How has the miniatures business been doing, post-pandemic?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Obviously, RPGs as a whole benefitted, at least temporarily, from lockdown, with 5E and others doing great numbers once people were stuck at home and Critical Role, Discord and Twitch as the new (or new-ish) shiny things to connect with other gamers.

But while Reaper Minis had some great Kickstarter campaigns during that period, I can't have been the only one to have cast a skeptical eye over my minis and other accessories that required in-person play. I ended up dumping 99% of mine, including the 4E WotC Dungeon Tiles (which were a really nice product and the only D&D product line from that era that I invested in).

Do we have any data for how miniatures companies -- and I include terrain makers in this -- are doing today? (I'm sure we can find lots of individuals who are playing with minis; that's interesting but not the kind of data I'm curious about here.)

The irony is that I think, between 3D printing, HeroForge (which obviously uses 3D printing along with other tech), new materials for minis, etc., technologically, this is probably the most exciting era for miniatures. I just wonder how much of the market has moved online and away from minis as anything more than a collectible.

 

[aco175]

I only bought the random convention mini lately, but my brother backed a few things during the lockdowns and seems to have plenty to paint still. Not sure if others had more free cash then and are saving now with costs rising and inflation still being high.

I might be in for a pre-painted kickstarter or something.

 

[prabe]

Obviously, RPGs as a whole benefitted, at least temporarily, from lockdown, with 5E and others doing great numbers once people were stuck at home and Critical Role, Discord and Twitch as the new (or new-ish) shiny things to connect with other gamers.

But while Reaper Minis had some great Kickstarter campaigns during that period, I can't have been the only one to have cast a skeptical eye over my minis and other accessories that required in-person play. I ended up dumping 99% of mine, including the 4E WotC Dungeon Tiles (which were a really nice product and the only D&D product line from that era that I invested in).

Do we have any data for how miniatures companies -- and I include terrain makers in this -- are doing today? (I'm sure we can find lots of individuals who are playing with minis; that's interesting but not the kind of data I'm curious about here.)

The irony is that I think, between 3D printing, HeroForge (which obviously uses 3D printing along with other tech), new materials for minis, etc., technologically, this is probably the most exciting era for miniatures. I just wonder how much of the market has moved online and away from minis as anything more than a collectible.

The category is almost certainly at least slightly different, but board games are coming with more and more elaborate miniatures--more both in terms of numbers and elaborateness--especially the ones with Kickstarter campaigns. Maybe there's more expectation that a given table is only going to purchase one copy, but some of those games are unqualified chonks.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The category is almost certainly at least slightly different, but board games are coming with more and more elaborate miniatures--more both in terms of numbers and elaborateness--especially the ones with Kickstarter campaigns. Maybe there's more expectation that a given table is only going to purchase one copy, but some of those games are unqualified chonks.

I will say that, after I sold most of our minis, it's made the Dungeon! board game much less fun, since cardboard standees, speaking frankly, suck. I was thinking I might need to pick up a good pack of dungeon adventurers to leave in our Dungeon! box for when we play.

 

[prabe]

I will say that, after I sold most of our minis, it's made the Dungeon! board game much less fun, since cardboard standees, speaking frankly, suck. I was thinking I might need to pick up a good pack of dungeon adventurers to leave in our Dungeon! box for when we play.

I've heard decent things about Hero Forge's standees--but if you need the 3D-ness, that'll still be lacking.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've heard decent things about Hero Forge's standees--but if you need the 3D-ness, that'll still be lacking.

Yeah, I might go with one of the various nice quality flat-minis, which are all nice steps up from the very cheap cardboard standees included with Dungeon! 3D is obviously nicer, but then one has to worry about storage space, etc.

 

[cranberry]

I have no idea how the industry is doing, but I personally have not used or purchased minis in quite a while.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I'm several years out of date on being as up to date on the minis industry the way I once was, but the pandemic lockdown counterintuitively did a lot of favors for many companies. Painting figures is something you can do just fine solo, production wasn't badly impacted for smaller casting companies (the ones who relied on direct sales anyway) and even the GW elephant in the room managed to turn a profit consistently while WizKids continued to make mint on 5e related sales. Probably the hardest hit major company was Privateer Press, whose focus on tourney gaming wound up hurting them pretty badly when there were no tourneys - something that theoretically should also have crippled GW but as it turns out they apparently have a larger percentage of casual players than PP did.

Compensating for that we've had a lot of new-ish skirmish games that took off very well, and not just GW's Warcry, Kill Team, Necromunda, etc. Osprey and Northstar have both done very well with Frostgrave/Stargrave/Rangers of Shadowdeep/Silver Bayonet, etc., Gaslands was a bit of a flash in the pan but built a large enough demand that several casters (and STL farms) started making Matchbox-car-compatible conversion bit ranges specifically for it, and the Lion/Dragon/Xenos Rampant family of games is doing well and really encourages a "buy you want, you can use it here" mentality that helps casting companies no end. There's also RPG-adjacent stuff that's proved popular - the "5 Units of Distance From Someplace" game line, Rangers of Shadow Deep, Two-Hour Wargames' 5150 system, Four-Color Figures numerous rules, etc.

All that said, traditional casting is probably doomed in the foreseeable future as 3D printing tech improves and home printing/printing services become ever more common. There's just no way to compete with the costs on that stuff in the long run, and companies (even GW) that aren't preparing to transition to new business models are going to be relegated to niche specialty roles sooner or later. It's already getting hard to convince distributors and retailers to handle metal figs at all, and even "cheap" plastics like Reaper Bones aren't actually cheap anymore - especially compared to home-printed figs.

The RPG end of the minis hobby was never my specialty, so I'm less confident about how that's doing - but WizKids certainly seems to be selling okay locally, FWIW. The decline of metal casting makes it more expensive to get dedicated figs made for smaller games (by 5e D&D standards) but 3D STL files will probably wind up re-opening that market again in a big way soon.

 

[Clint_L]

It's the era of the Kickstarter. That said, it's hard to perceive an industry trend. Reaper 6 was a definite drop-off from Reaper 5, both in terms of dollars and backer numbers. On the other hand, Archon studios has been picking up steam. Dwarven Forge held pretty strong on their last big KS, but just ran a smaller one that didn't do so well, and so on.

In terms of going to the FLGS and buying miniatures, that's still dominated by Wizkids and Games Workshop. Wizkids has become a bit more exclusive, with prices going up, but also offering a pretty incredible array of licensed D&D, Pathfinder, and Critical Role miniatures. And Games Workshop is their own ecosystem. Steamforged has their Epic Encounters series, which has been growing steadily for 2+ years and is an excellent way to build out sets of commonly encountered creatures plus some gorgeous BBEGs.

The broad trend I've discerned post-pandemic is that prices are up, more than just inflation, and delivery is significantly slower. But there's also never been more options.

 

[MGibster]

I don't have hard data for anything, but Games Workshop appears to be doing well. When it comes to miniatures, I kind of feel like it's Games Workshop and then everyone else.

The Fallout series on Amazon appears to have helped out Modiphius and they continue to sell quite a lot of Fallout: Wasteland Warfare and they have a new skirmish game Fallout: Factions coming out in July. As far as production is concerned, Modiphius is changing from producing resin miniatures to producing hard plastic miniatures which is a good sign they're confident about continued sales.

Catalyst Game Labs seems to be doing well with Battletech as its popularity has increased over the last few years. If you had told me in 2014 that I'd see a bunch of new Battletech books and mechs at my local game store I would have laughed. (Seriously, my local game store has BT & Cyberpunk 2020 books for sale and I thought I accidentially found a time portal to 1994.)

During the pandemic, I think there were a lot of people like me who simply decided to get back into painting miniatures with gusto. I even bought an airbrush so I jumped back into it more than most. What was amazing was how well GW did during a period of time when most people couldn't go to their local game store or club to play a game.