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General BattleTech Discussion / Re: If you could get pre-painted BattleTech figures, would you?
« Last post by butchbird on Today at 16:26:28 »Personally, no. While I don't particularly like painting (altough its very relaxing with a whisky and some music), I take a weird pride in "making" the units myself. The right mix of paints for that 4th Tau Ceti Ranger's bronze, managing to paint something that relatively looks like the Draconis Combine symbol on the Proseprina Hussar's striking paint scheme, doing a good kit bash with all the plastic cut to the right dimensions...Yeah, got carried away.
But...If I can link this to a thread of a few years ago...
There had been a question about wether battletech was a "miniatures game" or a "boardgame". I'm not sure I agree with the very question, as neither answer is really what I think BT is (yes, there's miniatures and yes, I can just carry along one sole box and go have a game at a firneds, but...y'know, its a miniature wargame...with maps,... still use the 3rd edition "boards" myself sometimes) but lets carry on with this distinction.
For the "board game player", I doubt they'd be willing to pay the extra bucks on miniatures which they won't go overboard with in terms of quantity anyway.
But for the "miniature gamer", I can definitely see it. From what I've seen from browsing online stores offering used miniatures, the well painted ones tend to sell pretty well. In some more...shall I say mainstream?...franchises, I was quite surprised at the profit margin between a mint miniature of spiderman versus a "used" well painted one.
Another indicator is that even small stores in small markets sell their used and well painted minis a hefty price...or so it seemed to me, I don't know much about WH40K, but those minis were costly by the unit, it really struck me...and like I said, I'm in a sparsely populated area, the number of miniature gamers must be pretty low.
There's definitely a market, but it might get more complicated to appeal to a sufficient number of buyers for a more obscur franchise.
But...If I can link this to a thread of a few years ago...
There had been a question about wether battletech was a "miniatures game" or a "boardgame". I'm not sure I agree with the very question, as neither answer is really what I think BT is (yes, there's miniatures and yes, I can just carry along one sole box and go have a game at a firneds, but...y'know, its a miniature wargame...with maps,... still use the 3rd edition "boards" myself sometimes) but lets carry on with this distinction.
For the "board game player", I doubt they'd be willing to pay the extra bucks on miniatures which they won't go overboard with in terms of quantity anyway.
But for the "miniature gamer", I can definitely see it. From what I've seen from browsing online stores offering used miniatures, the well painted ones tend to sell pretty well. In some more...shall I say mainstream?...franchises, I was quite surprised at the profit margin between a mint miniature of spiderman versus a "used" well painted one.
Another indicator is that even small stores in small markets sell their used and well painted minis a hefty price...or so it seemed to me, I don't know much about WH40K, but those minis were costly by the unit, it really struck me...and like I said, I'm in a sparsely populated area, the number of miniature gamers must be pretty low.
There's definitely a market, but it might get more complicated to appeal to a sufficient number of buyers for a more obscur franchise.
