From Logan Bonner’s blog:

I like the new rules for the minis game. The previous version had a lot of things that were unlike the RPG in an annoying way (morale, always attacking the nearest) and a faction system that left us with too many minis of creatures PCs wouldn’t fight (which is a problem for people who buy minis for RPG play, but also leaves minis players with a bunch of birds and crap).

The new rules are different from the RPG in the ways they need to be, but not in ways that just seem “un-D&D.” Many of the monsters are converted from the MM1, and they aren’t super different from the MM versions. (They usually need to be simplified a bit.)

The RPG monsters look more like minis monsters. There are several reasons for this, the most important being that monsters don’t use PC rules anymore. They’re more focused on carrying out their specific shticks. This dovetails with encounter design: We have more monsters, so each one needs to be more focused.

The really cool thing about designing minis is the set of concerns that doesn’t exist in the RPG: the metagame. You’re not only thinking about whether a monster’s abilities make sense for its theme, you’re also thinking about warband building, making something different from the minis that came before, and considering the rarity and point cost.

Steve Schubert gave me some good guidelines about levels/point values to assign to minis based on how many minis we expect people to use out of each pack when playing sealed games. When I was working on a high-point-value mini, I made it the kind of creature that can be the centerpiece of a warband and can really mess with the battlefield.

The new factions are pretty cool, too. They’re kind of a loose guideline, assigned based on both theme and mechanics. It’s interesting when you find a monster that fits with two seemingly dissimilar categories, like blue (civilized) and green (wild). We don’t have a Magic-style “color pie” worked out for the factions, but there are some commonalities members of a faction will share. I’m curious to see how these evolve.

In other minis news, I got a set of Desert of Desolation repaints from Chris Tulach. The paint jobs all look good. I probably can’t talk much about them, but there’s one that will definitely be highly sought-after. There’s only one that is kind of boring IMO.