Tomb Thursday P19: Dat’s Dah Fact, Jack!

Back to our Egyptian miniatures collection we go, as we’ve got some more featured baddies that are sure to be in multiple desert encounters as our adventurers search for riches beneath the sands!

DM Ben doesn’t want to scramble for formidable foe minis as he crafts numerous one-shots to go with this homebrewed Egyptian-style series. Often, scatter terrain and minis generate that creative encounter-building spark. Besides, scrambling to 3D print pieces is such a downer. As Train Tuesday followers know, it’s really important to us that we give the dungeon master everything he needs to entertain the group… otherwise, it’s more of a dreadful job than a beautiful hobby.

So, with that said, let’s showcase a staple of desert tombs: Anubis Warriors. They have a true jackal form, a humanoid form, and a hybrid jackal-humanoid form, and are often associated with death and graveyards, and have a taste for humanoid flesh. Bad a$$ warriors no doubt.

In terms of history, Anubis is the ancient Egyptian god of the afterlife, mummification, and cemeteries, and depicted as a man with a jackal’s head. He was the divine embalmer who guided souls to the underworld and oversaw the crucial “weighing of the heart” ceremony to determine their worthiness for the afterlife. So darn cool.

In just our second Tomb Thursday post, we showcased our first set of city soldiers. Now, it’s one thing to get past the hired help soldiers who are dreading their life choices, but that’s not what we’re gonna focus on today. This post is about the tomb’s elite protectors and their dedication to keeping the peace for their fallen leader.

We’re showcasing a couple of 3D-printed miniatures today, and we’ll start with EC3D Designs and their version of Jackal-were Warriors. These bad boys are from their brilliant Empire of Scorching Sands set, and we’ve made several to disperse throughout our underground tomb.

This particular STL is packed with details, so resident painter Kimmy Utah had to answer the coloring call. Once again, her choice of paints was spot on and gave us the exact vibe we were looking for with these fierce fighters. We always ask her to do subtle differences when we pass her two or more of the same miniature because variety is the spice of life.

Our other featured miniature comes courtesy of MiniaturesCraze, who also shares a passion for all things Egyptian. There’s no denying their excellent assortment of dessert sculpts, but they’re a little on the fragile side at times. Hence, you gotta remove them from your print plate with kid pharaoh gloves. This post inspired us to re-slice a few more from their Back to Egypt – Seth’s Curse Kickstarter. Second time could be the charm (along with a little extra patience). 😉

Kimmy Utah also painted this Anubis Warrior 3. We ship her numereous DnD 3D prints, and we can only send her so many pieces per box. Hence, the office debate was fierce that this guy would survive both mail trips (to her and then back to us in AZ). That’s another reason we’re a little hesitant to go bonkers on 3D-printing the entire set. Still, nothing wrong with just slow-rolling it.

In terms of DnD 5e stats for our Jackalwere tomb guardians, adventurers definitely would prefer to launch a surprise attack from behind rather than a fierce charge from the front. We did peruse our archives, and while prepping for a courtyard ruins encounter, we pulled some stats from a Jackalwere Slayer stat block via Reddit: AC 12, HP 36, +4 att/1d4+2, Pack Tactics. Still, these numbers still felt underwhelming for our six-player, level six party.

So, we went back to the well and found this slick Boros Jackal defender 5e build by GamingBrew: AC 16, HP 60, +5 att/1d10+3, Glaive reach 10ft. Now we’re talkin’ – lean, mean fighting machines.

Until next time!