Review Category: Merch

By Ed Fortune

If you’ve been inspired by the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, you might have decided to get into the game itself and might want to go that extra step and get some models and terrain pieces so you can play the more tactical aspects of the game. You don’t need models to play D&D, but they do add to the fun (and make it easier to figure out where the fireball is going.)  One of the quickest ways to do this is to pick up one of Wizkid’s pre-painted Icons of The Realms Warbands, especially if you’re looking for specific units.

The Icons of The Realms Dragon Army Warband are a collection of human-shaped warriors with an evil bent, intended for use with the Dragonlance Shadow Of The Dragon Queen adventure but suitable for anyone looking for six bad-guy warriors. We get one officer, who is an angry-looking bald chap in heavy armour, two knights, who have very spikey-looking weapons and horned, face-obscuring helmets and three soldiers, each armed with a spiky shield, long sword and a nervous expression. These are nicely done, reasonably well painted and durable. Very useful for any fantasy game.

Sticking with Dragonlance warbands, The Icons of The Realms Draconian Warband features five dragon-shaped humanoids. Draconians are the corrupted young of good dragons, turned into shock troops for the Dragon Queen.  We get seven models in the pack. We get two identical Baaz Draconians, hunch over dragon-men brutes, hiding their misshapen wings under a red cloak and carrying a wicked blade.  The two identical Bozak draconians carry tridents, are proudly displaying their wings and look a little pot-bellied thanks to their scrappy armour.  We get one Aurak Draconian, which has no wings, a tattered cloak and a noble bearing. It carries no weapon, but it is casting a spell. The Kapak Draconian is sat in a pouncing pose, wings spread and dagger drawn. Finally,  we get one large Sivak draconian, a silver creature with massive swords and wings. The is a fun set of monsters that, in true Wizkids style, follow the descriptions from the books very closely. Perfect for your evil dragon people’s needs.

The Icons of The Realms Kalaman Military Warband stays in the Dragonlance setting, also. These are the ‘good’ guy defenders of the city of Kalaman and are set up similarly to the Dragon Army Warband units in the sense that we get an officer, two knights and three soldiers. The officer is a lady with a short haircut, decent armour and a stern look. The two knights look like tinned food for a dragon but have cool-looking shields with the city’s logo on them. The soldiers have similar buckler shields and are armed with spears and good footwear, all the better to run away with. Nice models and a good set, though you may want to redo the shields with a dab of paint if you’re using them generically.

Next up is the Icons of the Realms Hobgoblin Warband. Hobgoblins are the red or orange-skinned tall goblins that are much more of a serious threat to a low-level adventuring party and tend to turn up in force. This set is a bit of an odd mix. We get one regular hobgoblin with a bow and another with a sword, and they’re both well-armoured and posed. We get one captain and one warlord, and they’re a little interchangeable; the captain is more dynamic with two swords, and the other has a shield, but both of them look like officers. The Hobgoblin Devastator is dressed and posed as a wizard/priest-like miniature, and that very useful for certain encounters. Finally, we get a thing called a Hobgoblin Iron Shadow, which is a demonic ninja-type dude in a martial arts pose. Limited use, but a fun piece. This is a useful set.

Icons of the Realms Undead Armies is a collection of six skeletal warriors. Any good DM knows you can’t have enough skeletons. The Warband is led by a thing called a Skull Lord, a very skinny-looking armoured wizard with three skulls for a head. Nicely creepy. The rest are skeletal variations of existing D&D races. We get a skeletal Tabaxi cat person wielding two blades and with a very thin tail. Somehow it’s still cute.  The skeleton Tiefling still looks a pit like a devil, albeit an underfed one and the undead gnome is still dressed as a wizard.  There’s an elf skeleton, still in fine (but tattered) clothes and a very angry-looking lizard-folk skeleton, wielding a very jagged sword. We also get a regular human skeleton warrior who looks like they may have been a barbarian in life. These are robust, well-thought-out pieces that work well.

Finally, we have Voices of the Realms: Band of Heroes. This more a collection of adventurers than a war band, and this set features models based on existing D&D art geared towards diversity and inclusion. We get a human paladin who looks very stern and has very shiny armour, a halfling wizard, a very dapper human warlock, a shiny and gold dwarf fighter, a very plain-looking druid and a very dynamic elven ranger. These are good pieces and certainly handy when your players pick heroes.

All of these models are reasonably well painted (though if you have the skills, you may want to touch them up to suit your games). They’re made of a flexible plastic that holds just enough detail whilst still being robust and is of universally good quality, with a good sense of design to each. Overall, the new Icons of Realms Warbands are well worth a look.

By Ed Fortune

One of the things that make Dungeons & Dragons work so well is that it draws ideas from all sorts of fantasy stories and presents them in a way that allows people to make them unique to their own adventures. This sort of creative freedom explains why the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves works so well, but it also leads to some really weird stuff.

Take, for example, Wizkid’s Dungeons & Dragons – Teeth of Dahlver-Nar Bite-Sized Artifact. This bizarre live-sized prop is a collection of monstrous teeth kept inside a leather pouch. It’s frankly one of the oddest bits of merchandise we’ve seen in a while, and given that STARBURST Towers has a whole Indiana Jones-style vault of weirdly geeky stuff, that’s saying something.

This cool cosplay prop is inspired by a high-level wondrous item found in the D&D book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.  In the game, the teeth can either be put in the ground to summon a monster in a manner similar to the classic Ray Harryhausen Hydra Teeth scene in Jason of the Argonauts, or your character can try to put them in their mouth where they magically become part of that hero’s dentures and grant powers such as telepathy or immunity from lightning. This is sort of hilarious because they are monster teeth, and some of them are quite big, a thing made all the more evident by this prop.

We get twenty different types of creature teeth, a paper chart with a diagram explaining what each tooth is, a leather pouch and a bone-coloured twenty-sided die. The pouch is okay, it’s designed to sit on a shelf and be a bowl of sorts to display the teeth, or you could tie the string and carry it around, but it’s not great at that as some of the teeth are quite big. There’s a small copyright mark on the bottom of the bag, so it’s best used for display purposes.

We get twenty different types of teeth. The smallest is a halfling incisor, which is very small and easy to miss. The pit fiend tooth is the largest; it’s about 12 cm long and is bright metallic green. The ‘sliver of tarrasque tooth’ is almost as big and is perhaps the most interesting item, as a tarrasque is basically a Godzilla-style beast. We get a Red Dragon fang, described as ‘ruby veined’, an effect done with very shiny red paint. For twenty plastic props, they look pretty good, with a nifty amount of weathering on some that makes them look realistic in a fantasy sort of way.  Some of these are meant to look like gem-stone type teeth, and Wizkids have been fairly cunning with the translucent plastic to get the effect.

Overall this is a very weird addition to any D&D fans trophy room, but perfect to put next to a shelf with your Blue Dragon’s head trophy plaque and Wand of Orcus.

 

By Ed Fortune

The first critically acclaimed Dungeons &Dragons movie,  Honour Among Thieves, has inspired an absolute plethora of cool related merchandise, exacerbated by the fact that regular Dungeons & Dragons has its fair share of cool related things to go around.

Wizkid’s Icons Of The Realms Honor Among Thieves is a selection of pre-painted miniatures of selected monsters from the movie. Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t require miniatures to be played, but it’s a lot more fun if you can put some minis out on the table with cool scenery. This selection of models is specifically inspired by the movie, so there’s a  little bit of a spoiler here, but if you’ve seen the trailer, you already know what to expect.

First up is the snowy owlbear, a creature that first appeared in the now classic D&D adventure Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden. Wizkids has produced owlbear miniatures before, including adorable snowy owlbear cubs. However, this one is specifically modelled on the one from the movie, the pose and design resembling moments from the trailer. Doric The Druid (who is connected to this beast) isn’t present in this set, but good druid models aren’t hard to find.

The other large-ish model in the set is a Gelatinous Cube. This is a small cube of blue, translucent plastic that’s moulded to look very slimy. It’s not a perfect cube (it’s meant to represent a living creature, after all), but the corners are very well done in a very disgustingly goopy-looking way. Two hapless adventurers ‘float’ inside the cube thanks to the careful placement of another model inserted into this one.  It looks great, and it’s a fun thing to spring on players in a regular game of D&D.

Another classic dungeon monster is the mimic, essentially a treasure chest that, instead of having a normal lid, has a row of sharp teeth and a very long tongue. It’s just the perfect size; plonk down a treasure chest model in your dungeon or tavern set-up, wait for the party to open it and spring this abomination on them. If you wanted, you could convert it into Luggage from the Discworld books, but it’s quite fun as it is. Also, a fine addition to a Mimic Colony if you’re planning on springing that sort of horror on your players.

Next up is a displacer beast, another ‘classic’ D&D monster that’s so popular you can get it in plush form. This is essentially a large black cat (like a panther) with two prominent tentacles on its back. In the game’s fiction, those tentacles allow it looks like it’s somewhere it isn’t,  meaning the displacer beast can use pack tactics to hunt its prey without actually needing a pack.  This movie version looks especially deadly and the tentacles are quite prominent.

Finally, we get the Intellect Devourer, a stubby-looking brain on tiny legs. These are low-challenge (but potentially party-destroying) horrors that are sort of cute in a Fiend Without A Face sort of way.

All in all, a great bit of movie merchandise that also doubles as a collection of horrors for your gaming table (or collector’s shelf).

Fighting (or at least interacting with) monsters is an integral part of table top roleplaying games. The biggest RPG is called Dungeons and Dragons after all, you should expect that big monsters to feature heavily.

However, sometimes the imagination just isn’t enough to convey the situation; maybe the fight takes place on a moving arena or in a tight corridor and you just need to know exactly where all the goblins are so you can catch them with a well-placed fireball.  One solution to this is miniatures, however if you’re popping over to someone’s house to run a game D&D , you might not want to lug a box of expensive models around. Wizards of The Coast’s Campaign Case: Creatures solved the issue in a novel way.

This is a set of 64 plastic tokens in various sizes, in red, blue, black and white colours.  The case also comes with cardboard folder crammed with ‘static cling’ stickers. The idea is that you put your monsters on the poker-chip like tokens and you’ve got the pieces you need to play a strategic fantasy game. They are 159 clings in total, include elves, kobolds, goblins, beholders and of course dragons. The plastic stickers slide on and peel off easily enough, but there’s enough ‘cling’ in them for many, many uses. They are a fairly robust though regular use means they tend to clump together a bit often.

Clings also come for character types, though obviously not every type is catered for in this set. One bonus is reaching over to move the plastic pucks does make you feel like you’re in an old-timey war movie.

The case comes with a solidly constructed cardboard carry case, with one level for the clings and below that we get two plastic storage boxes for the actual tokens. The box has a thick rope-like handle and the whole thing is charmingly covered in D&D logos. There’s a handy ribbon to pull the top tray from the bottom tray. It’s well made, but it is cardboard.

This is a useful tool, though of course it requires some sort of battle map to work (the range also has a terrain box).

It is much, much more useful than it looks at first glance and this a solid addition to a Dungeon Master’s arsenal.

Tabletop Roleplaying games are mostly a blend of story telling techniques and tactical boardgames. Though one can play games such as D&D, Blades in the Dark or even Pathfinder without a board (or even a table), sometimes it’s really useful to know where things are.

Campaign Case: Terrain is Wizards of the Coast’s solution to tricky problem of explaining to players where everything is in relation to each other. It’s designed work with the Campaign Case: Creatures box, but you can also use it for miniatures. It’s essentially a collection of grids, board pieces and static clings.

First up is the Adventure Grid, a double-sided 22×25 inch grid; dungeon on one side, wildererness on the over. It folds easily for storage.  Similarly double-side are the 5×5 inch interlocking terrain tiles, for DMs who want to slowly reveal terrain as the characters explore. These are both solid board-gaming tools, useful for dungeon crawl games of all types. They have a standard grid on them and if you aren’t in the mood for D&D work with most games. (It would be weird to run something like, say, Warcry on it, but totally do-able, they’re that flexible).

The board pieces seem to work well with dry-erase markers, for Dungeon Masters  who like to scribble on things.

What’s unique here are the clings, these two-dimensional stickers that ‘fill in the gaps’ for any scenario you may want to run. We get wall pieces, trees, fountains, barrels, beds, fancy chairs, bridges,  pretty much everything in a sticker format. These are weird, well-drawn and quite useful.

The whole thing comes in a fairly hard cardboard carry case. The case is portioned into two bits; the top bit has the big board and a folder full of clings, the lower section has the interlocking tiles. A nice ribbon makes it easier to separate the two. The carry case comes with a thick rope on top. The set is very secure in it’s packaging and it’s  little tricky to unpacked, the box the case comes in feels like it should be something that can be re-used, but it’s just packaging.

This is a neat idea for a games accessory, and combined with the creatures set it’s a useful, space conserving tool. Fun, useful but not for everyone, especially if you already have some mats.

We’ve waxed lyrical about how much fun Games Workshop’s Kill Team is before. This miniature skirmish game has a low model count but is tactically deep, meaning that you can play it fairly quickly.  Games Workshop have produced a number of starter sets for the Kill Team, usually with a strong back story and scenery to match. For example, in a war torn city or the engine room of a starship.  Kill Team: Into The Dark moves the action to one of Warhammer 40,000’s more intriguing settings; the space hulk. And it’s latest game the good folk at Nottingham sent across to Starburst Towers for us to take a look at.

Space hulk’s are twisted amalgamations of various galaxy roaming star-craft. The notion is that warp travel is dangerous and sometimes ships get fused together in vast lumps. In   Kill Team: Into The Dark, the hulk is ominously called The Gallowdark, a vast and claustrophobic nightmare of sprawling corridors and tight spaces. To represent this, the box comes with a large, double sided play-mat and over fifty bits of scenery so you can make lots of little rooms for your toy soldiers to have fights in. The doors open and the various weird bits of spaceship slot together well. This is all compatible with previous Games Workshop terrain, though you may need to be creative depending on the parts. They’re well detailed and are fun to paint. And yes, if you had enough of these kits you could make 3D board for vintage GW games such as Space Crusade or Space Hulk.

We get two Kill Teams to play with here. These are Games Workshop models, so they assemble cleanly, are highly detailed and come with some fun options.  First off are the Kroot Farstalker Kinband. These are bird-like alien cannibals and they look like wild warriors from space. They wield some savage looking weapons, that blend ‘high-tech yet crude’ very well. One of the models come equipped with a pet bird of prey. Two of the models are alien dogs; and they look fab, though we wouldn’t pet either of them.

In play, the kinband is brutal and tactically interesting. They’re good at getting out of combat and have two special abilities, Mercenary Contract and Poach that make them very flexible in terms of use, this makes them a great option for newer players.  They move quickly, are decent in ranged combat, better in close combat and have good heavy weapon options. They’re designed to work as a pack and this makes them a fun choice.

The Imperial Navy Breechers are the other faction in the set. They don’t come with alien dogs, but they do have a robot CAT.  The Breechers are humans who specialise in fighting in space ships. We’ve only seen a few models like this in Warhammer, this is a bit of a shout out to old Space Fleet  and Rogue Trader games. It’s nice to see this faction get some love after so much neglect. They wonderfully detailed models and fun to convert and paint.  Rules wise, they’re specialised for close quarters movement. They can seal hatches, cover each other very well and co-ordinate as an elite, tactical squad.

They also have this great heavy weapon called the Navis Las Volley, which you will use a lot.

(And in case you’re wondering, yes you could field these units in a game of regular Warhammer 40,000 alongside the models from the Rogue Trader  Kill Team to form a sort of grim dark away team. Alas,

it’s not that competitive right now).

Rules wise, this works well as an introduction to the game, similar to the previous Kill Team: Octarius set.  Hero focused, strategic play with enough tools to make the game quick and easy to play. The measuring system for the game is still a little weird (it’s symbol based rather than using numbers) . This set adds rules for fighting through doors. It also brings back the ability for units to ‘cover’ each other through the guard action. (Essentially you can activate a model to act when something else acts). Both of these are welcome and add to the tense and tight fighting action of the game.

It’s pretty, it works

If you’re thinking about getting into Kill Team or you’re looking  for a gift for the Warhammer fan in your live, this is a lovely set. The rules are tight, the models are lovely and the scenery is fabulous.

One of the things that has kept the world of Warhammer 40,000 fresh in the minds of fans is Games Workshop’s current commitment to an ongoing narrative. The current storyline is Arks of Omen, which takes place on 40K’s own version of a haunted house; the space hulk. These massive space-ships are cosmic flotsam; bits of ruined ship tossed together by the hellish energies used in faster-than-light travel.

The new campaign requires space-ship themed scenery to run the scenarios. You need quite a bit of it, but if you pick up Kill Team: Into the Dark  and the latest Killteam expansion, Kill Team Shadowvaults, you’ll have enough to run the campaign. This, coupled with some very juicy models (more on that later) means that Shadowvaults is this years ‘must-buy’ Games Workshop expansion; we only get our hands on it because GW sent us a copy for review.

Kill Team Shadowvaults is an expansion for the current edition of Kill Team – you will need the basic rules, or a starter set to get full use out of this. Kill Team is a tactically deep small scale skirmish game. You only need ten models, an hour and a friend to play it, though fancy terrain is a nice bonus.

Firstly, the box has 45 pieces of Gallowdark terrain; this is the haunted space-ship stuff. Hatches, sentry turrets, little robot things, security panels, cameras, crates etc.  The doors swing open, it’s a very flexible set and it’s the sort of set up that you can use in other sci-fi games. It’s great stuff and almost makes the box picking up for this alone.

We get two full Kill Teams, as well as the usual rules required to run these teams.  The Hierotek Circle are Nercons; crazy aliens robots that are the remnants of a long dead and incredibly powerful alien race. The kit provided will make up to eight necron models of various types, from frontline troops to highly specialist pieces. It’s a solid kit with a lot of options and the Necrons themselves are stylish and freaky.  Rules wise, they’re hard to kill;  the living metal power means they heal easily, they can shrug off damage and they have powers that make managing your team’s actions very easy. They have good action economy and some neat weapons. You’ll probably want to build and use the Deathmark model as this sniper can pretty much take out anything in the game.

The big draw of this box are the Kaskrin Kill Team. Kaskrin are the elite units of the Astra Militarum (Imperial Guard), the human foot-soldiers and perennial red-shirts of this grim dark world. Kaskrin are meant to be tough and the kit lets you build ten of these troopers. They’re heavily armed and armoured humans, who look like they’ve stepped out of a military sci-fi novel.

The kit let’s you build a Combat Medic, Demo-trooper, Sharpshooter, Gunner, Recon-trooper, a Vox Trooper and Sergeant, as well as some regular troops.  They don’t hit as hard as some options in the game, and they aren’t as tough, but they are very flexible. They have a range of abilities and special equipment that let’s you plan on the fly, taking objectives and working together to take out foes bigger than they are. They play off against the Necrons very well, as you’d expect.

Shadowvaults may be a challenge to find at the moment, but well worth seeking out.

Critical Role is the online show that actually is responsible for bringing back Dungeons and Dragons to the mainstream. You might think it’s Stranger Things, but it turns out people actually playing the game online and having fun doing so is a far better sales pitch than 30 seconds on a 80’s inspired Netflix show.

Wizkids sent a bunch of their unpainted (but pre-primed) Critical Role miniatures to Starburst Towers a little while ago and we have to honest, they’ve been a delight to paint and then use in various TTRPG games. There’s something about bringing the creatures and characters from the show to live by painting them that does the soul some good.

First off, let’s talk about the Ashari Waverider and Octopus; It’s an octopus with a little spear holding warrior friend, and some translucent plastic added to make the ‘waves’. The Ashari looks quite busy (they’re grimacing) an the Octopus looks pretty happy. The model assembles well (they’re single pose, unlike the Frameworks pieces) and paints well. Some Army Painter speedpaint or Citadel Contrast does the job fine.

The Asharhi Firetamer and Inferno Serpent is a similar deal. Worried looking (and quite buff) elf dude wielding a sword, alongside a huge snake that happens to be on fire. Expect to use all your orange paints.  They’ve enough detail to paint well, quickly but in a satisfying way.

Next up are Skeletal Centaurs, which are terrifying as they sound. Why have skeletal warriors on horse back when you can have a two in one deal. You get two of these horrors in the set and again, they’re skeletons, so a little bit of bone/ivory paint, some drybrusing and you’re good to go. You may want to use an ink on the translucent fireball though.

The massive unpainted Ettin model is the very definition of a two-faced monster. Wielding a barrel and arguing with itself, this is again a well thought out, well produced model that requires minimum prep work. It’s the sort of piece you can easily take your time with.

The Cinderslag Elemental is a similarly large piece. Bit less relaxing to paint as it’s made of entirely translucent plastic. The idea is that you can get that lava effect with a little planning careful layering first; use the more see through, lighter paints first in key spots then add the ‘rock’ effects. It’s a piece that really makes you want to got that extra mile, very satisfying.

The Kymal Militia Brawler and Axeman set are fun dwarves and excitingly posed, as are their fellows in the Turst Militia.

The Kull’Tevir Javlineer and Assassin set are basically well dressed lizardmen with cool weapons. They have skulking poses and they’ve really thought about were the  brush goes here.  The Clasp Cutthtroat and Enforcer gives us a satyr and halfling to paint, both of whom look they’ve had rough life and want to share their experience. Again, really easy to paint. The remnant faitful and chosen models come with a lot of translucent sections for the spell effects and they’re pretty thin. The prime is very good on these, but you’ll need a good light source and a steady hand.

The amusingly named Ravager Stabby-Stabber and Slaughter Lord set are a goblin and a half-orc, both mid-stab. These are simply done, with delightful faces, great to just paint up, fabulous for the table.

Over all, an excellent wave of unpainted models and well worth the investment.

The first Critical Role Campaign is a messy thing; the show itself took a while to become the cult smash it is today,  and it’s telling that the growing fanbase mostly familarise themselves with the Campaign’s story through the TV show, The Legends of Vox Machina. This does mean however, that it will be a while before they meet some the Campaign’s more memorable NPCs.

 

Wizkids: Critical Role: NPCs of Tal’ Dorei Set Two is a boxed set from Wizkids with 12 figures from the campaign. These are all pretty significant to the story in some way, work as fun (if small) collector pieces (and desktop decoration). These pre-painted pieces are suitable for table-top gaming and can be easily used in your own Critical Role inspired games. Of the samples we saw, all are painted to the usual Wizkids standard.

 

The Kaylie Shorthalt model is tiny, as one would expect from a gnome. Posed playing the flute, it doesn’t quite capture the vibe of the character, but is a useful generic piece regardless. Sticking with the smaller models, Seeker Assum Emring’s piece looks like a bad-ass halfling ranger with two axes and an attitude, which is good take on the sort-of-heroic spy.  Halfling Paladin Lady Kima of Vord completes the set’s small NPCs.  It’s a well made, heavily armoured blonde-haired halfling, though it does lack the detail of Kima’s Bahamut themed chest plate, which makes the model a little more useful on the table.

 

Kern the Hammer is the boxer who’s a natural foil to Grog, one of Campaign One’s heroes.  The model is very well done; it’s a half-naked half-orc, fists wrapped up in cloth, in a ‘come at me’ / raging pose. Fun and useful out of context for many games.. The human monk, Earthbreaker Groon, is also posed half naked in a starting combat pose, as if he’s just about to strike. He complements  Kern very well indeed and the two pieces together are quite fun.

 

Jarett Howarth is a human guardsman who is posed on full alert with a crossbow. It’s a colourful hero piece, as befits one of Vox Machina’s most competent allies. He complements the model for Allura Vysoren, the blue robed wizard who is a patron of sorts to  Vox Machina. The staff has features a translucent blue gem on the top, it’s a good general wizard model, and captures the character quite well.

 

Shaun Gilmore is perhaps the most well-known NPC in this set. Shaun is a seller of magical items to adventurers, and occupies a sort of ‘Q from James Bond’ style role in various campaigns. He’s meant to be a striking and flamboyant character, and the miniature provided him put in a pose that could either be greeting on an old friend or haggling the price. It’s a nice model. Viktor is the crazy old man who sells the hero Percy the blackpowder for his various weapons. The model looks very much like a mad scientist, white hair, over-alls, claw-hand and a crazed expression. It’s fun in a Doc Brown sort of wayYou will absolutely find a use for this piece in various TTRPGs. Senokir is the fire genasi jeweller the party meet when they go to City of Brass, a settlement in the Elemental Plane of Fire. It’s a white robed, slightly strangely posed, humanoid that works as a merchant or a cult leader.

 

Cassandra de Rolo is Percy’s sister, and a complicated character throughout the show. It’s a fun piece to own (especially if you’re a fan), but also doubles as a useful courtier or noble piece; they aren’t enough practically dressed (but still regal) noble models in tabletop minis, most of them are over the top. Cassandra is just right.

Finally we get to J’mon Sa Ord, who is a little over-sized for human, which should give casual viewers a hint as to their true nature. The model is a little bland, but that is point. Nicely done.

Overall, a useful toolbox for DMs and a fun item for fans of the show.

The Critical Role Wildemount campaign, (AKA The Might Nein) had no shortage of very memorable characters, especially the NPCs (non-player characters). Wizkid’s range of NPCs serves two purposes; not only are these cool merch, they’re also useful for various tabletop games. The pre-painted, D&D scale models are ready to go on the table, are pretty resilient to repeated use and though specific to Critical Role, can easily be added into other fantasy games.

The smallest model in the set is Kiri, the tiny little kenku child adopted by The Mighty Nein, who communicates through clics and mimcry.  It’s a tiny yet adorable model. Less adorable is The Traveler.

This set features the mysterious god-like being as a humanoid figure with pink skin, mostly covered in a green cloak. (And in case you’re wondering, the closely related entity Artagan can be found in another set.)

Marion Lavorre and The Gentleman are also key characters in Campaign Two. Lavorre, aka The Ruby of The Sea, is a famed Courtesan and mother of Jester, one of the Mighty Nein. It’s tricky to pull of ‘legendary beauty’ at a 28mm scale, especially when the character is a red-skinned devil in a lacy purple dress. It’s very identifiable as Lavorre.  Similarly The Gentleman, aka Babenon Dosal, is a prominent patron of the Mighty Nein with a story closely tied to Jester. The pre-painted model is impeccably dressed, and the face (with it’s beard) is very well done.

The elderly elven mage Yussa Errenis is perhaps one of the slightest models in the set, but he’s posed exactly as you would imagine the shy introvert to be. It’s a sensitively done piece for a very interesting character. It compare nicely to Trent Ikithon, a similarly powerful archmage who is a lot more outgoing and just as mysterious, as you’d expect from someone who is a spymaster of sorts. He’s sculpted with his arms open with a greying beard. Another wizard for the collection.

Handsome triple-threat drow magus Essek Thelyss is represent here with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. He looks a bit Vulcan to be honest, and the robe hides most of the figure. It’s nice to have though. And he is floating.

Orly Skiffback is a Tortle, a turtle person. Orly’s bard and a sailor, and the sculpt features his bagpipes, which are built into his shell. His magical tattoos feature neatly, the whole model is just a joy. Finally we get Olomon, the minotaur leader of the Urzin and Kryn army. Reincarnate many times, Olomon is meant to be an eternal warror of sorts. The mini does show this off quite well, it’s a cool looking model.

Over all,  one for fans of the Mighty Nein.