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Sprue and Paint: The Year Ahead With each release of WizKids’ pre-primed, ready-to-paint miniatures, we’ve done our best to improve upon our figures, grow the selection, fulfill fans’ requests, and also to try new things.
Our line of sprue-based Dungeons & Dragons miniatures—customizable plastic miniatures that come unassembled, on a plastic frame—premieres in November, with D&D Frameworks …and we’ll follow up in 2022 with even more miniatures (and more licenses).
For those who haven’t seen one of those sneak previews yet—the Elf Ranger, Dwarf Cleric, Orc Barbarian, and Human Druid—here’s a rundown of what to expect from the sprue line.
First, these miniatures come unassembled and unprimed, giving them a lot more customization options, right out of the box, than our standard unpainted miniatures. Each figure comes on a sprue with a choice of heads, arms, gear, and accessories—plus a fair amount of spell effects cast in clear plastic—as well as a terrain base, and enough clear bases of the appropriate size for each figure in the pack.
Second, these are entirely new sculpts: still recognizably the characters and creatures gamers have come to expect from their favorite fantasy roleplaying game, but updated with poses more suited to customization.
An Array of Sizes As we’ve learned from our unpainted miniatures, differently-sized creatures require differently-sized packaging, and so we’ve developed an array of several sizes of sprue boxes, each at a different MSRP. The smallest contains only a single sprue (with perhaps a partial sprue of clear parts), and the largest have twice the footprint, and are also thicker. These are reserved for the very largest or most complex sprues, or multi-packs with several figures of the same monster type in them. These sprues are cast in rigid plastic, which means that it’s easier to create a more dynamic pose—no flight stand needed. Unlike the Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures line of unpainted miniatures, these do not come pre-primed, but they’re also designed with the more experienced miniature hobbyist in mind. Frameworks starts out with a broad selection of popular character types and classic D&D monsters. In the first release, look for a good mix of Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Dragonborn, and more, with nearly every class covered—and the rest with the follow-up release. There will also be classic monsters like Beholders, Driders, Minotaurs, and so on…up to and including the grandaddy monster of the premiere release: the terrifying Balor!
Mini Bits and Multi-Packs When we put together our “wish list” for sprue-based miniatures, it was obvious that they had to have interchangeable parts—but what else could we do to make them more useful on the tabletop? We knew we wanted consumers to be able to “kitbash” with these sprues: to use parts not just on the miniature they came with, but a miniature from a completely different sprue, or even a figure from Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures. These “figure-agnostic” bits would be loosely themed for the sprue they came on—a spellbook on a wizard sprue, a broken statue for a basilisk, and so on—but not necessarily designed to fit the miniature on any particular spot. That means the consumer can put the spellbook in the basilisk’s mouth, for example, or the broken statue next to the wizard…or any combination they like. Along similar lines, we know that even though the minis in a multi-pack can be constructed in distinctive way, keeping track of several different orcs or goblins during a battle can get confusing. We solved this problem by including a simple-yet-unobtrusive numbering system. Each frame in a multi-pack includes singles, doubles, or triples of a particular item—arrows for goblins, for example—all of which can be attached to the mini or its base. Each multi-pack includes enough of these items to assign different numbers to each figure in the pack. And again, because these are figure-agnostic, they can be attached to completely different miniatures.
In addition to the entirely new line of sprue miniatures, we’re proud to present the Dungeons & Dragons Prismatic Paint line! Developed in cooperation with Wizards of the Coast and Acrylicos Vallejo, this line of 60 colors makes use of Vallejo’s vast expertise in the model and hobby paint industry, WizKids’ distribution network, and Wizards of the Coast’s brand recognition. In fact, thanks to the familiar D&D logo on the paint bottles and our retailer-friendly display racks, these paints will fit right in beside any store’s selection of D&D Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures.
There’s more to the D&D Prismatic Paint line than just 40 familiar Vallejo colors and 20 brand-new, D&D-themed colors, and there are more ways to buy them than off the rack. The Prismatic Paint line includes the Basic Starter Case and the Intermediate Case, each of which holds 30 bottles of paint. Between them, these portable plastic cases contain each and every paint color in the line—so a customer who wants all 60 colors can buy one of each case, with no duplicates. Additionally, we looked at the tools miniature hobbyists typically use, and included those in the line. In addition to packs of brushes, we offer a hobby knife, flexible sanding pads, a mold line remover, and a sprue cutter.
As time goes on, we’ll add more paint colors and tools to the D&D Prismatic Paint line, just as we’ll add more miniatures to the D&D Frameworks sprue line.
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