Boneyard Haul

 

Greetings everyone! A new set of miniatures has come out from Wizkids Minis… Icon of the Realms set 18 BONEYARD! This is a set of mostly undead monsters with a few random demons and monsters thrown in as well. This will be a shorter post than most but I wanted to share the cool stuff that has come out. I bought 4 boxes against my better judgment. 

Box 1

First we have a Ghast, an advanced type of ghoul with a stench aura affecting each creature within five feet of it as well as granting fellow ghouls within thirty feet advantage on being turned. They are stronger and way more dangerous than a normal ghoul. Then we have our Avatar of Death, summoned when the Skull card is pulled from the Deck of Many Things. Of course, it can also be used as any floaty undead monster as well. Our next mini is the Ochre Jelly, a large ooze creature with the ability to split into two jellies the moment is takes certain kinds of damage. Oozes have been thorns in players sides for years and this is a pretty cool sculpt for one. Ochre Jelly dissolve flesh but leave everything else, other oozes destroy metals, stone, or wood along with flesh. Finally, we have our Skeletal Gnome, or as the bottom states, Skeleton. Undead are terrifying enough, but small undead at times are worse.

Box 2

Ogre Zombie! Our second box started off big. Ogres are always an easy foe for parties to fight, they are strong and resilient, but all their other statistics are lack luster. Make them undead and they gain the ability known as undead fortitude, which allows them to stay standing and fighting unless they fail a saving throw. One ogre zombie can be an issue, multiple ogre zombies a nightmare. Our second miniature was a Death Slaad, a chaotic evil extraplanar frog monster that lay eggs in their enemies to make more slaad. The stronger ones are shape changers, spell casters, and very dangerous. Our next miniature appeared within the pages of the Curse of Strahd adventure, as well as older editions, the Phantom Warrior usually is honor bound to a task. The example they give in the stat block is guarding a wall that it protected in life until another guard can be found. You could even use these as parts of a ghost army, mine might show up as a wraith king unleashed by necromancer when a party failed to stop him. our last miniature was the Demilich. When a lich lives to long and fails to add souls to its phylactery it potentially becomes a demilich. It will normally appear as a floating skull with jeweled teeth and eyes. It has an entire suite of abilities meant to reduce a party to tears by negating their healing, knocking characters down to zero hit points with an action. Variants and older editions had demiliches trapping people within their gemstone teeth. Tough fights. 

Box 3

First mini out of the box was a skeletal archer, again just labeled Skeleton. I really like having skeletal archers in my armies of undeath, luckily, they added them as a common miniature in this set. The sculpt is much better than many of the older models. The next miniature is the Dread Warrior, which appeared in the Dead In Thay adventure which was printed again in the Tales from the Yawning Portal book. Dread Warriors are made by evil wizards to use as spies. Again, they can work as any ghostly undead you are using in your game. Next we had another Ochre Jelly, luckily I also like oozes. Finally we had a goliath zombie, I like that they are branching out in this set and adding in more types of zombies than the standard human looking zombies.

Box 4

Our last box today had two repeats, both the Avatar of Death and the Skeletal Archer, which just adds to my undead horde to vex my players. Our third mini was the Otyugh, one of my all-time favorite monsters. they usually live within garbage piles and unlike many of the monsters can be reasoned with. They are great ambush monsters for when your party fall down a garbage chute, end up in the sewers, or just living in a mad wizard’s lair. Last is our Sword Wraith Warrior, one of the cool transparent miniatures in the set. Sword Wraiths are more melee specialist undead obsessed with honor, the commanders can summon warriors to fight with them. They are less wraith like and more like the wights, since they are corporeal and can’t fly through walls.

This has been a fun set so far and there are so many other miniatures out there to find. Out of the 45 miniatures we have pulled 13, with sets like this repeats still are cool. There are two special miniatures, both a blue and a green Dracolich, which are evil undead dragons, and they are massive. This set also features huge miniature, I did not pull any yet, as well as some absolutely terrifying monsters that will go great in an horror based campaigns you run. This set feels like they are priming us for the next hardcover Dungeons and Dragons book Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which returns us to the mist shrouded lands of Ravenloft and will highlight a few other Domains of Dread. I am excited for new class options and new monsters. it will be interesting to see how much is a rehashing of the older Ravenloft material from the late eighties through the nineties.  

 

Hope you all enjoyed! The Boneyard miniatures sets should have hit most of your local game stores!