D&D Icons of the Realms: Return of the Dragons (Set 34)

[BBShockwave]

I am rather unsure that was the case, mostly because the guy selling the Vecna model also made a Deathwolf model, while the Vecna set never even has that mini. More likely, he got the book leaked, and thus had a head start to make the models.

As I understand, the physical likeness thing is a sort of hard to prove point, hence why the name counts - and why Wizkids and Paizo got away with minis like "Shimerae" or "Malfeshnekor" or "Pit Devil".
Hasbro probably does not care about these as they do not see third party as competition - at least with Transformers, they tend to cost a lot more than official products, and are not sold in stores, so only hardcore collectors buy them. I only know of one case when Hasbro sent such a company a stern warning - when 01-Studio started advertising their "Cell" figure which was basically a smaller (about gestalt sized) Unicron, right in the middle of Hasbro's very first Transformers crowdfunding event with their much bigger Unicron. The contents of the letter were never made public, but 01-Studio took down all marketing and only started advertising Cell again after the official kickstarter ended.

[Kualan]

In their Wizkids booth Gencon video, the guys at the Gallant Goblin asked if we would see more reboots of existing Icons sets after this one (Elemental Evil, etc). The response was "we'll see".

Thoughts/opinions on this possibility?

Personally, although I like the idea and look of this set (and it being a dragon-heavy one is probably a large reason for this) and it's a neat idea to commemorate 10 years of the Icons line, I don't think we need to do the same for any others.

There are certain specific monsters from those early sets I would like to see get new miniatures (Salamander, Fire Snake, Solar Angel) but many of the creatures in Elemental Evil, Rage of Demons etc already have new minis at this point that rebooting those sets would feel like a waste (do we really need another Peryton or Troglodyte at this point?)

[MyriadTabletop]

Thoughts/opinions on this possibility?

I think it would come down to the need for such figures. We saw the Tombs set rerelease, but by then we had already seen new sculpts of almost all of the creatures; and they had discontinued the boosters almost two years in advance.

Do we have any other boosters that have been discontinued?

[BBShockwave]

In their Wizkids booth Gencon video, the guys at the Gallant Goblin asked if we would see more reboots of existing Icons sets after this one (Elemental Evil, etc). The response was "we'll see".

Thoughts/opinions on this possibility?

Personally, although I like the idea and look of this set (and it being a dragon-heavy one is probably a large reason for this) and it's a neat idea to commemorate 10 years of the Icons line, I don't think we need to do the same for any others.

There are certain specific monsters from those early sets I would like to see get new miniatures (Salamander, Fire Snake, Solar Angel) but many of the creatures in Elemental Evil, Rage of Demons etc already have new minis at this point that rebooting those sets would feel like a waste (do we really need another Peryton or Troglodyte at this point?)

Agreed. I would like to see a remake of Elemental Evil, but of the later sets, we do have new minis of pretty much all of Rage of Demons, and I am betting more are coming later (we do need a new Dretch for sure).
Even from ToA, we had new minis of a lot of the main named characters in the separate ToA sets, and others are now being re-made like the Vegepygmies.

[jmpowell]

In response to Mr. Goblin's query about whether they might continue with similar revisions for other early sets such as Elemental Evil, the GenCon interviewee says "We'll see. But also D&D's going in new directions, so we'll see."

He's clearly thinking of something specific with that second part of the comment. Maybe he's thinking of the many monster redesigns WotC is producing for the new core manuals.

Personally I would expect set 35 to be a Monster Menagerie–style set: not a direct repeat of one of the three previous Menageries, but a similar grab-bag set conceived as a Monster Manual 2025 tie-in and focusing on monsters whose design has been changed.

[MyriadTabletop]

Personally I would expect set 35 to be a Monster Menagerie–style set.

Oh 100%. Absolutely. It's almost a guarantee at this point.

But with that I also anticipate the "Icons" label being retired as well. Something to help buyers differentiate between the old sets that use the old artwork, and the new sets that will use the 2025 artwork for their models. I almost think it's a necessity for the generically labeled, non-adventured sets.

[deadsmurf]

Personally I would expect set 35 to be a Monster Menagerie–style set.

Oh 100%. Absolutely. It's almost a guarantee at this point.

But with that I also anticipate the "Icons" label being retired as well. Something to help buyers differentiate between the old sets that use the old artwork, and the new sets that will use the 2025 artwork for their models. I almost think it's a necessity for the generically labeled, non-adventured sets.

I'm not sure if "Icons" should be retired. In some way, the "The Realms" part of the product line is mostly outdated and has been for years as like half of the recent sets are not set in the Forgotten Realms - but 10 years of recognition is a long time of market saturation to just drop branding. And the art style of the D&D revision is not particularly drastic for basically any PC/Player side of things (mostly just additional options not revisions visually) and there seem to be only a few major monster visual changes - though the new dragon designs are quite notable.


My guess is that if Return of the Dragons does really well, we might see like a "best of 2015" set or something to that effect, where they can revise a few of the Elemental Evil and Rage of Demons minis that need it, but not the entire set, which indeed does have a lot of minis which have basically already been redone, and much better.
A set like that can live alongside sets based on the 2024 Revision - especially when you only do one of them a year.

[berk the black]

D&D minimized the rebranding with the 2024 updates, and I imagine Wizkids isn’t going to toss Icons of the Realms into the dumpster either. Pathfinder Battles didn’t seem to do any rebranding when they went to 2.0.

[MyriadTabletop]

I explained poorly. Let me rephrase.

Alongside the new core books, I just think we're going to see a new numbering format that will reset the count, and that there will be some signifier on the packaging to reflect this. That's really all I meant. But Wizkids still wants sales for the previous sets, so I wouldn't expect anything that would discourage people from buying 'old' product.

Then again, looking at the materials on the Wizkids Store, I don't see any indications that they're branding any sets with numbers after 50th. The website refers to 50th as Set 51, but neither Vecna, Quests, or Return of the Dragon refer to set numbers at all.

Maybe just including the name "Monster Manual" in the new set will be enough to capitalize on the momentum.

[BBShockwave]

Yeah, I think they also probably copyrighted the name so they are unlikely to abandon it.

[BBShockwave]

We get a look at the booster design!

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[Kikoli]

I was 99% certain they were gonna use that Tiamat picture!
It works really well!

[BBShockwave]

And it is still old style classic Tiamat, thankfully.

[Zephialtes]

And it is still old style classic Tiamat, thankfully.

Agreed

[MonsterEnvy]

And it is still old style classic Tiamat, thankfully.

We won’t get new minis for the new style Dragons until the new books are properly out.

Anyway looking forward to the new style Dragons.