Just wondering if any of the Innmates, like me, ever took up or currently have an interest in the D&D miniatures game. I started playing sometime soon after War Drums came out and gamed right through the last expansion for 3.5, Desert Of Desolation. Then, in true WotC form, they switched to v4 rules, making most everything else obsolete and worthless in the process. For quite some time, my interest lagged as I looked over the rules changes and found such changes irritating at best or completely unnecessary at worst. Still, I collected minis for my RP tabletop game. However, a ray of light did shine through, thanks to the independent DDM Guild who has made all minis legal again, albeit under a different rule set. Locally, interest in the minis game has dried up and my hobby shop no longer holds tourneys, but I still have fond memories of these battles that evoked memories of 1970's Chainmail and, if anyone is of like mind, would like to offer an opportunity to discuss a game that would have died were it not for the Firefly-esque fervor of its fans.

I enjoyed playing the miniatures game, though nowadays I use them much more for tabletop (even the 4.0 sets are good for this). I still buy them every once in a while for this purpose. I did enjoy the strategy of building the warbands to defeat others, but I always had to have some logical way that the warband was formed. I wouldn't, for instance, combine vampires and troglodytes unless I could come up with a reason. That's just my opinion. Otherwise it's just points and abilities really.

And wasn't that just a genius move on WotC's part: introduce a product that enticed non-RP'ers with strategy and involved combat rules so that perhaps they would cross over into actual role-playing while still providing a useful (some critics would say necessary) tool for RP'ers who then might start buying more and more minis for the warband game?

One warband I crushed with was Blood Golem of Hextor, Hellcat, and (wait for it) Pit Fiend.

Yeah, I completely agree that there had to be some kind of synergy within a warband for it to be successful, not just "Well, I've got a bunch of dwarves, so they ought to work all right together" and letting that be the sole planning involved.

My favorite victory was defeating an Aspect of Moradin. I blocked him in a narrow space with a ghost (I can't remember which one) and he kept missing because of the incorporeal trait. Meanwhile I had a yaun-ti sorceress behind the ghost pelting the Aspect with magic missiles every round until he finally died. More luck than skill, but it worked.

Whoo-hoo, took down an aspect! That's even more satisfying than defeating dragons, isn't it Steelight? Lady Luck and I have almost always been strangers (another 1?!? Arrgh!) but on the plus side, it made my warbands a bit more focused. I've misplaced my notes on this specific band, but I did make an all Drow one which included at least two cleric-types, Mounted Drow Patrol and a drider. In a three-way casual game I came in 2nd mainly because I sent my Lolth's Sting quickly to a victory area and kept banking VP with it each round. The other two guys were too busy getting VP via kills to notice my little drow-ninja off by herself. As I recall, one other guy ran a Drizzt-Gwenhyvar-Wulfgar band that time.

I really hated having to roll those routing checks since I did worse on them than actual attack rolls. Once, my Cleric of Dol Arrah was routing, and I needed only a 5 to avoid running away--I rolled a 3

I did get a handful of them back when they first launched. Had a couple silly games with them, now I mostly use them for char models in tabletop.

When I play tabletop.

I miss tabletop. :<

Before any of us in my circle of friends did DDM warbands, we used minis to represent heros in Dungeoneer games.

I think I'm pretty much the only one in the area with minis (that I know anyway) so I don' get to play the war games very much. I do make extensive use of them in tabletop play though. Them in addition to Tac-Tiles make for some great scenes and battles.

Hey, Steelight, could you elaborate on Tac-Tiles? Besides vinyl reusable maps, poster-sized maps from the Fantastic Locations WotC products and the Dungeon Tiles series, I haven't encountered other battle-map oriented products.

Tac-Tiles were created and sold by an independent manufacturer for about a year. I found the add in Dragon magazine a few years back. They don't make them anymore but it is a great product. I'm trying to figure out a way my publishing/gaming cmpany can re-design and sell a different version of them since everyone who knows of them seems to like them and miss them.

What they are is passically 1/4" think plastic puzzly pieces. Each piece is 10"x10" with a 1" grid on it. They have a very fine dry erase surface so you can draw whatever terrains you want on them. They fit together flawlessly and when your adventure moved out of one area and into another you could wipe clear one of the tiles, redraw the new area and just place it at the other end of your map. It really is quite convenient. Add that to the small plates produced by GameMastery for flying creatures and such (adding a 3-D aspect to the game) and you've got a great environment for any adventure.

Whoa, those sound like a bucket of awesomesauce! Thanks for illuminating my ignorance of such a fine product. Like so many other things (again, Firefly anyone?) that have this quintessential quality about them and for reasons only the gods know are quickly cast aside and never seen again. Sigh.

+1 to Steelight for his uber knowledge

+1 to Grugg for posting and adding some cred to the thread

I must admit, I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. It's rather.... interesting...