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Where To Find The Perfect Miniature for DnD and Tabletop RPGs!

So you’re on the search for miniatures, eh?  Maybe you’re looking for some bulk cheap miniatures for a DnD game.  Or a specific figure for your upcoming campaign. There are a LOT of options out there for you!  The key will be how to easily find what you’re looking for. I’m going to cover all of that in this article for you.  

We will cover the following topics:

  • Where to find Cheap Bulk Miniatures for DnD or Tabletop RPGs
  • Where to find specific miniatures for your gaming campaign
  • What miniatures are a step up in quality?
  • Where can I find different styles and genres of miniatures?  For example: Roman soldiers, TV Based miniatures like Thundercats, Dr Who or Battlestar Galactica, how about Steampunk or SciFi based?  

Where to find Cheap Bulk Miniatures for DnD or Tabletop RPGs

If you’re looking for a bunch of miniatures for the table, this is for you.  You want to fill up a dungeon perhaps, or build a stockpile of minis to fit any situations that might come up. Maybe even some player characters or NPCs to join the party.  I’m going to focus on bang for the buck miniatures. Often times this comes in the form of games or sets. Here we go:

Cheap DnD Miniature Tokens:

40 unpainted miniatures for $25.00:  .62 Cents Per Mini.  A great cheap option for token minis to play on your table. Around $25 for 40 miniatures is a steal of a deal. This is good to have as a way to fill out your ranks.

SMILING GM 40 Fantasy Monster Unpainted Miniatures for Tabletop Roleplaying Games Ready to Play
  • 40 pieces with 8 unique creatures including Orc, Goblin, Imp, Fairy, Blight, Hag, Lizardmen and Ooze.
  • Miniatures are unpainted plastic in 28mm scale.

Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon  

[amazon fields=”0786955708″ value=”price” link_id=”32340″] for 42 unpainted DnD minis = roughly $1.19 per miniature.  Now we’ve nearly doubled the cost but easily tripled the quality.  They’re unpainted but it’s DnD based miniatures and you get a whopping 42 of them, including a dragon.

Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon
  • A heavy shadow falls across the land, cast by a dark spire that belches smoke and oozes fiery lava.
  • A cave mouth leads to a maze of tunnels and chambers, and deep within this monster-infested...

WizKids Icons of the Realm Booster Boxes:  

Around 12.00 per box of 4 painted miniatures = $3.00 Per miniature.  Bulk DnD Miniatures… Painted!  Ok, now we’re moving up in price. For around $3.00 per miniature you can get these guys, and yup they are already painted!  So you get a huge time saver if you’re just interested in getting things on the game table.  They are ready to rock.

Again, The premium boxes are PAINTED, DnD based miniatures.  Awesome. Now it is bulk, but it’s not cheap. For around [amazon fields=”B07JX7X4KY” value=”price” link_id=”32341″] you can get 8 booster boxes.  That’s $12.00 a box roughly, and you get 4 painted miniatures inside including one bigger size miniature like a dragon that I got. 

D&D Icons of The Realms: Waterdeep: Dungeon of The Mad Mage Booster Brick (8)
  • This set of collectible figures many of the monsters and villains found throughout the levels of...
  • Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage includes exciting new player characters & monsters like...

Here are the 4 that came in my box next to a couple of dropper bottles for size reference.  Witch, Berzerker and Intellect Devourer:

So we’re looking at $3.00 a miniature roughly.  The other problem with these boxes is Duplicates.  Now maybe you get 2 Beholders! Yay! But maybe you get 3 clear plastic minis that are apparitions… or invisible dudes or whatever they are supposed to be.  Mmm… ok.  

You can see a list of all of the minis from this set and others here:  https://www.minisgallery.com/dnd/dnd20.htm

Lord Of The Rings Set:

The Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle-earth Board Game - Strategy Game, Cooperative Adventure Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 14+, 1-5 Players, 60+ Minute Playtime, Made by Fantasy Flight Games
  • EPIC ADVENTURE GAME: Form your Fellowship and set out on your own adventures in this...
  • STRATEGY GAME: You and your friends become heroes of the Free Peoples of Middle-earth...

[amazon fields=”B07PHH966D” value=”price” link_id=”20549″] for 25 awesome, unpainted, miniatures = $2.80 per unpainted miniature roughly .  You can also watch Sorastro’s channel on YouTube for exact guides on how to paint these bad boys.  Yes, it’s Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli but it can be any human elf and dwarf you want. If you are into LOTR, and you want to learn to paint miniatures, this might be the set to get.  

Here is Sorastro painting Gimli from this set:

Where to Find Specific Miniatures for Your Gaming Campaign

Now we are into specifics.  You have your hordes from sets and games.  You want something specific. Are you looking for a human fighter with a sword and shield?  Easy. Tons of options for you. Are you looking for a Female Tiefling Swashbuckler wearing a hat and wielding a club?  Ah… hmm.  

Here are the best ways to find your specific DnD or RPG miniature:

These sites are a great resource for so many options. You’ll find miniatures from a lot of different sources.  

Reaper Figure Finder
The Reaper Figure Finder allows you to search through their large catalog of minis by a lot of different variables.  So If you know the race and gender, you can fill that in.  If you’re looking more broadly for someone with a shield… you can search that up too.  This in my mind is the first stop in any mini search.  At least for DnD miniatures. Reaper just has tons to choose from and odds are you can find something workable.  Genre, gender, race, weapon, armor… it’s fantastic.

Miniscollector Figure Finder
Very much along the lines of Reapers finder, this will give you a list of painted minis to look at!  Along with helping you to find something you like, it will also give you ideas on how to paint it.  Cool color schemes, styles and looks you can draw inspiration from.  They’ll also have the name so you can search it up in MiniatureMarket, Reaper etc…  or just google it.

GnomishBazaar Figure Finder
Another great finder along the lines of Reapers.  In fact, many of the mini’s here are Reaper.  You can check the pricing and see if it’s a better option for you.  Again it’s good to have options here if you are looking for something very specific.  Gnomish has a lot of stuff, the prices are good and they have made searching easy.

MiniatureMarket
Fantastic site for tons and tons of miniatures from almost every large manufacturer.  Here you can find Reaper, WizKids, GamesWorkshop, Star Wars, and anything else you need.  MiniatureMarket is probably the biggest resource I use for buying miniatures.  If it’s not on Amazon especially, or even if it is, I’ll buy from here fairly often.  They have EVERYTHING and I can grab a pot of paint I need while picking up a mini or some basing supplies all in one shot.  Shipping is fast too.  Make sure you check here for anything you’re looking for.

Google

Seems silly to add this but uh… www.google.com .  Maybe you’ve heard of it?
Yeah, you’ve probably tried this and you know that it’s very hit or miss.  Still, it’s worth a shot. Start specific and go broader in your search.  Google is great for when you have a name or model number to search up.  For example… let’s say you want a Dwarf.  A warrior.  With a hammer.  You find one you like, and you see his name is Fulumbar.  Now search Fulumbar, Dwarf Warrior and hit Images.  Boom, lots of Fulumbars to check out and get painting ideas from!

Amazon

Amazon is great for the big sets I listed above.  The DnD sets, LOTR boxed games with minis, Booster Packs… fantastic and easy.  For specific miniatures though?  Well… it’s worth a shot!  Amazon doesn’t have a really wide selection of specific minis, and what they do have is usually shipped 3rd party.  Let’s be honest though, for easy of purchase they are tough to beat.

Hero Forge
If you can’t find a specific character or someone in the exact gear you want: Create your own!  I have some Hero Forge Miniatures and they are among my very favorites.  Mainly because I designed them to be exactly what I wanted.  I’m talking down to hair, weapon, and pose of the character.  You can customize so much stuff with Hero Forge.  Here are my 3 in various stages of their development.  2 are almost done and 1 is primed in this shot:

Now Hero Forge is not cheap.  I think mine cost $25.00 each.  Yeah.  If you want something very exact, maybe it’s your new DnD character and it needs to be PERFECT, Hero Forge is an option.  If you happen to have a 3D Printer then you can simply customize and buy the .stl files from Hero Forge for $10.00.  Print as many as you like!

Thingiverse
If you have your own 3D Printer or are interested in what you could do with one, check this site out.  Be warned you’re going to want to print everything in the Thingiverse.  The printers now are capable of some amazing quality.  It’s a great time to be into miniatures 🙂

Instagram
Instagram is a great place for inspiration on painting miniatures.  Often times they’ll have the model name so you can find it and buy your own.  I’d suggest creating an Instagram account and searching up some tags like #miniaturepainting and away you go!  Once you have the name of the mini, the rest should be easy.  Google, MiniatureMarket or whatever manufacturers site they list.

Wrapping Up Specific Miniature Search:

So here’s the thing… none of these pass the “Tiefling” test.  This is a random test I made up based on how easy it was to find a Tiefling miniature.   I couldn’t find a way to filter for them anywhere. It’s the one race I see people asking questions on and yet no options exist beyond a few casts by Nolzurs and some options on Etsy.

Honestly, I wasn’t fully sure what a Tiefling was until I looked it up.  Anyone finds a good source of them let us know in the comments!

What miniatures are a step up in quality?

Sometimes you’ll be looking for something special.  A boss fight in your campaign.  A new character you’re playing.  Or just something that is a level above what you’ve been doing.  You’ll paint it, and display it prominently in your home.  Nice.

Where can one find such things?  Well, while places like Reaper and WizKids have some cool stuff (Check out this ClockWork Dragon for example), there are also some that are something special.  People have their own ideas of what looks cool but let me give you a couple of starting points.

Citadel:  I say this a lot but, there is just something about Games Workshop / Citadel miniatures.  The plastic they use, the way the paint flows on them, it’s impressive to me.  If you find a Citadel model you like the looks of, I would give them a try.  They are expensive!  Like, $25.00 is a cheap one for the more intricate models.  But if you’re looking for something nice, check them out.  If you’re into DnD type miniatures you’re looking at Age of Sigmar stuff.  If you dig the Space/Sci-Fi look then check out Warhammer 40k.

MrLeesMinis:  Just click that and look for yourself.  It’s pretty amazing what people can accomplish with the miniatures and some paint.  I like this site to browse around when I’m not sure what I’m looking for.  I’ll usually find something to inspire me.

Dark Sword:  This site is my go-to for higher quality DnD miniatures.  They have cool sculpts, a wide variety of classes and races, and the detail is fantastic.  The prices are reasonable too, $10.00 for this Dragonkin Mage is worth it for me to get something of this quality.

Where can I find different styles and genres of miniatures? 

If you’re looking for something different… something fun, interesting, out of the usual fare we see, these are some options for you.  I know personally I’ve searched far and wide for minis like Roman soldiers, TV Based miniatures like Thundercats, Dr Who or Battlestar Galactica, and even  Steampunk or SciFi based.  These types of miniatures can be a little more challenging to find what you’re looking for.  A couple of sites that scratched the itch for me are:  

CrookedDice – This site is fantabulous.  It’s got crazy stuff in it, and loosely based miniatures on classic TV or cartoons or movies.  For fun nostalgic minis, this is where you’d go.  Ever wanted to paint Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom?  How about the Duo of Doom then.  The thing here is you need to browse.  I’m not sure how you’d know these guys are based on Thundercats from the description “Beastmen”.  They have Mum-Ra too 😉  

WarGame Foundry – These guys have a lot of historical minis.  I ordered some Roman centurions from them and I’m happy with the quality!   Another one to just browse and see what you like.  Again they are out of the mainstream DnD/Sci-Fi minis.  A good place to go to when in search of something different.

And there we go!  I hope this has been helpful in your search.  I’m going to maintain this and add to it as we find more wonderful sites to find our miniatures.

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