PUBLISHER: WIZKIDS | RELEASE DATE: August 12th
You couldn’t honestly say that the Mythic Odysseys of Theros setting for both Magic The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons was truly inspired by Greek Myths without the presence of some sort of appropriately horrifying monster.
The Polukranos, World Eater Premium set for D&D is a single large model of a hydra. This over-sized, five headed angry looking lizard is meant to be the idealised version of all hydras ever. Bound in place by the gods Nylea and Heliod, it only walks the world when the very foundations of Theros itself have been shaken. Or to put it another way, it’s the big scary Godzilla like horror that turns up when things are gettimg very exciting.
As such it’s essentially a campaign ending monster, or at least an encounter that should be the highlight of any Theros game. This is a big bad end guy for most games and those familiar with the original card game it comes from may well wonder exactly how it’s going to work in a tabletop game; get this wrong and you end up with something very silly.
Luckily it looks really good. It’s a lovely and evocative sculpt; the five heads of the hydra are all doing something slightly different and there’s even one that is obviously ‘thinking’ about what to do next. (Clue: It’s to going to eat you.). The model is on a clear base so we can see the muscle detail on its belly. The muscles look poised to strike, it’s talons look long and deadly and the paint job is striking and accurate.
A smashing model for gaming or just to look fearsome on the shelf.