A good way to get a bunch of cheap minis for D&D?

Hey all. I am looking for a bunch of some common enemy types to use in D&D. Many of the lots on ebay run a couple hundred dollars. Are there cheaper ways to get a bunch of goblins, ogres and trolls?

I have even been thinking about buying some D&D Adventure games just for the models as they have higher counts of common bad guys and I get game to boot. Any help is greatly appreciated.

-Ben

I use homemade pogs. Go on Amazon.com and look for 1" wooden discs, and a 1" circle punch.

Then go here:
www.drivethrurpg.com/product/59450/Count...llection-Digital-v30

... and download the template pdfs from the description; they're free. Then do an image search for whatever you want. Skeletons, goblins? Drag and drop the image onto the template (stagger diagonally). Print, punch out, glue to your pogs.

Way cheaper, no painting needed. For big monsters go to your local hardware store and get 2" or larger washers as needed and use the larger templates.

It would be interesting to know what the most bang for your buck board game is, in terms of how many miniatures it comes with vs. what it costs. The DDAS games are probably pretty high on the list.

Sounds easy enough. What's a good circle punch? I like the look of the Fiskars squeeze punch where you can see what you are punching.

There are boxes of standees available for Pathfinder. One of my friends has them.

bendgar wrote: Sounds easy enough. What's a good circle punch? I like the look of the Fiskars squeeze punch where you can see what you are punching.

I got the EK Tools 1" one, but I'm sure it doesn't really matter all that much.

I recently wrapped up a four-year D&D 3.5 campaign, which ran all the way to 20th level. It was the first time that I had run D&D since first edition, so I had zero miniatures. I went the homemade pogs route, just like dysjunct described upthread. I stole good quality artwork online and dumped it into an excel template that I made with lots of pre-set 1" and 2" circles for all the large and smaller creatures and characters. For the non-unique ones, I found it useful to insert numbers in an offset color, so that I could easily tell the difference between goblin #1 and goblin #5 in a fight. For the pogs, I used wooden nickels and Mod Podge craft glue to affix the art. I punched out the art with this 3/4" hole punch:

www.michaels.com/recollections-lever-pun..._color=White#start=8

Over the course of the campaign, I made maybe 1,200 of these pogs, and used the vast majority of them. I always printed off an extra copy of a template page on label paper, and I would slap that copy onto a cheap sheet of thin cardboard, like the stuff copy shops use to separate copy jobs. I would cut up that copy with scissors and use that set of tokens to track initiative on a simple numbered grid that I created on a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper. Between sessions, I kept the tokens and the matching intiative tokens sorted in ziplock bags labeled things like "elves" and "undead." About a half hour before each session, I would get out the tokens that I expected to use during that session.

The players really liked the tactile sensation of handling the wooden pogs, and the satisfaction of flipping one over when an opponent was downed. They also liked that I would use whatever art they sent me to create custom tokens for their characters, familiars, and animal companions.

The wooden tokens cost me about a nickel each for the 1" ones, and slightly more for the 2" tokens, not counting paper, one bottle of glue and two toner cartridges. I used cardboard backing instead for the bigger creatures. I got to the point where I could do a sheet of creatures in two hours, counting locating art, printing, scissoring/punching and gluing. By contrast, buying and painting 1,200 miniatures would have cost thousands of dollars, not counting the cost and the absurd amount of time to paint them all. I realize that DMs that use minis probably tend to re-use the same minis over and over again for similar creatures (this dragon is actually a wyvern), but I liked being able to tell my players that each pog looked just like the creature that it represented.

First, you don't need miniatures to play D&D.

Second, if you want miniatures, just grab a bag of 100 zombies for $10 and use them for every humanoid creature in the game. For other creatures, use blocks of wood or whatever.

Fantastic ideas everyone. I just bought a hole punch at Hobby Lobby today. I bought a 1" but maybe should have gone a quarter inch smaller. Anyway. Thank you.

Shellhead's tokens look great in person also.

If you dig paper minis, Pathfinder has an entire line of paper minis .

I can also recommend One Monk. It's a great little resource. Used a lot of them for my own campaigns. One Monk

Another cost effective approach is Cardboard Heroes:

www.sjgames.com/heroes/

I really like the illustrations on those Cardboard Heroes. They are simple enough to be recognized at a distance. Thank you. I am either buying my first can of Mod Podge or going that standee route.

Here are some sample pictures of my token miniatures:

For my D&D tokens, I used headshots for Medium-sized creatures on 1" tokens. Small or smaller creatures went on 1" tokens as well, with half- or full-body shown. Large creatures also had full-body shown, on 2" tokens. For creatures that were larger than Large, I printed them on full-sheet label paper and stuck them on cardboard sheet backing.