The Miniature Dilema

I've bought several hundred miniatures for all the table top adventures I've run. I've got mostly D&D 3.5 and a few metal Reapers, but I've used odd 3rd party figures, dice, and a quite sizable replica of St. Basil's Cathedral (you had to have been there). But even with such a plethora of possibilities come the next stage of the adventure I find myself needing more. Using the proper miniature adds a whole new level to a gaming environment: 3D terrain, cheetos, and block text gorged with description help but these will all change as soon as you move to the next room. Actually seeing your battle clad dwarf stand alone against three rage drakes feels awesome. PC personal figures are a must. A lot of people use Lego figures which are pretty cool because you can change it up based on the situation, take that sword out and switch it with a crossbow or when disguised as a pirate throw a little hat on. I always use a D&D mini because they're cheap and some of the 3.5 sets look gorgeous, but I find myself switching to metal unpainted minis because they have better detail and if they're painted right they look really awesome. For NPC I'm split. Before a large campaign I'll always buy the super obvious figures I'll need. For the start of the Curse of the Crimson Throne I bought a Queen Ileosa figure and for a heavy undead module I was running I stocked up on nondescript zombies and vamps. There will always be NPC's and monsters you wouldn't or couldn't have thought out so instead of bringing the entire bin of minis around with me I always grab a catchalls. A few random human fighters, a couple goblins, one large, and some descripts in case the PC's don't have or forget theirs. This seems to work in case you don't have time to plan em out perfectly before hand or if you're running a random adventure. One problem I do have with any figure system is the hoard scenario. If you have more than say eight of the same monster on the board keeping track of em all is rough. This is when you pull out counters, spare dice (if you're fighting goblins or something else with really low health have the dice show how much health that creature has taken, sure the PC's will know they're health but at that low health it'll be obvious) or even your secret supply of 5 cents a piece cthulu statues. But of course with this many pieces on the board even if you do differentiate each and every mini from the actual creature it's representing you're going to forget which one lost how much health and when. Since hoards pretty much always rush in try to give them each a number going clockwise or something and keep track of their health on a piece o' paper. This way you can usually correspond the right health to the right monster and if you off by one monster over its okay because hoard fights normally have low ECl's and having one less monster on the board probably wouldn't mean life or death. I can't stand this encounter but with a lot of practice you can OCD them down to a science. Once in your lifetime make a gelatinous cube out of real jello and some random miniature bits its fun because you can actually eat adventurers by jamming em in there and upon its death you can hack it to pieces.