Rating: 
Summary: New sale price - unbeatable deal
Review: Had to comment on the new price Amazon is carrying on this product. For the DM, finding a large volume of quality miniatures to represent the various foes that your PCs will encounter has always been a challenge. Sorry folks, but M&Ms, Skittles, and glass beads just don't cut it any more.16 figures for $8! That's a steal. Let's break it down - 50 cents each for painted minis + terrain cards + 20-sided die + free shipping when you buy 4 boxes. Even if you never try out the included skirmish game, there's enough here to keep your players coming back to the roleplaying table. If you've been on the fence, now is the time to give them a try.
Rating:
Summary: Nearly perfect for what it is designed to do.
Review: I enjoy painting miniatures, so I feel I need to explain how I could love a prepainted miniature game as much as I do. I love playing D&D, especially DMing the game, but it takes too long to put together a painted diverse group of miniatures for a game. The average time it takes me to paint a miniature is around 4 hours, and if I have an adventure with 50 monsters, that's 200 hours of prep-time -- I don't have that sort of time, especially to waste on rank-and-file troops. These prepainted miniatures are perfect for me to flesh out my adventure and let me concentrate on painting the miniatures that I want to paint. These prepainted figures should not be looked upon as works of art, as most well painted figures can be. These D&D Miniatures are tokens, and for what they're supposed to do, they're nearly perfect. It's true that there are other prepainted figures out there, such as the Wizkids line, but the problem with these is that the click base interferes with a good D&D game. (I could rebase them, but that again takes time and ruins them for any MageKnight game.) How are the miniatures? For approximately $1.25 a figure, they're what you would expect. Flexible plastic, limited colors schemes, and cheap. Which has a benefit: my personally painted figures I guard like gold while I carry the prepainted D&D Miniatures around loose in a cardboard box. No worry about them bending out of shape, and if they do bend out of shape I can reshape them by warming them in boiling water, holding them in a new shape, and cooling them in cold water. (Young children should have their parents help with this.) Contents of the box: The starter set comes with 8 non-random terrain cards, a rule book, a 20 sided die, a players map, and 16 figures. (I believe the distribution is 1 rare, 5 uncommon, and 10 common, but it might be one less uncommon and one more common. Ultimately, you're better off getting two expansion packs than one starter if you're looking for rares.) Each figure has a statistics card, which allows for more tactics than the simple MageKnight click-base games. The flip side of the card has rules for using the figure in D&D. Out of the box, the game plays pretty well. They have a simple ruleset where you just pick miniatures, but after you get a larger selection of them you can design your own alignment based faction and fight. It's not perfect. For one, the flip side of the battle map has templates for some spell attacks, so you should photocopy them before you play (or get two starters...) I think the set is lacking in commanders which makes it difficult to put together a 100 point faction without a large amount of figures (I'd guess 1 starter and 6 expansions but since the figures are random it's hard to say.) I wish that they had included more possibilies for terrain cards had had included 8 randomly selected cards, to give a secondary collectable nature to the game. I also think that there should always be one large figure per pack, but instead only around half of the rares are large, and no commons or uncommons are rare. Finally, I wish that they had more care deciding figure distributions -- there are Unique figures, which means that you can only have one in your group. Since they're uncommon, you'll be more likely to get them, and having more than one unique figure is useless for the miniature game. Most of my complaints are just nitpicking the game. The rules are well-written. The game is pretty fast paced, especially if you're already familiar with D&D. As a miniature painter/D&D player, I recommend both the miniatures and the miniature game they come with.
Rating: 
Summary: It depends on what you want
Review: I have bought one entry pack of minis and one expansion pack from the Harbringer set. I have looked the models and have the following thoughts on them. The small and medium models with extermely small faces are just painted over without thought to extra detail(or redoing as some of paint wasn't on the face of one of my models) as well as any of the small items. However, the larger models, in my humble opinion, are done much better. I think that if you don't like them or if you want to add extra or different details that you should repaint them. At least you don't have to glue them and find out that they don't fit together right. So, if you don't want to spend a lot of time or money painting and are willing to have minis of mixed quality, then this set is good. If you are a diehard painter, convert kits, or want different looking models then you should go to another company. As for me, I will probably buy a couple more packs and then try to find someone to trade figures with. I hope the Dragoneye and Archfiend set that I have heard about have taken consumer comments into account. Quick tangent, if the expansion were priced something like 10 figures for $15 and the paint jobs were a bit better, then I would be all over those packs.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor quality
Review: I learned to play D&D in 1979 and I've played ever since. I've also painted a few good miniatures in my day. Unfortunately, the folks making these not only can't paint inside the lines, they frequently left parts completely unpainted in my set. Beware of the reviewer from Wisconsin, who makes what sounds like a company-planted pitch and apology by commenting (essentially) "What can you expect for about $1.25 each?" I think we can all expect a lot better, frankly. My elven archer didn't even have her bow painted! It was black like the plastic it's made from. When the company's own site shows the figure with a bow painted the color brown, you know someone screwed up. STAY AWAY from these miniature until Wizards of the Coast announced it has improved quality control.
Rating:
Summary: Finally!! D&D sells painted miniatures for their game!!!
Review: I love them!!! I could never get into the painstaking efforts to paint miniatures, so if you couldn't either, this will be a god-send!
Rating:
Summary: Great price, very durable
Review: I think it has been approximately one year since I bought my first harbinger miniatures. Since then, they have doubled (or more) in value. Now, it is nearly impossible to find a harbinger set anywhere.
My only regret is that I sold my harbinger displacer beast for $5, about 9 months ago! I thought the buyer was a sucker for paying almost as much for one miniature as I paid for the entire booster! But, now I realize that I'm the idiot. If you can find a displacer beast today, you'll probably pay at least $30 for it.
The good thing is that WoC is continuing to crank out a set every 3-4 months. The new sets have a higher percentage of rares and fewer miniatures (so, there is more chance to receive duplicates), but the variety and quality of the miniatures is as good or better. I love the huge minis in the giants collection, and the new aberrations collection contains a lot of nice monsters as common and uncommon figures. Archfiends contains a lot of nice villans, too. The Death's Knell collection of undead (scheduled for March 2005) should be a welcome collection for dungeon masters, too.
It is true that these miniatures are mass produced. The paint jobs are sometimes lacking. But, overall, the quality is good. The new flexible plastic material is awesome, as it is now possible to carry miniatures around and even use them in games without worrying about them eventually breaking. I bring them to games in a regular suitcase (no foam, no individual compartments .. just one big pile). Sometimes, they are bent when I first receive them in the mail, but this can be fixed by applying some heat. In general, it is extremely difficult to bend them and it is nearly impossible to break them (my wife likes to test this). I imagine that the durability has allowed WoC to produce and distribute these with much less cost.
Overall, I am extremely impressed with WoC's management of the D&D license. D20 was, by far, their greatest contribution to the community. Their simplified rules (i.e., 3rd edition and now the Basic Set) are probably my second favorite contribution. Their miniature lines are a close third.
P.S. Don't bother buying Harbinger on Amazon or any of the other sites still advertising it. Amazon will send you several emails as they delay processing of your order, then they will finally cancel your order as they are "unable to locate the inventory". Instead, invest in one of the more recent miniature collections (dragoneye, archfiends, giants, or aberrations).
Rating: 
Summary: Good for the money
Review: If you are a perfectionist about how well detailed your minis' should be then don't buy them. Go out and by the unpainted ones and derive your pleasure from painting in addition to gaming. If, however you are like most other people (myself included) who just want to enjoy the game and use miniatures for combat in DnD (mostly for visual ease) then by all means purchase them. For the money they can't be beat.
Rating:
Summary: Good for the money
Review: If you are a perfectionist about how well detailed your minis' should be then don't buy them. Go out and by the unpainted ones and derive your pleasure from painting in addition to gaming. If, however you are like most other people (myself included) who just want to enjoy the game and use miniatures for combat in DnD (mostly for visual ease) then by all means purchase them. For the money they can't be beat.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much hype for a meager paint job
Review: Just got my starter pack and was very excited to get my hands on the figures as I've heard they are much better painted than the other "pre-painted skirmish game." Unfortunately, when I opened my pack what I got was similar to the rest of you folks....dark half-finished painted miniatures. Very, very, very disappointing! Oh well I'll just use my old painted miniatures instead. The game system as well has nothing new to offer except for the way the figures are activated.
Rating:
Summary: How did I live without them ?
Review: Seriously, I've seen a lot of reviews insulting these new miniatures. Like the elf archer with an unpainted bow... maybe some of them are painted, just to make it different? Or the bow could always be made of darkwood, use your imagination, it IS a fantasy game. I love the fact the figures are hardcore plastic and prepainted, I really don't have the time or patience to paint the old metal ones. Not to mention the price ... the Entry pack alone, which has 16 random mini's, costs less at full price than one of the old set with only five characters. Why complain ? Be happy and rejoice in the laziness of it... and my orc army! Mwahahahahaa!
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