Today I'll be taking a quick look at the new Frameworks line of hard plastic D&D miniatures being produced by WizKids Games.
When I heard that WizKids was going to be producing hard plastic customizable D&D figures I was extremely excited, this was the exact kind of miniatures line I had wanted for years. I'm going to preface this review by stating two things to make my own perspective clear:
1. Having a positive personal bias going in, once I received the models I decided to spend some time with the models before reviewing them with the goal of remaining as objective as possible.
2. I fully understand that on the venn diagram of miniature gamers and role-players aside from the group in the center overlap there are two different sets of wants and needs from a D&D miniature product.
Having said that, let's get to it!
At release there are two basic types of Frameworks boxes; single models (characters and monsters), as well as multi-packs of 'horde' type monsters. I started off with four single model boxes (intentionally chosen as two sets of two, more on that in a bit), and one multi-pack. Here's a quick look at the single models:
And then my one multi-pack:
The Good
I will start off by saying the level and sharpness of detail on these figures is outstanding. Remembering that for as long as WizKids has been making miniatures this is their first pass at hard plastic and the quality is outstanding. The variety of models available is also great as most basic D&D character arch-types are readily available and suitable for D&D or similar games right out of their boxes. And I'm really sorry, but as far as positives go, that's pretty much it.
The Bad
The design of the plastic frames themselves is incredibly out of date by modern casting standards, what I mean by that is in the pictures you can clearly see the amount of unused space on the sprues. This means there could have been significantly more options in each box than we ended up getting. This issue is further exacerbated by space being taken up on the sprues by repetitive and needless pieces. The two most egregious example of this are the bases and shields. Every miniature includes a clear plastic base, but in spite of this on every sprue the second biggest component (after the main body of the figure) is a single flat rock for the miniature to stand on, flat based rocks are a holdover from the days before generic flat bases and you don't need both, it wouldn't matter but given how much real estate on these sprues seems to be at a premium I would rather have another component or accessory than a duplication of basic basing function. The shields are even more glaring. The fighter's two shield options are identical except for the groves on the back so they can easily be attached to the figure in two different ways, given that the backs of the shields will be unseen once the models are assembled this is completely unnecessary. In the case of the Cleric three of the components on the sprue are one shield with two different images to mount on the front, this would be fine if again it wasn't for how much sprue space is given over to what is effectively one option.
The Ugly
Normally this would be my final point but I have to call out what poor value for money these figures are before moving on to ,more subjective points. A single character box has an MSRP roughly 80%-100% higher (so nearly double) than it's equivalent pack in the softer vinyl. The material and options theoretically add value to these Frameworks packs, but keep in mind that the packs I'm comparing them to have two figures each, not a single character (in the case of the Kobolds in my market I could have gotten 30 kobolds for this box of 7 costs). For my next point I'm going back to the start where I mentioned I consciously started with two sets of two characters, two armoured humans, and two unarmoured arcane casters. The reason I started with 'sets' of figures was to determine whether or not part could be easily swapped from one kit to another reasonably similar kit, for no reason at all the answer to that is; no. The heads don't have the same attachments, the arms attach at different points in the lengths, and most of the clear plastic accessories attach to a single specific arm or hand. Due to the models being plastic it would be fairly easy to use a knife or files to modify pieces to get them to fit together, but remember that venn diagram? I'm going to say 50% of potential hobbyists for these models are really not going to want to do that.
Overall I am really disappointed by Frameworks. I had high hopes but the technical execution and some design choices are so poor that almost from the moment I opened these boxes my mind went to all the better options to fill this particular hobby niche. If you see a single figure that really appeal to then by all means go for it, but if you are looking for a pool of miniature options for your D&D games there are much better choices out there for you.
Thanks for checking in.
-Jay
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