by Gianthogweed
I am new to Descent, and this type of board game in general, although I used to play games like Dark World and Dragon Strike when I was younger. Me and my cousins were reminiscing about these old games and were thinking of playing them again. I read some good things about Descent on Boardgame Geeks and after looking it up I decided to buy it, as well as the lair of the wyrm expansion.We played it for the first time this week, and found it to be a blast. The cards and especially miniatures look very high quality and well made. They definitely did not skimp out.
But one thing we were disappointed about was the fact that it didn't come with any miniatures for the lieutenants. It just didn't feel right that there were these amazing miniatures for the regular monsters, but disappointing flat cardboard chits for the lieutenants. We soon learned, after visiting the website, that FFG was planning on selling pewter miniatures for these lietenants at $10 each. This annoyed me a bit, to say the least, but I enjoyed the game so I decided to to buy them.
But then, I learned that two of the of the lieutenants (Merrick and Alric Farrow) are listed as "not available". Another one (Lady Farrow) looks to be available but when I tried to order her, it said "out of stock", and the other three (Splig, Belthir and Zachareth) are listed as "not yet available". I wasn't able to get any information on the miniature for Valyndra. What is going on here? Are they selling these miniatures or aren't they? While I admit, at $10 a piece they are pricey, I'd be willing to purchase them all together if they were to offer them in a package deal to make the game seem more complete.
I'm hoping, that with the reduced cost of 3D printing, they'll be able to sell more miniatures at a more reasonable price in the future. The main reason I didn't buy the Conversion Kit was because it did not include the miniatures. It'd be nice to have the option to buy these miniatures, as well as miniatures for the NPCs in the game. Right now the game feels a bit incomplete without these miniatures. I'm new to these types of games so I don't have any proxy miniatures I can use (I guess Dragon Strike would have had the closest miniatures, but I no longer have that game). I've read some of the threads here telling how one can make stand ups, or buy bulk minis from other games to use as proxies, but these tedious and somewhat pricey solutions seem less than ideal.
I would have preferred it if they had, perhaps, fewer monsters and npcs in the game so that they could have made miniatures for everyone. As much fun as the game is, the inconsistency of using flat pieces of cardboard for the lieutenants next to the awesome miniatures for the monsters bothers me. I'm a bit anal about things like that. Does anyone agree? Is FFG planning on releasing more figures to supplement the game?