Dreamblade Minis for D&D

[Glyfair]

Looks like they finally got up the D&D stats for Dreamblade Minis article they promised us in the spring.

I was actually thinking of this recently. For Black Friday my FLGS had a sale of 2 boosters of Dreamblade for $5. At $2.50 for 7 miniatures I figured I had to get my money's worth, even if half of them didn't fit in D&D very well. I think I hit my quota and am considering getting a few more if they still have them on sale. They did have some real clunkers, though)

It's just a shame that the scale created issues with the great PC figures (like this one). Given that no one I've spoken to who has played the game disliked it, I do feel that they missed the boat by not using the D&D compatible scale. Given their own research says that about 70% of D&D miniatures go to RPG players, how could they exclude that market?

 

[Drowbane]

Dreamblade had some wicked cool looking minis... minis that I would've bought had they been the proper scale to go with my primary RPG.

D&D.

That said, our main planescape DM bought a handful of them and has used them to represent some oddball critters. Such as a "rhinotaur" thing that was the focus of an adventure (sorta).

 

[2WS-Steve]

Yah -- the scaling thing seems sort of bone-headed. Especially since the scale would also work in d20 Modern and even be appropriate for non-d20 games.

In fact, a d20 modern Dreamblade setting would be pretty cool as a web enhancement.

 

[Soel]

How off is the scale? I might be getting some of these to supplement my d&d minis.

 

[blargney the second]

How off is the scale? I might be getting some of these to supplement my d&d minis.

It's almost, but not quite, entirely unlike D&D scale.
-blarg

ps - The 40mm base reeeeeally doesn't work well with 25mm squares. Specifically, it's much too big for medium and way too small for large.

 

[dmccoy1693]

For my homebrew though, Dreamblade is WONDERFUL (esp at rock bottom prices). Tons of ideas and my players crap themselves every time. Cut off the base, glue on a new one, they don't know where its from.

 

[Zaukrie]

There are a ton of DB minis that work great for D&D - the minor scale issues be danged. One of the stores here in town has a bunch of commons and uncommons on sale for $1 each. I bought a lot of the ones that look like Far Realms monsters, and the great ogre sculpt. Once the prices drop even more on boosters, I'll likely buy those. There are plenty of uses for many of them.

You can, of course, also find singles on line at various minis stores.

As for the "article" itself - they posted each conversion as a seperate zip file (sigh) and I can't find a link where they compiled them all if I want them all (but that may be me missing it, if not, sigh). They really have not figured out this whole online publishing thing yet.

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

One of the things I'd be interested in is a correlation of what published creature each DB mini *could* reasonably represent. There's a lot of monsters in later MMs and sourcebooks that I'm just not aware of but might be inclined to use if the figs matched up somewhat.

 

[Glyfair]

How off is the scale? I might be getting some of these to supplement my d&d minis.

It's simple. A "standard" Dreamblade figure is a Large D&D monster.

As for the "article" itself - they posted each conversion as a seperate zip file (sigh) and I can't find a link where they compiled them all if I want them all (but that may be me missing it, if not, sigh). They really have not figured out this whole online publishing thing yet.

Yeah. I typically mentally "pooh-pooh" those who complain about them zipping files for downloads since I know of a lot of issues with things getting corrupted when not zipped. However, having dozens of small files zipped as separate downloads is just stupid without one zip with all the files.

 

[frankthedm]

Specifically, it's much too big for medium and way too small for large.

DDM was using 1.5 inch round base for large creatures rather than 2 inch round bases for about 2 years. If your group uses a battle grid, as long as the base is not bigger than the 2"x2" area of the grid, ther is no real issue whether the base is from dreamblade, older DDM, or a 1"x2" cavalry base used in most wargames.

As for medium, those you will need to cut off the dreamblade base and rebase on a 1" base

{upwords tile, metal washer, othello disk, quater, GW stotta base.

[IMaGel]http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/747/safead6.gif[/IMaGel]
Dreamblade figs can be a real pain to cut of their bases. What I find is the safest way to cut them is carefully hold the base against a wall while standing up. Take the x-acto blade and cut AWAY from you, towards he wall, keeping the blade as flush with the base as possible while using every bit of force needed. Determined rocking helps make the blade cut. Because of the force required to make progress, You will nick the wall with the blade, but this is better than having the blade cut deep into your finger. You'll get results like this..





...rather than results like this!

I also picked up a few cheap commons and re-based them a while back.

As has already been said, some were a bit of a pain to cut from their original bases (yes I sliced my thumb ) ...but all in all I think they are perfectly usable.

Here's a quick pic of some of them re-based (and I've put a D&D figure in amongst them for scale purposes).

Hope that helps.