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Make Your Encounters Legendary with Prepainted Minis from Reaper

Jeff McAleer

Sep 13, 2011

Name: Reaper Miniatures Legendary Encounters Prepainted Figures

Publisher: Reaper Miniatures

Sculptors: Jason Wiebe, Ed Pugh, Sandra Garrity, and More

Year: Ongoing releases

Ages: 10+

Retail Price: $2.99 – $6.99

Genre: RPG; Fantasy

For many gamers, the overwhelming desire to include miniatures into their fantasy settings is tempered by the reality of time and investment needed to bring those figures to the table. Spending loads of dough and/or whiling away many hours painting figures may be beyond the capabilities of a lot of folks who’d enjoy the visceral benefits miniatures add to everyone’s gaming experience. If your one of these people I’m talking about, you have a few options available to you.

First, you could purchase unpainted figures and pay someone else to professionally paint them. Obviously that frees up the time element but it will dramatically increase the cost of each figure. On the other hand, someone could look to save on figures by purchasing them through a secondary market (eBay comes immediately to mind) but they still have to paint the miniatures. I know firsthand that it can be difficult for many of us to devote time to crank out enough minis to fill the ranks. There is a third option available that easily fits into everyone’s budget and schedule: Buy prepainted miniatures!

Reaper Miniatures offers the Legendary Encounters line which can go a long way to adding loads of figures, representing many of the tried and true fantasy monsters that make up miniature armies or lower and midlevel RPG encounters. Here’s a great way to stock up on miniatures which are nicely painted and inexpensively priced overall. The figures aren’t perfect (and what plastic prepaints are?) but they are the best of what I’ve seen available for those who want to enjoy prepainted miniatures.

Having spent years painting minis, personally owning some of the Legendary Encounters figures, and spending time studying them at Origins and Gen Con leaves me in a position to honestly appraise what you can expect when you look to add some of these to your gaming collection.

Let’s look at the pros of the line.

First off, the sculpts are very nice as they aren’t “soft” like many prepaints I’ve seen. There’s plenty of detail and I’m sure there are quite a few painters out there who would be more than comfortable repriming these and having a go with their own schemes and styles. There’s nothing worse than seeing a plastic figure (painted or otherwise) that has very little character and was obviously a rushed sculpt. It was nice to see that isn’t the case here.

The paint jobs are pretty good as well. The eyes line up properly, another pet peeve of mine with prepaints has been avoided, and there is just enough shadowing and highlights to give the figures some pop. For the most part there isn’t an excessive amount of overlap or carryover of one color into other areas of the figures. I have to be honest and say the skeletons do leave a bit to be desired but they only skeletons after all.

And on to the less than perfect qualities of the figures.

The plastic is of a softer variety so for those who might be looking at scoring some damn fine figures, to repaint, at a bargain price some additional steps will need to be taken to ensure minimal paint flaking. For those who just want to game with the Legendary Encounters line as is this won’t be an issue. I will point out that I’m not especially keen on the metallics that are used on the figures as they come across a bit cheesy. Maybe it’s just to my eye but I just wasn’t a huge fan and repainted those areas. One last item about the paint jobs is there is some carryover (although rather minimal) on some of the minis I’ve seen. It’s certainly not eye grabbing in any sense since the masking done on the figures during production is top notch but it is there. As someone who paints figures I’m probably looking at these with an overly critical eye but I did want to point these out.

For those out there with even a minimal amount of painting skill I would recommend using a very light wash of dark brown or black, on the figures, to cover the carryover and pick up some metallic (why you could even get those paints from Reaper with your order) and repaint much of the armor and weapons.

You’ll also need to provide bases for each figure if you plan on using them with any particular wargaming rule set so that’s also something to keep in mind – not something to worry about for the roleplaying crowd though.

I suppose the biggest con of the line is really just the number available as there are only 35 or so to choose from. Reaper is committed to releasing anywhere from four to twelve new figures each year but that’s still not a whole lot. Regardless you’re still looking at a nice selection at a very attractive price.

Which now brings us to what might just be the biggest selling point of the entire LE line, price point! For those gamers looking to punch up their collection or even those looking for an inexpensive entry into the world of miniature painting, you can do no wrong with the Legendary Encounters line. The average price of each figure is right in the vicinity of $4-5, with even the largest monsters carrying a price tag of $6.99, so that means you can really stretch your gaming dollar! With so many miniature companies putting a $12-14 price tag on what amounts to nothing more than an unpainted 28mm figure just think how many LE figures you can field compared to a standard squad of minis from those other guys!

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media for fifteen years, Jeff takes on any and all sorts of games but is especially ready to tackle roleplaying games and strategy games. He's been involved with the hobby since he was just a wee grade school lad, over four decades ago.