are they ever going to make the metal figures into plastic figures like all of the expansions and original game have them? I think that the only way you can get them is metal ones that you have to paint and pay a lot of money for is ridiculous. anyone know? Thanks

I doubt they'll make them into plastic ones, at least not until they sell out of metal ones and decide that there's enough money in it.

If you want nice looking minis for your lieutenants but don't want to buy them individually and paint them, I recommend going through the various D&D miniatures on ebay and finding some singles you like that match the campaign you're playing at the moment. The scale won't be exactly the same, but there are literally hundreds of choices and they're all pre-painted.

If FFG was going to make plastic figures don't you think they would have done that from the start?

bizman316 said:

One of the reasons the metal minis are so expensive is because they're made separately. Plastic LTs might be a bit cheaper, but probably not by as much as you'd like.

If and eventually when they release Descent 2e they might include LT minis in the base game (I'm assuming a second edition would have something akin to the advanced camapign) and at that time they'd probably make plastic LTs just because everything will probably be plastic in that box. That's really the only way you're likely to see cheap LT minis though - when the cost of producing them can be subsumed into the cost of a whole new board game. As long as the LTs are sold separately their price will need to include separate production costs, separate packaging costs and separate shipping from the factory to the outlets. Plastic vs metal will of course have some effect on the price, but the lion's share of the expenses is not in the material they're made from.

I'd heard that the plastics are much more expensive to produce unless you're doing a very high count run. For the figures in a game, there are a lot of these figs on one sprue, and a lot of sprues for all the games produced. For the Lt one-offs, no where near the same number of minis, so metal is the way to go.

-shnar

shnar said:

This is exactly right, producing platic figures costs alot more initially than metal ones, and is only worth while in vast quantities, look at gw as an example. Also you cant get the same level of detail in a plastic model, even with the new lazer technology so metal has always been prefered to plastic for one off models.