Will FFG ever do a miniature pack for Arkham Horror? I would like to see miniatures like the ones in Fury of Dracula instead of the cardboard stands. They kinda wear out over time plus the feel of a miniature is much nicer. Any news about any future development? Thanks!

I truly hope so and I have been thinking the same thing. Im also a bit suprised that they are not out allready. Since the game has been selling great from what Ive understood, there should be plenty of buyers.

Maybe now after you finish Insmouth?

I like the idea. Draw the cardboard one from the cup, then place the mini in town. I'd buy.

I think we'll be lucky to see official minis. If they do get released, they're probably be rubbery plastic things like the Descent minis. Not bad, but not great either.

There are some Call of Cthulhu miniature ranges (although not all of them are great either). For example: www.rafm.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc

You're tempting me to convert up some Games Workshop miniatures (Daemons of Chaos make perfect monsters)

Not intending to be a party pooper, but people said the same thing about LT minis for Descent. At first it was all "that'd be awesome, I'd buy!" but then when FFG finally did make minis it was all "why so expensive? I'm not buying!"

Setting that aside though, there are a LOT of investigators in Arkham (and even more monsters). If they were going to do something like this I think it'd be in the next edition of the game. Putting out a separate bundle for minis is risky since there's no guarantee that all the people who bought the game will also buy the minis.

For my part, I wouldn't want minis for Arkham only because then I would be tempted to paint them, as I have been for all the other FFG games I have with minis... I have enough work on my plate!

I dont think we need monsters as miniatures. Would only add more downtime because you would have to always refer to the tokens as well for the stats. I just hope we get the investigators as miniatures some day. I for one think that you can relate to a miniature much more as you do for a cardboard-piece.

And thats not a whole lot of miniatures for the investigators. (compared to many other FFG-titles).

I don't think miniatures would add anything to the entertainment value of Arkham Horror; for many, a full 3-D sculpt would be less evocative than the artwork on the tokens.

I don't think they'll ever do monster minis, and I find it unlikely they would do investigators. The monster minis would slow down the game terribly, having to sort through all different types to find that one ghoul. I imagine it would be like Descent or Doom when the Overlord/Invader player has to look through the box when trying to spawn stuff. Too many different types especially with the expansions.

I would consider buying investigators, but they would be expensive, and if I really wanted to I would just buy some of the old Call of Cthulhu figures and use them. I always liked the business man putting a gun to his head, or the guy in the straight jacket- very nice thematically.

Well, I would only want the characters to be miniaturised not the monsters, as stated above, miniaturising the monsters would make it a hassle during combat. As for the characters, I feel it would make the game perfect with the 3d sculpt. Maybe instead of metal like the ones used in descent, FFG could consider using plastic alone?

garlicss said:

The thing about plastic minis is it really isn't cost-effective unless you're making A LOT of them. It works fine for board games like Descent where it starts off with minis in the box. They can absorb the cost of the minis into the cost of the game itself. But putting out a set of minis that are sold separately from the game itself is risky because, as I mentioned before, sales figures of the game itself don't guarantee similar sales figures for the minis package. I suspect this consideration (and other factors like it) is why the Descent LT minis are being made out of metal rather than plastic and it remains to be seen if even that will pay off in the end.

Mass production can offset a lot of cost, but that really only works when you can bank on mass sales to get your money back. To feasibly make plastic investigators for Arkham, it would basically require putting out a new edition of the game that comes with plastic minis. If you can't go for mass production then the cost to the end user rises accordingly, resulting in minis that maybe aren't as cheap as people would like. So the real question here is how much money are you willing to spend to get your investigator minis?

Steve-O said:

It's not hard to see that the game would work with Descent-type minis, though. You just have the rules cards laid out on the table, like in Descent. Or there could be some sort of standard monster 'base' or stand which had the rules on its edges - not that difficult to do, since monster rules are quite simple in most cases, and only need chunky symbols to indicate them.

You'd probably need fewer monster types (say, twelve) but if we're honest, AH has an excessive number of monster varieties anyway. You could easily get all the really iconic monsters (and the ones whcih are really necessary for gameplay) into a dozen types. Still, it's obviously such a big change that it'd require a new edition.

...although, meh. You would be sacrificing a lot of variety and the only advantage is an aesthetic one. Remember, you couldn't expect masterworks: if FFG ever made AH minis, they'd have to be single-piece plastics. I'm not a big fan of low-quality miniatures anyway. Games Workshop still produce some pretty naff models and they're light-years ahead of almost anyone else when it comes to making plastic minis on that scale.

Hmm.. that makes no sence. Come on, just how many different miniatures has FFG produced over the years? Like its going to be a problem to sculpt molds for the investigators as well.. its just a matter of are they willing to and for what reasons. You make it sound like they would have to work around the clock for 2 years to get the miniatures out and then make 5 million copies of them at once. Now that would be a risky business but I doubt it would work that way. Descent doesnt just "start off with minis in the box", FFG truly has to make them and put them in there?

+ GW in no way is "light-years ahead of almost anyone else", its just the only thing that appears on the shelves because they have the biggest budget. I think most of us wanting Arkham miniatures would be just fine with standard FFG-quality components. Would make this great game even better if I had investigators to paint.

Tomyrgon said:

GW metal miniatures are no better than many others out there, but plastic wargaming minis are actually a bit of a rarity. GW does loads of them; hardly anyone else does. GW plastic kits are much, much higher detail than the Descent minis, or anything else I've seen in an FFG game.

Wargaming miniatures have traditionally been made of lead or other relatively cheap soft metals, which hobbyists have gotten used to over the years. Have a look at some of the independent games stores and miniature makers on the net - metal models are waaaay more common than plastic ones. I'm not sure why, but if I had to guess, it'd be that when you're manufacturing models in relatively small batches, it's cheaper or easier to get reasonable-quality results with metal than it is with plastic.

Tomyrgon said:

I work in the plastic injection molding business, and I can confirm what Steve-O says. Not cost-effective at all for Arkham investigators. The die costs (which must be paid before a single miniature is molded) would be prohibitive for a product with 64 different sculpts and uncertain sales prospects.

thecorinthian said:

Less so as of this year. Wargames Factory, the Perry brothers, and Warlord all do high-quality injection-molded plastic miniatures now, with Privateer soon to join the fray.