting on these things and consider them an inferior product. Luckily, there are hundreds of companies that sell unpainted ones. So these are perfect for people like me!