Martial Heroes

A long, long time ago Wizards of the Coast decided to produce their own line of prepainted D&D minis for use in your Dungeons & Dragons game. The upside was that they were dirt cheap initially, especially once you factored in the money it would take to buy the painting supplies and the time it would take to paint them yourself. On the downside they looked like (to put it nicely) rubbish.

They were also randomized, which is one of the main ways that Wizards was able to keep the production costs down. You bought a box and got a random assortment of creatures with a rarity determined by how many of the buggers you'd need. Goblins and kobolds were commons, while minotaurs and mind flayers were logically uncommon or rare. Seemed reasonable to me, but provided plenty of nerd-rage-fuel for those that wanted to get the exact mini they wanted at a paltry sum.

Whelp a few months ago Wizards announced that they were mostly stopping this practice, producing hero packs for players and monster packs for DMs. We've been able to see more than a few sneak peaks mostly thanks to Hordlings, but Wizards has upped the ante by giving us the full frontal on Martial Heroes 1, which contains a male elf ranger, male human fighter, and female dragonborn rogue. They talk a bit about the power card that will come with the pack, but elaborate a bit further by revealing that not all powers will be at-wills: powers of all types, frequencies, and levels will be getting some love.

As for the actual quality of the sculpts...well, the ranger and rogue dont look too bad, but I just cant stand the green on the fighter armor. However, I'm going to withhold final judgement until I can see them in person: sometimes the screenshots dont do the final product justice.