I recently stumbled across Scott Pyle’s Super Mission Force (paid link), read up on it — it’s a low-complexity superhero miniatures game that uses power suites to make character creation simple, and it supports campaign play — and thought, “That sounds totally rad! Except I don’t have any miniatures for it . . .”
Enter HeroClix, which have been around for years, and which are readily available in bulk lots — perfect for someone who doesn’t care about them as HeroClix[1], just as miniatures. SMF is specifically designed to work with whatever minis you have on hand (just like Frostgrave (paid link), which I love).
The best I could do for bulk minis, with some duplicates and likely a few broken ones in the mix, was $0.50/figure on Ebay. Or so I thought, until I remembered that CoolStuffInc — a fantastic online game store I’ve shopped at for years — stocks loose/single miniatures.
Their HeroClix selection includes batches of 100 assorted HeroClix for $15, with the note, “May contain duplicates.” (They also have batches of 100 different HeroClix for $28, but those were sold out and in any case were pricier than I’d like.) I rolled the dice and bought four packs.
Zero minis enter, 400 minis leave
Here’s the first 100, which turned out to be the lot with the fewest duplicates of my four (dupes and broken are in front):
Those plus the second hundred (growing horde of dupes off to the left):
The final 200:
The breakdown
Here’s how my 400 HeroClix shook out:
- 332 unique miniatures
- 68 doubles (and multiples, etc.)
- 3 broken figures, all easily repaired with glue
At $60 for all 400, that’s $0.15/figure, or $0.18/unique figure — much better than the best I could find anywhere else.[2] And duplicates aren’t a bad thing: Superheroes fight forces of goons, squads of robots, evil crime families, and the like all the time, after all.
The variety across my 332 unique HeroClix is staggering. A wide range of skin tones, genders (male, female, genderless, ambiguous, etc.), ethnicities, species, roles, and heroes/villains are represented in my lot. Also included are a dozen or so minis on flying bases, some mundane non-super folks, and a handful of giant-sized figures.
Compared to the other prepainted minis I’m used to, WotC’s old D&D Miniatures line, the paint jobs on HeroClix range from awful to pretty good, with the occasional excellent one — but I knew that going in. HeroClix get the job done, and what they lack in quality they make up for in variety. I don’t know of a better way to acquire this many prepainted figures, with this much variety, this cheaply.
Some of the fancier and more interesting-looking ones actually look pretty awesome, too. Here are a few favorites:
I also threw in a random assortment of $2 HeroClix maps for good measure.
Overall, I’m beyond thrilled with how this worked out. When Super Mission Force arrives, I’ve got a deep catalog of potential miniatures to match damn near any character concept we can come up with. I also bought a superhero RPG by the same author, 3d6 Supers! (paid link), that looks it will work well with miniatures.[3] I’ve loved superhero RPGs since I was a kid — I’m sure there will be plenty of chances to put these to use.
If you need a walloping great bunch of inexpensive superhero minis, this is a splendid option.
[1] I’ve played HeroClix and it’s neat, but it’s not my jam. And the older I get, the harder it is to read the tiny icons on the bases.
[2] Compared to CSI’s $28/100 different, which shakes out to $0.28/figure, this is the clear winner.
[3] I don’t always love using minis in supers games — Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, for example, is superb as a theater-of-the-mind game — but some supers games lend themselves to that approach.