What’s not to love about Baba Yaga’s hut, or this Walking Hut miniature being crowdfunded by Dungeon Crawler Miniatures. This miniature, add-ons and stretch goals, including a Wood Hut, Water Elemental Lord, and various miniatures from prior successful Kickstarters, are all available through an interesting crowdfunding campaign being run on the Dungeon Crawler web site.
This latest campaign is a rework of Dungeon Crawler’s canceled Kickstarter campaign from September. While it looked to be heading towards successful funding, the complex campaign structure lead to some confusion and ultimately its cancellation. Retooled and introducing a different miniature as its focus, Dungeon Crawler considered another Kickstarter campaign, but for various reasons, one of which was the desire to offer pledges in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian, they have decided to run the campaign on their own site.
The crowdfunding campaign will run from December 11, 2015, until January 3, 2016. They are starting with the “Walking Hut; a colossal 6×6 figure.” An excellent figure to represent the infamous Baba Yaga’s Hut; the roof is removable for access to the hut interior, and the legs are removable for when the hut is in “resting mode.” If the initial project goal of $20,000 is received, the Walking Hut will be funded. Add-ons and stretch goals are presented on the Dungeon Crawler funding page.
While I started this post in September as a pointer to the original Kickstarter, I found so many cool products from Dungeon Crawler’s site that it has expanded into more than just a crowdfunding recommendation.
Dungeon Crawlers has experience delivering some awe-inspiring miniatures from their prior campaign, Dungeon Crawler, Fantasy Miniatures. The intention of Dungeon Crawler’s Miniatures is “to bring forth concepts that are not saturating the painted plastic market, but most importantly that they are created to fit in to many different fantasy worlds.” Their most notable miniature from that campaign was an enormous Kraken. Calling it a miniature is really quite misleading. This thing is simply huge. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on some mini’s from the successful Fantasy Miniatures Kickstarter for review.
The Kraken is an impressive figure. Sporting an 8 inch by 8 inch base with a dynamic pose and detailed sculpt. The separate tentacle is another figure from the same Kickstarter campaign. The Massive Tentacle has a 2 inch base and works well as an addition to the Kraken or on its own Watcher-in-the-Water style. The Kraken came assembled and primed. Typically buyers will have the choice of primed and unassembled or an assembled and prepainted miniature.
I received three other miniatures for review. The giant Firbolg Skeleton, a Peryton, and Green Knee, a goblin. The Firbolg is a nicely detailed undead giant. The Kickstarter special paint job on this miniature is comparable to the quality of other available pre-painted miniatures. I prefer my miniatures with a less glossy finish than the Firbolg sports but given the literally hundreds of unpainted Reaper Bones miniatures I have, even as a do-it-yourselfer, I am more than happy with this menacing guy’s look.
The Peryton also has nice detail, a good active pose and came unpainted. The only miniature of the sample I was sent that I was disappointed in was Green Knees, a goblin necromancer. I believe I would have preferred the unpainted version to the paint I received. The paint and the gloss conceal his detail. I do like his sinister look though.
You’ll note that the Dungeon Crawler miniatures have some interesting, notched bases. They’re designed to take counters for tracking stats such as hit-points, and for combat clips that can include a banner, floating sphere, or a torch. You can purchase these clip bases without miniatures if you’d like to use Combat Counters and Clips on your miniatures from other sources.
Like I said earlier, this post started with me being interested in a Kickstarter campaign, but as I researched the company and saw some prior miniatures I found so much more. I am ecstatic to have discovered Dungeon Crawler Miniatures if for no other reason than to find their “From the Depths” set of tentacles. This was their first foray into the pre-painted miniatures market and it was very well done. Tentacles come up often in role-playing, in the form of spells, or unseen beasts pulling adventurers into the depths. From the Dungeon Crawler site, “Use them for area spell effect markers, creatures that are not fully revealed, as part of the terrain or as a distraction for the real encounter.”
From what I have seen of the miniatures provided to me for review, as well as on the Dungeon Crawler web site, I absolutely loved some miniatures such as the tentacles and enormous Kraken, while, like any set of miniatures, there were some that I was less fond of, namely Green Knees. The Walking Hut from this latest crowdfunding campaign, is a great miniature whether you’re introducing your players to artifacts and relics from AD&D or running Reign of Winter with your Pathfinder group.
I’m interested to see how a self-run crowdfunding campaign fairs. With two prior successful Kickstarters that generated some excellent miniatures, Dungeon Crawler is not just some random person asking for money. If you’re interested in a Walking Hut, chip in $45 to get the ball rolling. It’s really the only Baba Yaga’s hut option out there! Otherwise, check out their store as there are some excellent miniatures available now from prior campaigns. If funded, any pledged funds can be used on project goal rewards, or on existing items in the store, so really the risk here seems to be less than many Kickstarters.
Disclosure: Dungeon Crawler Miniatures provided the miniatures reviewed.
Any idea what became of this fund raiser?
This was posted January 3 of 2016 on their Facebook page – “No luck with the #WalkingHut either, well maybe in a few months we can take another swing. We’ll be doing refunds, taking a short break, and then launching our ECG Thorn campaign shortly.”
Check out the Facebook page for a history of some more funding, etc… https://www.facebook.com/DungeonCrawler
Some cool miniatures. The Behemoth looked pretty sweet, but also looks like that one didn’t go because of cost.