4th edition Dungeons & Dragons standard rules don't have "facing", it is supposed that somebody can turn around quick enough so that "attacking him from the back" rules aren't necessary. Thus 4E works perfectly well with flat tokens, which is what I am using. Some flat tokens come with the monster vault, the starter set, or with boxed adventures. Others I just print out and stick on self adhesive felt pads to make them thicker. But of course other people prefer 3-dimensional miniatures. And as it gets rather expensive to buy painted metal or plastic figurines for all D&D monsters, you can print those out as well. A fellow blogger wrote me and told me he had just the site for that.

Which brings us to a question of art. How "realistic" do you want your tokens to look? The site I linked to is using hand-drawn stick figures, resembling those in the Order of the Stick web comic. Personally that is a bit too comic style for my campaign. But otherwise the tokens look nice, you fold them into triangles for the 3rd dimension; thus you get a front, a back, and even character stats printed on the bottom. So if that is something you would be interested in, go and check the site out.