I've been a Descent player for a little under 3 months now, and I can say that this is definitely one of the best (if not THE best) board games I think I've ever played. I started with the base game (Second Edition) and have since gone nuts with buying expansions for the game. Thus far, my collection includes:

Second Edition Base game

Trollfens Expansion

Labyrinth of Ruin Expansion

Lair of the Wyrm Expansion

Manor of Ravens Expansion

Shadow of Nerekhal Expansion

Crown of Destiny Hero and Monster Expansion

and very nearly every last Lieutenant pack

My question though, is there any way I can get my hands on just the MONSTER miniatures from the first game and it's expansions? The conversion kit would obviously be able to provide the monster cards I'd need, but as best I'm able to see there's no official FF Product or collection that makes the actual figures available.

I'd really love to be able to effectively double my pool of available monsters, but unfortunately my only available course seems to be Ebay, and most of the options there are hilariously over priced, broken, or missing pieces. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ebay it is unfortunately, believe me as a man who spent all the time and money digging them out they are hideously over priced.

In all honesty the hero and monster packs are re-releasing the conversion kit stuff with the updated models. I would suggest patience in this regard and just pick up the packs as you go.

2ED has 30+ heroes and enough monsters with all the expansions and collections available to offer more than enough variety imo.

Also, as an aside a lot of the conversion kit stuff monster wise can be a bit sub par imo - there are of course some standouts that haven't been re released yet (daemon lords, ogers and kobolds spring to mind).

As I am one that hates the following idea, I loath to offer it, but you can always pick up the CK and then use proxies. There are various on-line sites that sell monsters of appropriate size that while not an exact match for the D1e monsters, certainly could work.

Having said that, I think Underworld40k's suggestion is spot on ... collect the Heroes and Monsters expansions. Not only do I actually like some of the models better than their counterparts in D1e, it has given FFG time to balance the heroes and monsters abilities, etc.

I think getting the monster miniatures of the first game is possible but much too expensive and some of them just look bad (while some of them look really good)

So here is my tip: Get the 3d tokens from BGG (search through the file section) they are nice standups with the monsterartworks on them. If you glue them to thick paper before gluing them together they even have a nice feel to them.

Then see what monsters you use regularly and look at reaperminiatures.com. They have very nice miniatures at a very fair price and I found a lot of miniatures that fit very well with the monsters. Just bear in mind these miniatures are a tiny bit taller than the Descent miniatures, so getting miniatures for heroes might look a little off, although I can see no problem for monsters.

Take it from someone who bought Descent 1E on eBay and spent a long time painting it plus ended up buying a lot of Reaper bones proxies, only to find out that a year later they would re-release much better models in the Heroes and Minis Collections:

I would second the opinions above--just wait for the Heroes and Monsters collection.

There are a lot of nice proxies you can get for pets and I found several cheap and nice Reaper minis that can be used for villagers, chests to put on top of search tokens and dungeon décor too.

The conversion kit was a great idea when the game just came out - however, there's now a wide variety of monsters available, and most of them are much better than the conversion kit monsters. Virtually every worthwhile monster has either been a. reprinted or b. is Kobolds, who are so overpowered they shouldn't be used. The heroes are the same way; most of the missing ones are either really lousy or overpowered. (The overpowered ones being Aurim and possibly Nanok, as well as Elder Mok who was reprinted and is still massively overpowered even after a giant nerf.)

Edit - it might be interesting to make a list... what are people's faves from the list of non-reprinted monsters, and why?

it might be interesting to make a list... what are people's faves from the list of non-reprinted monsters, and why?

Well now that crusade of the forgotten is out (golems, sorcerers, medusa are all good monsters) the list gets smaller and smaller.

Ogres (high damage output, decent blocking abilities with undying, throwback can really tear the hero-group apart in tight spots)

Ferrox (small creatures with b/r pierce and leech)

Nagas (ranged damage dealers that don't need surges (sorcery) that also can block fairly ok and you get 3 of them)

Hellhound (very comparable with barghests, but do more damage with firebreath)

interesting but never had the right circumstances:

Deep Elves (quick and stealthy, automatic pierce, not the best defense but high HP. I think they work well if you already have a bunch of big monsters and fear blocking yourself)

Blood Apes (decent stats, ravage, the leap attack of the master sounds awesome, but it is a bit situational if you want to maximize its damage)

Ice wyrm (not the best stats, no surges, but freezing could be great against a melee party and swallow could be highly usefull if you have other damage-dealers)

Manticore (ranged ravage, high pierce, but you get only 2 and they have bad stats. If you can protect them they could be very powerfull)

soon to be reprinted

Wendigo (fast, high damage, ravage, good stats)

Crypt Dragon (ranged with blast, blocks fairly well, master has a situational immobilize, very situational as a whole as they don't have the best stats)