WHY!!!!!!!!!!!

Love FALLOUT and I would love to play this game; the cards look so sweet, lovely finish EVERYWHERE.... but WHY do I need to look at those UGLY unpainted minis...

WHY can the X-wing minis be SO beautiful and these NOT?!?

Do you not want to sell me this game?

Please tell me there is a premium version comming with prepainted minis - INSTA BUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nearly any game of this type comes with unpainted figures. I wouldn't expect to see them in this game, nor would I want to pay for them to be.

X-Wing is an exception and very much not the rule, and you pay for that pre-paint. It won't be difficult to paint 5 figures on my own and that's good enough for me.

Yup, X-Wing is the only FFG property I've seen prepainted. None of their other board game minis come painted.

1 hour ago, mwmcintyre said:

Yup, X-Wing is the only FFG property I've seen prepainted. None of their other board game minis come painted.

The big ships in Armada are also prepainted, but this is a boardgame and most boardgame with minis I know come unpainted.

If you don't want/can't paint your minis you can find people that will do that for you online.

Imperial Assault much?

Maybe one day they can 3D print minis in full color at an affordable cost, but that technology is not feasible yet.

Until then, I would rather not pay $100+ for a board game, so unpainted is fine (as they are in Descent, Imperial Assault, Doom... well, just about everything really).

They aren't painted for cost. A single small ship in X-Wing is $15. FFG adding paint to these figures (detailed paint including faces, shading, etc) would likely up the price of the game by $30. It's RARE for games to come with pre-painted mini's due to the expense. Most people won't notice or care. Those that care are the type to paint their own stuff and would end up doing so with much higher quality than pre-painted anyways.

painted miniatures are the exception, not the rule. Typically, when miniatures are pre-painted, they look pretty crappy anyway. X-wing is definitely the exception in both regards.

True, unpainted or raw plastic minis are the standard today. However I have to agree with @RedHotDice that in this modern day and age, this could be considered standard, and perhaps one of the underlying successes of the X-wing Miniatures Game is in part that it comes prepainted.

To the non-table-top-gamer, X-wing could appear as a more "professional" product. Consider that almost all other "toys" in toy-stores are painted as standard, even the cheap throwaway toys supplied in a Happy Meal are painted.

13 hours ago, Volcano467 said:

Maybe one day they can 3D print minis in full color at an affordable cost, but that technology is not feasible yet.

Until then, I would rather not pay $100+ for a board game, so unpainted is fine (as they are in Descent, Imperial Assault, Doom... well, just about everything really).

I can think of VERY few plastic toys in a Toystore, that are not prepainted.... the technology of mass production of painted plastic minis exist and has done so for several decades, and is cheap.

56 minutes ago, kmanweiss said:

They aren't painted for cost. A single small ship in X-Wing is $15. FFG adding paint to these figures (detailed paint including faces, shading, etc) would likely up the price of the game by $30. It's RARE for games to come with pre-painted mini's due to the expense. Most people won't notice or care. Those that care are the type to paint their own stuff and would end up doing so with much higher quality than pre-painted anyways.

Difficult to calculate a price for this, but surely this can be done cheaper, and ..

18 hours ago, RedHotDice said:

Please tell me there is a premium version comming with prepainted minis - INSTA BUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..this is an interesting option and would apperantly attract a customer like you. But it is more expensive to make two versions of a game than it is to just make it prepainted from start. So dont get your hopes up.

The thing is, in X-Wing, players collect their own personal fleet of ships. So the cost of entry is still only $45-$90ish per player, depending on the size of the fleet and what ships they use. So in any given game of X-Wing, you tend to have $90-$180 worth of minis on the table. So on average, if one person wanted to own enough ships for a "normal" game of X-Wing, cost of entry is closer to $150 for a "whole" game.

With board games, one person foots the cost of the whole game, so this one board game would easily start to hit $100+ at that point (difficult to tell how many plastic minis there actually are, looks like it might just be pawns for the players and just the 5-6 they show). Not to mention the costs FFG would have to either maintain two separate versions, or to only offer one very expensive box that fewer would actually get.

As a side note, FFG has offered pre-painted minis for their board games before as a collectors series . The thing is there, those minis were useful for multiple games, and part of one of FFGs major product lines (and I'm pretty sure done after the fact as a sort of victory lap for how well received the whole line had been).

12 minutes ago, Kommissar said:

As a side note, FFG has offered pre-painted minis for their board games before as a collectors series . The thing is there, those minis were useful for multiple games, and part of one of FFGs major product lines (and I'm pretty sure done after the fact as a sort of victory lap for how well received the whole line had been).

After looking at the pictures I have to say they don't look that good, but they are cheap. Looking at this face I know why it is called Arkham Horror

5 hours ago, Sciencius said:

I can think of VERY few plastic toys in a Toystore, that are not prepainted.... the technology of mass production of painted plastic minis exist and has done so for several decades, and is cheap.

It's very difficult getting how impactful painting minis is if we compare sales of plastic toys in a toystore to sales of an advanced boardgame that will possibly sell 20K copies and then it's done.

A lot of these posts bring up goo reasons why these minis aren't prepainted, but I'd like to bring up something else as well- painting is fun! Even if you don't think you'd be much good, give it a try! A handpainted mini, even if not professional looking, is sure to by widely praised by your friends when you break the game out.

11 hours ago, Julia said:

It's very difficult getting how impactful painting minis is if we compare sales of plastic toys in a toystore to sales of an advanced boardgame that will possibly sell 20K copies and then it's done.

My point was merely that painted plastic models are standard production today even when it comes to more limited plastic toy productions, but without knowledge of the exact businessmodel of FFG and their manufactoring processes and collaborators, it is hard for any of us to speculate on this.

9 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

A lot of these posts bring up goo reasons why these minis aren't prepainted, but I'd like to bring up something else as well- painting is fun! Even if you don't think you'd be much good, give it a try! A handpainted mini, even if not professional looking, is sure to by widely praised by your friends when you break the game out.

You make a very interesting point here. That is, the tabletop wargaming hobby, as it has grown large and has come to known, is mostly following the (in)famously GamesWorkshop table-top miniature market model which is part 1) strategic wargaming 2) a model/painting hobby. A hobby where X-wing, as many here have noted, is the exception, at its miniatures comes preassembled and prepainted, thus only focusing on the tactical/strategic gameplay.

I.e. the present FALLOUT game caters to the audience which is the common subset of those who like FALLOUT + like tabletop games + like to paint their miniatures (or do not care if they are painted). This subset is smaller than those who like FALLOUT and tabletop games.

15 hours ago, Kommissar said:

As a side note, FFG has offered pre-painted minis for their board games before as a collectors series . The thing is there, those minis were useful for multiple games, and part of one of FFGs major product lines (and I'm pretty sure done after the fact as a sort of victory lap for how well received the whole line had been).

Very interesting, I did not know FFG had done a collectors series before, thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Pre painted minis are nice sure but there are also a bunch of reasons for unpainted miniatures. Back in the beginning of miniature wargaming miniatures like GW minis or Battletech minis were metal and I think we can't print fully painted metal miniatures to this day, some games like Infinity are still using metal miniatures so no prepaint.

Then I think it was more of a design/financial choice not something that has to do with GW, unpainted miniatures are cheaper for the company and the customer and even if you prepaint what do you do? Just the base colours, or base colours + shade + 1 highlight or more layers of highlights? And in GW's case prepainted miniatures are not an option, do you know how many different chapters they have in the lore? All with their own colour scheme, yes some of them have their own units but still even those use the standard Space Marine range for most of their units, so you would have to sell a Tactical Squad in blue, white, yellow, black and so one, no one has the shelf space for that.

And with prepainted minis you are bound to one colour scheme but many miniature war games have different colours for one army in their lore, be it different colours for different places of battle (snow vs dessert) or for armies from different baronies/planets and so on ore just for special armies like the one guarding the capital or honoring its history or something.

And someone who wants to paint his miniatures has to paint a painting tax on prepainted miniatures for a colour scheme he might not build upon.

So while prepainted minis are nice there are also disadvantages.

But then this was about miniature wargaming and this is a board game and for them unpainted is also normal at the moment.

Well, over at the X-wing forum I have never heard any complaints about the miniatures being prepainted (and having payed a "painting tax" for those who want to completely repaint the miniatures).

They do whine alot about the balance of the game tho...

20 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

Well, over at the X-wing forum I have never heard any complaints about the miniatures being prepainted (and having payed a "painting tax" for those who want to completely repaint the miniatures).

They do whine alot about the balance of the game tho...

True but I think we can say for sure a prepainted minis would be more expensive than a unpainted one.

In the case of X-Wing most (including me) probably don't paint their minis so that's not a problem and there never was an unpainted version for price comparison but if GW would start selling all their Marines green or yellow and that would make them more expensive I'm sure you would hear quite some complaints, I would be one of them as mine are blue.

I WANT THOSE MINIS PAINTED LIKE IN DA FALLOUT 4 COMPUTER GAME BRO!!!!!

Listen FFG! Do you want me to buy your game?!? Dat collectors version WHEN?

22 minutes ago, Iceeagle85 said:

True but I think we can say for sure a prepainted minis would be more expensive than a unpainted one.

In the case of X-Wing most (including me) probably don't paint their minis so that's not a problem and there never was an unpainted version for price comparison

Yes, my point exactly. If these (few) miniatures in Fallout were prepainted, we would never know the difference and it would not be an issue.

A prepaint just as this would suffice for me:

( https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/arkham-horror-premium-figures/products/chthonian/ )

5 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

Yes, my point exactly. If these (few) miniatures in Fallout were prepainted, we would never know the difference and it would not be an issue.

A prepaint just as this would suffice for me:

( https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/arkham-horror-premium-figures/products/chthonian/ )

GLORIOUS!!! LIEK DAT FFG!!

15 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

A lot of these posts bring up goo reasons why these minis aren't prepainted, but I'd like to bring up something else as well- painting is fun! Even if you don't think you'd be much good, give it a try! A handpainted mini, even if not professional looking, is sure to by widely praised by your friends when you break the game out.

Nah! Painting is not for me.

Just chiming in here...

One of the FFG developers, I forget who, once chimed in on the boardgamegeek boards in response to criticisms of Imperial Assault having unpainted miniatures. He the cost of having them painted would be pretty high, as they have to be individually hand painted. The end price would be prohibitive to consumers.

Having painted a few IA miniatures myself (I'm a total amateur), it's hours (over a day) of work for a single figure. If these are on similar scale to IA, then they are very small, and require pinpoint precision. The other option is to do a lousy rush-job, in which case you might prefer not to have it painted. Larger scale figures like the worm up there is one thing, but humans with a lot of detail is a no go. At least not having it look nice.

For me, at least. I would have never gotten into X-Wing or purchased a single Armada ship had they not been pre-painted. I don't buy new games every month, like I used to, so I have the luxury of being picky on which game I spend my money. So on a good game pre-painted can push it from a maybe purchase to all in.

I also think painted ships are slightly different from painted people minis. I have rarely seen prepainted minis of people that were good. I'd prefer non-painted with decent details than badly painted minis of characters. People minis are very hit and miss prepainted.

16 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

Just chiming in here...

One of the FFG developers, I forget who, once chimed in on the boardgamegeek boards in response to criticisms of Imperial Assault having unpainted miniatures. He the cost of having them painted would be pretty high, as they have to be individually hand painted. The end price would be prohibitive to consumers.

Having painted a few IA miniatures myself (I'm a total amateur), it's hours (over a day) of work for a single figure. If these are on similar scale to IA, then they are very small, and require pinpoint precision. The other option is to do a lousy rush-job, in which case you might prefer not to have it painted. Larger scale figures like the worm up there is one thing, but humans with a lot of detail is a no go. At least not having it look nice.

10 hours ago, mwmcintyre said:

I also think painted ships are slightly different from painted people minis. I have rarely seen prepainted minis of people that were good. I'd prefer non-painted with decent details than badly painted minis of characters. People minis are very hit and miss prepainted.

Beautifully prepainted humanlike/people miniatures = normal looking colored plastic dolls/action figures like GI Joe/Barbie and the STAR WARS actionfigures I played around with as a kid where very nice, and has been around for like 30+ years.

I accept your word that a FFG designer has said they need to get their minis handpainted. However my only comment to this is that they need to work on their manufacturing process, or start a collaboration with a large toy company that specialize in this and who does not required handpainting e.g. like what Disney is using.