Epic Encounters

[Ish]

Epic Encounters is a set of D&D5e compatible adventures from Steamforged Games.  Each of them is a single box, with a selection of miniatures, a battle map, and an adventure booklet. The first one they released (and which I just bought using the Guardian Games gift certificate I got for Christmakkuh) is Epic Encounters: Shrine of the Kobold Queen. I'm very happy with it and I expect it will be a core part of my DM'ing repertoire for many years to come.

The Shrine of the Kobold Queen is a somewhat generic adventure -- local tribes of kobolds have been united by a charismatic and powerful leader who is up to no good and started making trouble in the neighborhood. However, it's a generic adventure done very well. The eponymous Kobold Queen is given a well thought out motivation and clear goals, her machinations are multilayered and without too much effort a DM should be able to turn her into a recurring villain for a whole campaign and not just this boxed adventure. 

The module doesn't have much by way of background, there's no "starting town" or "home base" or anything like that. There's a full page of suggested story hooks to rope in your adventurers and another page of rumors that they might have picked up on. But there isn't much "roleplaying" content, it's all straight down to business.

The adventure itself takes place across the two sides of the included map. The first is the Kobold Camp and then it heads deep into the Caverns. All the locations on each side of the map are then described, along with any mechanical effects and the book ends with the stats, abilities, and actions for each of the miniatures included.   The adventure isn't ground breaking, it's the classic "find the evil monsters, fight them; find the evil monsters' lair, fight them; go home." But it's all done very well. 

There's twenty minis in total, some of which are identical duplicates of each other. Each of the different kobolds has their own stat block and special abilities included in the back of the booklet in a pseduo-Monster Manual style entry.

Quality of the miniatures is somewhat sharper and more detailed than Reaper Bones, but not quite as crisp as the Nolzur's Unpainted Miniatures line. But they are loaded with little details and characterful touches, like the pair of Kobold Basilisk Herders whom each have chunks of meat on the end of their polearms for leading the tribe's Basilisk (who looks like a cross between a grumpy toad and a volcano) into battle. They're all made out of a bright red plastic, but should be fairly painless to paint to a table-top standard with Contrast Paints and/or inks and washes. A better painter than me could probably make them really epic.

 

I am a bit concerned that the first half of the module, the Kobold Camp, might be a bit too hard for new players. There's over a dozen of the evil blighters in the camp and a fair few traps scattered about... and the camp is basically all "open ground" instead of segmented into distinct dungeon rooms. If new players are too gung ho and just rush in, there's little logical reason that the entire camp shouldn't bum-rush the party all at once.  DM's might have to fudge things here or drop some not so unsubtle hints that the players should take a stealthy approach... But that's about my only quibble with the module.

The story is a solid 3 out of 5 stars. It's an old standard of the genre, but it uses the tropes well and avoids falling into cliché. 

The material product is a perfect 5 out of 5 stars. Twenty really good miniatures, a nice full-color map, and a nice adventure module makes it a very good value for the money. (I feel I should also mention the box itself. It's a very heavy duty cardboard, quite thick, like you get with one of the bigger boardgames like Descent or Twilight Imperium. It should last you for decades.) 

Overall, I'm giving it a 4 out of 5. Highly recommend.