@Walt: Nope, I don’t know anyone who paints minis in bulk. The one person I know, Gospog, does custom work one mini at a time.

I really wish my LGS had a bargain minis bin, or sold D&D mini singles at all, but no such luck. And I had to pick the year I decided to start building a collection to not go to GenCon…

If you need six extra skeleton minions, it is easy enough to find the one that you want, adjust it to the right size, copy it six times, and print.

At low levels, four Orcs is about as many as I’ll put in a single encounter. So I can grab one of each color.

At higher levels the player can kill the orcs quickly enough and/or the battle takes place in a large enough space that I can use more than one Orc of the same color. I just seperate them with enough distance, or keep track of them mentally.

Of course, with paper tokens, I can simply type or hand write a numbe on each of them.

I think the key to buying minis is to buy quite a few at a time, and save on shipping. Done right, you can get them well under a buck each, including shipping.

Another favorite is the “quarter mini bin” at Gen Con…

Thanks.

I recently got a new Mini for our brand new 4E campaign (Thomas Hammerhand from Reaper minis. I chopped off his hammer, put on a sword and made him a kilt out of green stuff.) and the very basic paints I picked up to paint him with ran me $70. Of course, the next week my daughter and I ordered one for her and we already had all the paints (except a flesh tone and an ink).

BLASPHEMY!

(just kidding)

Walt: Those 7th Sea minis had some interesting sculpts. Good luck with finding a painter.

For monster tokens, check out http://ochogames.com/store/

I have two of the Master GM sets. I labeled duplicates with letters A, B, etc. They are nice and tough, well illustrated, size appropriate – good stuff and well priced for a bunch of tokens.

I absolutely love them, and I now have stand ins for absolutely everything…

The 4e large dragons (There is a Silver, a Red and a Green in the current set) are absolutely awesome. You could also grab a large White if you DMed at the D&D Game Day.

If I could hijack the thread for a moment, I have a bunch of 7th Sea/Colonial miniatures that I’d love to get painted. Do you know of any reasonably priced places to get them done? (I’d rather not ship them overseas).

If you don’t mind unpainted minis or painting plastic ones, you can get an ample supply of cheap minis with some fantasy boardgames, especially if you can find them on clearance. The excellent game HeroQuest, for instance, not only landed me several useful D&D minis, but also stand-up cardboard furniture and dungeon dressing! I even found a blister pack of the figures for the game on a blowout sale at an old GenCon, and still use them. BattleQuest was good to me as well for units of foes. These are just some examples, but they’re out there, if you look for them, and you have the money to snap them up before someone else does.

I’ve also found small toys quite cheaply. Plastic army men are ten dollars per hundred and with a little paint and modification can make perfect bandits, orcs or hobgoblins. I’ve also seen toy dragons, suitable for a Large or Huge creature, for only £6; again, a little paintwork goes a long way.

I have 8-10 players at the table, a flat token is actually easier for everyone to see. Claudio Poazas and Fire Dragon sell some very slick professionally made tokens… I bought one set, but have been making my own ever since.

I do find players respond better to having a proper miniature for their character however.