So which is better for a board game a standee or minis?

What Are The Different Options?

So, before we dive into maybe why one might be better or not, let’s talk about the different options. I am putting this as standees versus minis, but there are more options as well. There are the flat tokens that you could use, pawns, meeples, standees, acrylic standees, and minis and probably some things I’m not considering that can represent these different items on the board.

Each of them has some benefits and negatives to it. Those will come through as we talk about the different reasons you might want one. And I’m not going to talk about tokens, pawns, or meeples. They work well for some games, especially for tokens when you want a lot of information available to the players without it being on cards next to the game board.

What Are Their Purpose in the Board Games?

It’s probably the most obvious question to ask when thinking about standees or minis. How much do you use them in the game? The more you use them, the better it might be as a mini. If I manipulate it a lot or handle it a lot for whatever reason, it might be a bit trickier to deal with it as a standee if I’m rubbing off the color on it.

Now, that is a printing issue potentially as well. You can print nicer standees that will last longer. But their shelf life for color is going to be shorter than a mini. Granted, they do have color. But when I consider this debate, I like to think about how it is going to be used.

Do You Paint?

Another very important thing to consider is if you paint minis or not. Painting is a hobby that I keep on wanting to dabble into. But for a lot of gamers, painting the minis is almost as much of the hobby as playing the game. It is something that Henry Cavill even talked about on the Graham Norton show, you can see his quote here. But it is very much the case where painting is a lot of work.

So, if you do paint and you do like that side of the hobby, it likely will sway you towards the minis. If you don’t paint, now you need to decide, do you like the color of the standees? Or would you prefer the 3D nature of the minis even though they are going to be grey on the board?

Which Adds More to Immersion?

Really, this is probably the biggest deciding factor for me. Yes, there is a functionality element as well. But a lot of the time I am considering what it does to the immersion in the game. Often times, especially if there is 3D terrain, even if out of cardboard, it might feel odd or break immersion to mix mediums or mix types from 2D to 3D or vice-a-versa.

I think that the theme of the game really makes a difference from what I can tell. For example, standard fantasy, I generally am more interested in minis, at least for some things. Gloomhaven, the mixed medium doesn’t break immersion but I like the minis and I don’t care that I don’t have them painted. Same with Tainted Grail because the world is darker so it doesn’t feel out of place.

On the flip side, if something uses bright and vibrant colors, if I don’t play a character matching that, on the board, it can feel like the immersion breaks. It feel like my piece is not as good as the rest of the world. So a standee might be better there.

So Should Board Games have Minis or Standees?

Obviously, I just made my argument that it depends on the game. I do think that both are a lot of fun, and really good minis can make a game way more amazing. Instead of talking about which is better, both are good, let’s talk about some games that I think work better with minis or better with standees.

Marvel United (and X-Men)

This is one that you might think it wouldn’t matter if it were minis or not. But I think minis are fairly important for Marvel United. A standee or token could work, but you’d lose so much of the art and the dynamic poses that the miniatures bring to the game. The game is so light that it’d feel wrong if it were just little standees. And I think it’d be harder to find the heroes that you want if they were standees as well.

Super Fantasy Brawl

Another one that would be considerably worse with standees. Another lighter game that is probably bigger than it needs to be because of the minis, but the minis make it feel more like you are battling. Without the minis the game would feel very small and very simple. It would still offer the fun choices and good light skirmish game play, but it wouldn’t make for as epic a fight.

Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor

This is one where I’m glad that it has standees in it. The reason being is that you need a lot of standees on spaces on the board. If you build up troops in one area, you still want to be able to see that area. There is text on them, so until you know the game well, you’re going to want to see everything. Plus, this has not acrylic standees, but nicer standees.

Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

This is one where I don’t think I’ll mind the mixed mediums of standees and minis, but because of the anime artwork, I might prefer minis. The game is vibrant because of that artwork, and my grey minis, unless I get better at painting and focus more on that hobby, is going to be a bit boring compared to what the rest of the game offers. Even the tiles in the game are crazy and awesome offering spot gloss on areas where there is water or other things that should shine.

Epic Seven Arise

This is one that I might have backed if I would get only standees. While the minis are very dynamic, it is again that anime art style. You put the characters in their dynamic poses on acrylic standees and the game would pop more on the table. But again, this falls into the category, for me, of being more interesting as standees because I don’t paint. And it would be more vibrant if I didn’t have to paint them.

Those are just some examples that I can think of. Obviously, I don’t even own one of them. But do you have a game you prefer with minis or a game without? And which do you prefer, a mini or a standees? If you were to really get down to it, I think I prefer acrylic standees, at least for a lot of games.

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So what are some ways that you can bling out a board game, or that board games have bling?

First there are fancier editions of board games, might be called collectors edition where they only make a certain number of an ultimate edition where some of the pieces have been upgraded by the company in the game. This might be something that the company puts out like a 25th Anniversary Edition of a game, but another common spot is on Kickstarter where they will have a standard or retail edition of the game where all the pieces are normal card board or whatever it might be, and then there is an ultimate or special edition that has it’s own unique cover and upgraded pieces in it, of course which costs a bunch more.

The next biggest way that people can bling out their board game is known as a custom insert. A custom insert is especially useful for a game with lots of pieces. The main reaso for this is because while you can put the pieces into little baggies, you then have to dump them out on the table and it’s all a mess, you have to know how you put them back into the baggies, and get them to lay flat enough in the box. There are companies like Broken Token and Folded Space that create inserts for these games. A great example of how this works is Gloomhaven. In that game you have monster tokens, status tokens, damage tokens, terrain, and more, to fit that all into the box is just a mess. The insert that I have is a wooden one that I had to put together. It has a spot for all the tokens, the coins, and the monsters so you can lift out trays, keep them in their trays for storage while they are on the table, and keeps them from shifting around in the box. This doesn’t make your game looks any nicer, like a lot of the upcoming ones will, but it makes it more functional to play, especially the bigger games out there, like a Gloomhaven.

Beyond that there are a lot of other ways you can bling out a game. Board Game Geek has items known as Geek Up Bits which are plastic bits to replace the cardboard tokens already in the game, it makes it shinier and nicer. And there are a lot more items like this as well from Etsy. There are companies that are creating custom meeples for games, or 3D printing minis. You can get card holders that help you organize your place space for games like Arkham Horror LCG and Marvel Champions. These can range from cheap little things that might cost $10 to bigger things like for Marvel Champions that might be over $100 plus shipping. All of these things are going to make the game pop on the table more.

Finally, and I mentioned this above, you can bling out your own game with a 3D printer. There are sites, such as thingiverse.com where you can get 3D printer files and print out blinged out pieces for your own game. I’ve seen people who have 3D printed terrain for an RPG and then used that in Gloomhaven as well, or printed out things specifically for Gloomhaven. Out of all of the areas, besides organizers for some of my bigger games, this really interests me, because it means that I can bling out games I want to have blinged out without having to track down some specific Etsy shop and spend a large chunk of money. Now, buying a 3D printer is obviously a pretty large chunk of money as well, but kind of as I’m thinking about slowing down some in buying games, or there are fewer this year that are really standing out to me, this would allow me to really bling out some games and have cool minis and things to practice my painting on. I’d also allow me to create set pieces more easily for D&D games as well, which isn’t a requirement, but once in a while for big epic moments, that’d be awesome.

So those are just some of the ways you can bling out your board game. Obviously, the question is why would you do that, some of it is for convenience, like the organizers, and some is just because you can. And to tie it into food, they say you eat with your eyes first, so the same can be pretty true with board games, if it looks better on a table, you’ll probably be more interested to try it and the experience itself might be better because it looks good.

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