Tomb Thursday P55: Royal Details

Greetings, fellow sun surfers. A bountiful box of freshly DnD painted miniatures and scatter terrain arrived from Kimmy Utah last month, so let’s dig in on some of our freshest finds!

When we get a glistening new batch in the mail, we typically take about four to six weeks to review them, organize accordingly, place ’em in our display cases, and then give DM Ben the green light to start perusing and building fresh encounters for our campaign. It’s our happiest of places.

Today’s TTRPG blog post follows up on last week’s Tomb Thursday, where we showcased some slick palace guards by Brite Minis. Those turned out so darn good that we even ran off another squad of five. However, those are more Star Trek red shirts/typical guards than the kind of muscle a Sultan would have flanking his side.

Let’s start with the big cheese who controls the nearest city from your recent tomb discovery. DM Ben wants a major settlement nearby where the players can resupply, meet new NPCs, gather fresh missions, and pick up more clues. So, we thought this Alchemist Dwarf by Void Miniatures looked perfect to fulfill that Sultan role! He’s from their hefty Lost Bolts of Hazim Kickstarter.

Resident painter Kimmy Utah took paintbrush to hand and delivered this red-and-black-themed gem. You certainly can see the Alchemist angle from the sculptor, but this no-nonsense dwarf just gave us all those Sultan vibes. DM Ben thinks his abundance of scrolls is because he’s constantly issuing fresh decrees to his people…a great quirk that he thinks he can roleplay well with our players.

Now that we have our supreme leader, someone of his wealth and standing needs some tough-guy guards. Enter Miniatures Craze and their Back to Egypt – Seth’s Curse Kickstarter. They have a cornucopia of amazing desert STLs, but they are stuffed with detail and therefore a bit fragile when 3D printing. So, you just have to understand these will take a bit more TLC to avoid any snappage.

DM Ben picked these two Anubis Squad Warriors so he could do a classic in-game miniature switcheroo. Meaning, the human version will be his traveling bodyguard and security detail. Everyone sees the normal looks, but our adventurers will discover that he’s in the pocket of the tomb lord itself! Our sneaky Dwarven Shah makes a pretty penny by continually misleading tomb raiders and setting traps for them.

Players will catch his human guard illusion giving way to the true Anubis version, which will clue them in that this crooked Sultan is taking them for fools.

Here’s a quick backside shot so you can see the full model details and how Kimmy Utah’s marvelous paint scheme just sings, baby. DM Ben still has a lot of pesky bullet points to craft up, including the Sultan’s villainous name, the name of the kingdom and city he rules over, and the DnD 5e stat block for these transformative warriors. We’ll focus on those things during our homebrew encounter-building stage. First things first, we need to form the concepts and campaign roadmap. Then we identify the minis/scatter terrain, since that can be very inspiring for the remaining content creation.

Until next time!