D&D Miniatures Archfiends Expansion Pack

Rating:
Summary: More cheap miniatures and a good game, too!
Review: Archfiends is the 3rd prepainted miniature release from Wizards of the Coast and it gets better every time. The quality of miniatures from WotC's prepainted D&D Miniature line has been improved from their prior two sets, and they're still keeping it affordable at $9.99. The details on some figures are really improving. For instance, Archfiends includes a new common "Warrior Skeleton" that looks better than many skeletons painted by professional miniature painters. "Ragnara, Psychic Warrior" is also a pretty slick looking figure. There is an increase in larger figures from previous sets, including four "Aspects" which are popular D&D villain deities with a midlevel power range (around CR 12) which work well in both D&D and the skirmish game. Finally, the popular Forgotten Realms character Drizzt is now a (rare) figure for the Chaotic Good faction.

I've played a lot more of the Skirmish game that the figures are designed for and I'm surprised how much I like it. The combat cards gives some complex play with relative ease, which is a nice bonus. The new figures add quite a bit to the Skirmish game. The "Gauth" has a dangerous 15 fire damage special ability eye ray, the "Githyanki Fighter" and "Erinyes" have a Dimesion Door ability that was previously only availible to the "Hound Archon" from Harbinger, and Lawful Good finally has a dragon with the nasty "Large Silver Dragon".

The set is not perfect. The humanoid figures are still missing a bit of detail, especially some of the elves -- like the uncommon Mialee, Elf Wizard. I'm a firm believer that figures for PCs should be hand-painted anyway, so in my RPG games any of the short-term NPCs are drawn from these prepainted figures and the long-term PCs are hand painted metal figures.

I'm willing to overlook some of the flaws because they're a relatively inexpensive way to build up a large force of painted figures to help a time-crunched DM. Unfortunately, there are rumors that the price of these figures is increasing, which will cut down on their usefulness. With the increased price of Giants of Legend to $19.99 (for 8 figures and 1 huge figure) and I suspect future sets will be around $12.99, I think this is the last easily affordable set.

Rating:
Summary: More cheap miniatures and a good game, too!
Review: Archfiends is the 3rd prepainted miniature release from Wizards of the Coast and it gets better every time. The quality of miniatures from WotC's prepainted D&D Miniature line has been improved from their prior two sets, and they're still keeping it affordable at $9.99. The details on some figures are really improving. For instance, Archfiends includes a new common "Warrior Skeleton" that looks better than many skeletons painted by professional miniature painters. "Ragnara, Psychic Warrior" is also a pretty slick looking figure. There is an increase in larger figures from previous sets, including four "Aspects" which are popular D&D villain deities with a midlevel power range (around CR 12) which work well in both D&D and the skirmish game. Finally, the popular Forgotten Realms character Drizzt is now a (rare) figure for the Chaotic Good faction.

I've played a lot more of the Skirmish game that the figures are designed for and I'm surprised how much I like it. The combat cards gives some complex play with relative ease, which is a nice bonus. The new figures add quite a bit to the Skirmish game. The "Gauth" has a dangerous 15 fire damage special ability eye ray, the "Githyanki Fighter" and "Erinyes" have a Dimesion Door ability that was previously only availible to the "Hound Archon" from Harbinger, and Lawful Good finally has a dragon with the nasty "Large Silver Dragon".

The set is not perfect. The humanoid figures are still missing a bit of detail, especially some of the elves -- like the uncommon Mialee, Elf Wizard. I'm a firm believer that figures for PCs should be hand-painted anyway, so in my RPG games any of the short-term NPCs are drawn from these prepainted figures and the long-term PCs are hand painted metal figures.

I'm willing to overlook some of the flaws because they're a relatively inexpensive way to build up a large force of painted figures to help a time-crunched DM. Unfortunately, there are rumors that the price of these figures is increasing, which will cut down on their usefulness. With the increased price of Giants of Legend to $19.99 (for 8 figures and 1 huge figure) and I suspect future sets will be around $12.99, I think this is the last easily affordable set.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed review
Review: I defer to reviewer Peter Lee for the details on this set, but my opinion is less enthusiastic than his.

My main concern with all of the D & D Miniatures made by Wizards of the Coast is that there seems to be no clearly defined reference of SCALE, as there is with lead and pewter military and fantasy miniatures and the higher grade plastic figures from Russia and Britain: a 15mm or 25mm figure from other manufacturers will almost always be in proportion to other figures from the manufacturer (and usually very close to OTHER manufacturers's products, too). I can't tell what the scale of the "D & D Miniatures" is SUPPOSED to be (probably 30mm), but the figures are strangely proportioned to one another within their own product line -- the bare-chested Giants of Legend Scarlet Brotherhood Monk is dispropotionately large compared to both the City Guardsman and the Protectar, and the robed Archfiends Sage is as broad in the shoulders as the Giants of Legend City Guard in armor.

My second and third concerns are with the weapons. Why are the weapons so bizarrely fashioned? The standard Wizards of the Coast fantasy sword has a blade which abruptly narrows in size to only slightly wider than the tang, although in this set only the Human Dragonslayer and Moon Elf Fighter appear to suffer from this certain-to-snap-at-first-contact blade. This design makes no sense. It copies a fashion set in some fantasy art, but is jarringly out of place in figures which seemed designed for melee combat. The weapons are also being used stupidly by the figures, with the point-of-spear-in-the-ground City Guard being the silliest example. This leads to another concern: why did Wizards of the Coast feel it necessary to arm EVERY human or humanoid figure? The Archfiends Expansion Pack figure of the Healer, for example, is carrying a spear (point UP, unlike the idiotic Guardsman figure). If this Healer is a spellcaster, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to equip her with a spell book or put her into a spellcasting pose? If she can't cast spells, why is she in a melee set armed with a spear, anyway? She's not brandishing it point outward, but it still seems extremely inappropriate. It's as disconcerting as seeing a medic with a Red Cross brassard armed with an assault rifle; medical personnel are supposed to be unarmed, by god!

Arming the "Healer" is a very, VERY poor example for Hasbro to set for children. Does Medic G. I. Joe pack a .45 in his first aid kit to shoot "enemy" wounded? I am not one of those silly geese who think D & D leads to devil worship, but I AM of the opinion that children should be raised from childhood to regard certain people -- medical personnel, for example -- as ALWAYS being non-combatants, no matter which side they are on. I get the feeling that if there was a goblin stretcher crew figure set, that the ideal Wizards of the Coast "lawful good" character would hack them to pieces because they are on the "evil" side. That is just plain wrong! There are some lines which simply should not be crossed, even in fantasy role-playing, and the well-armed "Healer" crosses one of those lines. It isn't hard to imagine kids who play with this particular figure growing up to cross that same line in a real life war; therein lie the seeds of the My Lais and Abu Graibs of the future, I'm afraid. Wizards of the Coast should discontinue this figure. It is grossly irresponsible of them to depict medical personnel as combatants.

I must disagree strongly with the other reviewer about the Warrior Skeletons. The ones I have are painted nicely, true, but either the injection molding was done poorly or else they were attached to the base poorly -- they are both bent forward so far that they look more like skeletal bloodhounds than anything else. They LOOK as though they were made in Red China by some wretchedly poor schmuck earning less than 50 cents an hour (which they probably were). It will take some unattractive wiring or else a break-and-repair job to make them stand erect.

All in all, though, the figures do what they are supposed to do, which is represent heroes and monsters from the Wizards Dungeons & Dragons product line. Their usefulness as figures for war games outside of the rules published (VERY expensively!) by Wizards of the Coast is greatly diminished by their "buy one hundred packages to collect 'em all!" packaging, which has led to my initial force having one sage to each archer, with no one pointing a spear at the ENEMY. Their usefulness outside of D & D Miniatures rules play is also hampered by the paucity of figures clearly designed to represent the sort of massed levies to be found in a real battle, even a "real fantasy" battle. There should be several figures each for plain old goblins, plain old orcs, plain old human warriors, etc., but there isn't, and the bizarre scale of the figures makes it very difficult to supplement their numbers with the military or fantasy figures of other manufacturers (which are almost all in lead or very expensive pewter, anyway, not the cheap plastic of these figures).

The D & D miniatures DO fill a need for cheap miniature fantasy figures, but that need includes the need for hordes of cheap goblins, orcs, etc., which Wizards seems to have no intention of meeting. They are narrowly focused on supplying figures for the rules which they have concocted and are not supplying enough to use the figures for battles using "De Bellis Antiquas," "Hordes of the Things," or even "Chainmail" rules for miniatures gaming, which is ironic, since D & D was originally just a set of rules for adding fantasy characters to wargames which used the 1970-something "Chainmail" rules.

If Wizards of the Coast were to offer their "common" figures in three-packs or six-packs (the numbers needed for units in their own miniatures gaming rules), my rating for the expansion packs would be higher, but they haven't done so yet, and they seem to have no intention of ever doing so, which forces players who DO want to use units of multiple figures to either buy large numbers of expansion packs (expanding the already bloated profits which Wizards of the Coast brings in for its corporate owner, Hasbro) or else buy them separately on eBay, which, once shipping costs are added, makes each figure cost a couple of bucks apiece -- a huge mark-up for a pennysworth of plastic made by a Chinese wage slave living just above the subsistence level!