Kickstarter Review - Curse of the Hollow Hills

I've been hitting the Kickstarters hard lately, actually spending more money on funding the creation of miniatures than buying actual miniatures. Over the past two weeks I've either pledged, or completed the surveys for four different Kickstarters. I thought I'd list them here.

First up, the Curse of the Hollow Hills by the Greek company Crippled God Foundry. They had been plugging this for weeks around the various Facebook pages, sub-reddits and forums. So I was super ready after seeing the preview renders. In fact, I was backer number one. (We're #1!)

I backed at the Dreadful Monstrosities level - although I pledged more as I knew I was going get a bunch more through add-ons.

Here's my haul:

The Foul Abomination I really have no need of. There are a lot of the "fat zombie ogres" around and I find them utterly unappealing. Although the skeletal animal things are interesting. Of course, had to go for the Undying Wyrm. Yet another drake for my collection. However the sculpt is really nice. And the Death Watcher - another in the recent explosion of undead beholders.

One Everliving sorceress liche

One undead Alhun liche. Perfect for my Chaos: Legion of Hell. (Alhun is the non-lawsuit way to say "Mind Flayer")

A bunch of skeletal infantry.

A large skeletal rat man for my Skaven contingent.

And finally, a zombie hill giant. Not skeletal to be sure, but a good addition to a barbarian or Dark Ages army.

Behold!

It's weird how there have been, over the years, certain lacunae in models available in undead form. Certain things you have a complete glut, like dragons. Boy, do sculptors love to make undead dragons! And then you get completely nothing in things you think would be fairly obvious - like an undead hydra. And then, you go decades without undead representation for some fairly common races/creatures like say, ogres, and then all of a sudden everyone has the same idea within a short amount of time and you get a whole bunch.

I always wanted an undead representation of one of the most iconic D&D monsters, one of the few wholly original creatures in original D&D, the beholder. 

For years there was no undead beholder representation, but around 2007 Wizards of the Coast put out this Beholder Liche for its prepainted D&D miniature line.

Wizards of the Coast D&D Unhallowed #31 Beholder Liche

For a prepainted plastic, the quality of this piece is really good. Although it suffers from all the issues that prepainted plastics do, the sculpt itself is not bad and probably deserves a reissue in resin. The paint job is ok, but could really pop with a quick prime and repaint. Of particular interest is the missing central eye, which could be attributed to rot, but apparently was part of the original lore of the beholder liche. I'm not a lore guy, and I really couldn't care less about fluff, but when the idea of a beholder liche became a thing, part of the process for becoming an undead magic user required the beholder to blind itself. Which I think is a pretty cool detail, seeing how the large central eye is the defining characteristic of the creature.

And there's this zombie beholder from the defunct Magnificent Egos Miniatures circa 2005.

Magnificent Egos MEO4037 Oculus, The Rotten Eye

A full metal piece. Not the greatest sculpt, but very interesting. I particularly like how the guts spilling out of the mouth forms the flying base. The excellent paint job above done by Dragon Eye Miniatures.

But aside from those two figures, there was nothing. I figured I could use one or both of the two as a random monster in one of my undead chaos armies, but certainly not put together a unit or anything.

But now, it's raining undead beholders!

Wizards of the Coast D&D Dungeon of the Mad Mage #44 Death Tyrant

Wizards of the Coast D&D Dungeon of the Mad Mage #29 Zombie Beholder

Two new prepainted plastics from Wizards of the Coast's D&D line. The Eye Tyrant is a larger figure and I think a better sculpt than the Zombie Beholder. Again, I like how the Eye Tyrant reflects the current D&D lore with the creature being solely skeletal, but with the eyes still magically revolving around the head long after the stalks have rotted away.

And because we live in a world of 3D printing where you can actually create anything you can dream up...

Jax Miniatures Death Tyrant

3D printed Death Tyrant from Jax Miniatures located on Shapeways

Death Tyrant by Duncan Shadow Louca

Above is a magnificent sculpt by the extremely talented 3D artist Duncan "Shadow" Louca. You can buy a number of his prints from shops on Etsy or contribute to his Patreon and print your own!

Dungeonworks Death Tyrant

A 3D printable Death Tyrant from the recent Dungeonworks Monstrous Encounters - Undead Rising Kickstarter. It looks really cool. Again, I like what they do with the ghostly eye stalks. Of course, I'll let you all know, once I get my freaking Ender 3 to freaking print!

Recent Haul - Death Tyrant (Undead Beholder)

Death Tyrant
by Jax Miniatures


Continuing the survey of my recent haul we have this "Death Tyrant", which is an undead beholder.


This model is somewhat unique in that it isn't actually cast in metal or resin, but rather is my first example of a 3D printed mini. I ordered it off of the Jax Miniatures on Shapeways.


I'm very excited about 3D printing and think it's definitely that way of the future in table top war gaming. Instead of having to spend hundreds of dollars on figures, you'll pay $20 for a set of .stl files and have them printed out. At the moment, 3D printing is good for larger figures like this. The sculpt is interesting and is fairly detailed. You may notice the surface is a bit rough. That's the nature of the material the model is printed in. It's the "strong and flexible" type of material. Other materials are smoother and pick up more detail such as "Ultra-detail Frosted", but they are consequently more expensive. In the coming years expect prices to drop.


One good thing about 3D printed figures is changing the scale is a snap! This figure is the "medium" size as opposed to "large".

The Death Tyrant is essentially a skeletal beholder - one of the most iconic D&D creatures. Powerful and terrifying, he's going to fit right into my Undead Chaos Horde with my two other examples of undead beholder-kind.

 Wizards of the Coast D&D Unhallowed #31: Beholder Lich

Magnificent Egos: Oculus, The Rotten Eye