Buying plastic soldiers isn’t as cheap as it used to be. Rising production and material costs have made some miniatures game impossible to get to. Games Workshop has been the leading miniatures company, with their Warhammer and Warhammer 40k games. Back in the day, a full army with hundreds of models might cost you a hundred bucks. Now, some Games Workshop models go for upwards of $450 and a full army can cost you hundreds. Players have ran from the arms of GW to the multitudes of other, cheaper miniatures makers, like Reaper Miniatures.
Bryan Stiltz is the production manager and web developer and production manager at Reaper miniatures. He respects their work, but feels Reaper Miniatures can compete because it offers a similar product quality but with a better price point.
“Games Workshop does beautiful work; their models are a joy to put together and play with. We want to get the same level of quality as them, and I feel we have done that using far fewer pieces and generally being easier to assemble,” he said. “On a professional level, I love that they send a bunch of customers our way.”
Reaper started selling pre-painted non-random plastic miniatures in 2007 and four years ago they started selling their Bones line which has been wildly successful. At PAX East Reaper’s booth is constantly swamped by eager miniatures enthusiasts looking to paint some of their models as soon as they’re away from the chaos of the show floor.
Recently, Reaper has stopped selling individual pieces of their models, called bits, on their website. Stiltz said that while it was a nice service to offer for enthusiasts it just didn’t make sense from a business perspective.
“Our bits program was wildly successful, but we couldn’t charge a reasonable price for the bit without raising the costs. To have two full-time employees fulfilling bits requests that were $1.25 apiece. The amount of time and money we had to put in was not worth the return,” he explained.
If you haven’t already, check out some of what Reaper has to offer . If you need a mage for your D&D campaign, or a vampire general to lead your troops into battle, Reaper has the exact model you need.
