Wizkid’s The Icons of the Realms range for Dungeons and Dragons works best when it’s based on the more recent D&D material. There’s something about wanting the models from particular adventures and campaigns to wow your players. Of note were the models for the Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden storyline. The main issue with the set was that it was mostly ‘the greatest’ hits of that book; giant skeletons, tomb-tappers and so on, the range missed some of the more interesting villains and encounters.
Snowbound is the follow-up and rectifies the issue; it’s filled with some of the more striking villains and monsters, as well as some of the more mundane stuff. For example, anyone who’s played the campaign with remember the Axe-Beaks, the bird like beasts of burden that look weird and cool. The pre-painted model looks hungry and is covered in adventuring gear, exactly the way it should do.
If you’ve played the campaign, you may recall the kind of tragic character of Ravisin, the mad druid. She’s here, along with various awakened animals and monsters. The druid looks like they’ve just stepped out of the pages of the book. If your players went another way, they may have met the secretive leader of the goblin city. Wizkids have treaded carefully with the model here as the leader is a mysterious character, but suffice to say not only is it perfect for that story, it can also be used easily elsewhere. Another memorable encounter includes the hag Maud Chiselbone and her cauldron. It’s one of the more sinister beats in a game filled with horror, and the model for it is perfect; it even comes with that bubbling pot of things the adventurers should really avoid.
Monster wise, we get every from awakened trees, giants, polar bears and the almost adorable snow golem. These are all sculpted in the typical Wizkids style and paint jobs are, as always, decent and resilient. We took a look at the Giant and Mammoth set for this range a little while ago and when you put all the various models together you get a good feel for what the Icewind Dale setting is all about; savage, dangerous, creepy but also with a sense of humour. We also really liked the Goblin Wagon – after all what could go wrong with a wagon pulled by polar bears? It’s a great take on another scene from the game
This is a worthy successor to the existing range and a set of booster boxes definitely worth checking out.
