As a bonus I'm including some more photos of selected minis with one of my Rangers of the North conversions to give some idea of scale (bear in mind that the LotR minis are a touch smaller than most modern "28mm" minis).
Before We Begin
None of this is sponsored by Wildspire Miniatures. I bought the set with my own money.
The opinions are my own, you may agree or disagree (and are very welcome to do so, politely in the comments please).
As of writing this I have only actually seen the minis in the Expansion Set. I've studied online images of the whole range, but I appreciate they might not reflect the minis completely accurately. I did find that the minis I bought were frequently better in real life than the pictures suggested.
I hope folk find this useful, and if you want to skip the waffle, there's a TLDR at the bottom along with an index with links to the rest of my Wildspire posts
The Minis
Individually, the minis range from OK to good. Detail isn't what we've come to expect from the likes of Reaper, but they are considerably cheaper. As an example; the Naga, a lovely looking mini, has large scales, almost horns, around the face and forming the hood. This is nicely done, but the rest of the body just has a pebbly texture to represent the smaller scales. I'm sure that other equivalent minis have far greater detail on the scales, but not for under £1.
Painting the Minis
I hope I've shown that they do paint up pretty well. I don't think you'll ever achieve absolutely stunning results, but they are monsters, and likely won't be on the table very long anyway.
I view them as good quality board game minis, and as such I think they hold up very well.
They look good using traditional painting methods, I found Speedpaints less effective; they looked great on the wolves and the werewolf fur, but didn't work as well on the latter's torn clothing.
There were times when my usual method didn't work as well given the level of detail on the minis (the Unholy Knights spring to mind), but I'm pleased with the results on the vast majority of the set.
If I were to choose favourites I'd go for the Bugbears, the Earth Elemental, the Naga and the Gray Ooze.
And there's another plus with these cheap minis; I never worried about 'spoiling' a nice mini. With some of my larger or more expensive minis I do find a certain reluctance to start painting them in case I 'do it wrong'. Not with these.
There are some issues with size and scaling. The humanoids are of a slighter build than most 'heroic scale' miniatures. Some of the traditionally Small or Large creatures are presented on Medium bases. I've yet to get my hands on the kobolds or goblins, but the pictures online suggest this is the case for them too.
This might mean that Wildspire stuff doesn't fit well with other manufacturers' minis.
Some of the equipment doesn't match the Monster Manual description (or even Wildspire's PDF stats). The Bandit, for example, has a long dagger rather than a scimitar.
I don't think these are huge problems though (he says, having frequently converted minis to have the specific equipment from the stat blocks).
What You Get
Hopefully you've seen my look at the Expansion Set. On it's own its a nice set of minis for a very good price. However, the selection is fairly limited: interesting and useful, but I can't imagine running many adventures using just this set. Given possible scaling issues with other manufacturers' stuff, you might want to think where you're going with your collection not before rushing in.
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| Translucent minis |
Expanding the Range
But if we add in the Essential Encounters set (for which this is the expansion) we suddenly get a lot more utility.
There is now a good selection of 'critters'; giant rats, fire beetles, giant spiders, (dire) wolves and boars.
Most of the lower rungs on the 'humanoid ladder'; kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls and bugbears, plus the lower rungs of the undead ladder; skeletons, zombies and ghouls are covered. There are bandits as well as cultists and various other less common creatures, such as constructs and imps.
Sprinkle in the single minis and you've got one of each elemental, plus a troll and an ogre plus three NPC villains.
Not to mention the giant and a Huge dragon.
Now the range is looking genuinely useful for a GM.
But the Creatures II set adds even more. Most of the humanoid ladder gets an archer variant (four minis), and some get a (single mini) boss, and there are wizards or the equivalent for a few. Even the cultists and the bandits get reinforcements in the form of female variants.
Now we've got a collection of adversaries that would keep a new GM going for a good while. The focus is, in D&D terms, very much on the lower tiers of play, but, for example, it covers nearly all the minis required for the Lost Mine of Phandelver starter set adventure. I think there's only a couple of monsters not covered, though there may be some encounters where you're short of numbers (you could treat the various archers as ordinary troops in most cases).
It's worth bearing in mind that to reach this stage you've spent in the region of £120. Not insignificant, though considerably less than most other manufacturers ask for 260 minis!
Niggles
I've mentioned the equipment and sizes. I'd also have liked to see a slightly different selection of minis. Buying both complete sets gets you 10 goblins (including boss and shaman), 10 orcs etc, but only 4 hobgoblins and 4 bugbears - both creatures I use a lot of.
The more powerful creatures, ogres, trolls, owlbears etc are only available singly.
I know that Wildspire discussed releasing STLs for home printing, but it would be nice to see more sets perhaps focusing on particular monsters. Of course, I'm no marketing expert, and I'm sure they've considered this. One solution is, of course, to buy extra sets and sell off any unwanted minis, but I suspect that a GM relying on Wildspire sets will become frustrated by the lack of sufficient numbers of particular minis.
Beyond Encounters
Wildspire also do Heroes. I've only seen pictures of these so far, but I'm expecting the same sort of quality as the monsters.
They cover a good range of class, gender and species, though not every option is there. I looked for minis for the Heroes of the Vale (all PHB class and species choices), and the sets don't cover all of them.
One answer to this is to present players with the minis and ask them to choose one, then generate an appropriate character.
There are also a few extra monsters and NPCs included in the Heroes sets, including an inn keeper, an arch devil and a Shambling Mound.
Wildspire also do their own range of slightly quirkier stuff* called Originals (beer keg golem for example, and it does look fun). The pictures suggest a slightly different style for these, but there are certainly some useful designs there.
A Buyer's Guide
There's a lot of different options out there but I think I've sorted out what's what. This should save you the time and trouble.
Putting aside the Originals line, there are two main sets of monsters and two of heroes.
The monsters are collected in Classic Encounters Complete Set (which consists of Classic Encounters Essential Set and Classic Encounters Expansion Set - the one I bought) and Classic Encounters II (some of these are also available in the Horde Reinforcements Set which contains 28 individual minis drawn from the minis available in multiples of four in Encounters II).
The heroes are available in Mercenary Guild I (which consists of Mercenary Band II and Mercenary Band II) and Mercenary Guild II (which consists of Specialists, War Priests, Warriors and Mages).
In every case the combined sets are better value than buying the sub sets, though special deals do occasionally appear which might prove better.
Classic Encounters II is available in two versions. In one, all the minis are in the grey plastic used in Classic Encounters I, in the other, the minis with multiple copies come in grey, blue, red and yellow. I wonder if they were intended for a board game originally? Regardless, the multicoloured set is a bit more expensive.
Finally, there is the Realm Reforged Set, which includes Classic Encounters II and Mercenary Guild II plus five additional villagers (unavailable anywhere else as far as I can see).
So if you wanted to get absolutely everything in the Classics range, Classic Encounters Complete Set, Mercenary Guild 1 and Realm Reforged Set (get the grey, it's cheaper).
This gets you 311 minis, with a current price tag of just under £170, though special offers seem to turn up fairly regularly. Pricy, but that'll keep you painting for a good long while and should give you many hours (and levels) of play.
Recommended for....
Despite buying and painting this set (and frequently searching for discounts on the other sets); not me. I've already got most of the creatures, and usually in better sculpts**. Just don't ask if they're painted!
But if you're just starting out, or a group of you have a club, then I think they'll see you right for several levels of play, especially if you share the cost.
They're also great for practicing painting, being cheap enough that it doesn't really matter what happens (I suppose I'll need to do a supplementary post on how to strip paint off them).
TLDR
Individually OK to good. Soft detail on some minis more than made up for by the price point.
May look a little slender (more realistic?) than most RPG/wargaming minis.
Taking the whole lot; potentially a very useful beginners set of traditional FRPG minis. Individual sets less so, but the Classic Encounters will give you plenty to challenge the first tier or so.
Wildspire Index
Painted Giant
Summary
*As I understand it, the Classics minis were originally designed by a different company. Despite their Kickstarter campaign funding, there were problems delivering, including a global pandemic (remember that?).
Wildspire Miniatures, a different company, had their own Kickstarter to fund their Originals range, and managed to obtain the designs for the Classics minis. I believe they made the minis available at a much reduced price to the disappointed backers of the previous campaign and took over production.
**Which, of course, doesn't actually mean I won't be getting any more.
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