Out of the stack of Epic Encounters boxes that’s slowly taking over my house, the one I’ve been keenest to paint and play is Village of the Goblin Chief. Here’s how it went.

Miniatures and Artwork

They’re gorgeous. I’m a fan of the Epic Encounters miniatures in general, but these are particularly characterful. They keep the fun, wild aesthetic that I expect from goblins while maintaining that these are still dangerous creatures. My favourites have to be the frog chewers:

This is one of the earlier sets and has some mould lines to clean up – I just took a hobby knife to them and it didn’t take long. The large eyes gave me a few problems but a more accomplished painter would likely appreciate the big canvas (and I did get to do some fun spirals on the frog chewers). Another favourite of mine are the frog riders for the wild colours and patterns you can get away with on them:

I think my painting suffered a bit from colour theory choices. Perhaps a different shade of green might have worked better for their skin (I used Sybarite Green, shaded with Coelia Greenshade, and highlighted with a mix of Sybarite Green and Vallejo Ivory) or perhaps having a range of skin tones. I struggled to get them to photograph well, which is more likely a reflection of my painting/photography skill than anything else. The basing is Kodama Woods from Krautcover, and I’m really impressed with that range (I also use Meadows of Purity for my Bretonnians).

Balance and Running the Game

Since I was running this as a one-shot, the first challenge I had was what level characters to tell my players to bring. The book made some effort to clarify this but had an unfortunate typo which suggested that it’s designed for middle tier but an experienced DM could modify it to be appropriate for middle tier. Not so helpful! The CR of the monsters was generally low so I assumed it meant it’s designed for lower tier – I could see my players smashing through 7-hp goblins at level 8 without breaking sweat. It’s worth noting, however, that the environment and random effects can be deadly (albeit funny) which adds to the challenge.

When you get going, the encounters are a blast. They’re funny, creative, and oozing (sometimes literally) the swampy, goblin theme.

I ran this with 3 players at level 5 using the DC and standard damage described in the book for middle tier. As far as balance goes, it went with mixed success – a questionable shatter spell in the room full of dangerous bottles and potions almost caused a TPK. Otherwise, the party completed the adventure with 2 players unconscious and the remaining one on their last legs, which is the kind of close-to-the-wire ending I like. Granted, I allowed the party a short rest after the ‘shatter incident’ (oh, kind and benevolent DM), otherwise they wouldn’t have made it past the second room. I’m confident that was more of a party problem than an encounter problem.

There was some confusion over where the players enter the maps and where the steps are between layers of the inverted ziggurat/tree hollow (I’ve found this in a couple of the other Epic Encounters maps too). None of us could spot them so I just made it up. The players ignored the steps anyway and leaped down, amusingly landing in snail slime (serves them right, but we all enjoyed it). Other parts of the environment allow fun, creative play. Thunderwaving bowls of poisonous, corrosive frogspawn all over the goblins was a particularly fun move in my game.

Aside from having a fantastic name, I expected the flail snail to be a swingy encounter because it has so many attacks. The party, however, went all in and smashed it to pieces in just over a turn. Its slime trail reducing AC is a fun touch and really took our boastful fighter down a peg or two.

What Did I Change?

The spell list for the goblin hetman didn’t make much sense to me. The description had them stood in their magic circle, fully prepared, and blasting the players with bolts of magic. The spell list, however, didn’t have a single bolt of magic type of spell in it – instead, it had spells like fog, blur, guidance, etc. To keep with the theme, I switched most of them out, instead choosing these from the wizard list: ray of sickness, Melf’s acid arrow, poison spray. Plenty of magic blasting there while keeping the swampy theme of decay, poison, and rot.

Conclusion

What’s not to love about frog-licking, frogspawn flinging, spell-slinging goblins? It’s fun, it’s quirky in all the right ways, and the random effects throughout the encounters are hilarious. Exactly what I want when goblins are involved.

The set suffers a little from some misleading typos, unexpected spell choices (see above), and rules like frogs having a fly speed. It’s worth checking the stat blocks too, as I noted a creature with 16 constitution listed as a +0 (should be +3) which you might miss in the midst of a game. Some extra polish here would make this near perfect, although the set is described as ‘5E compatible’ so perhaps some of these things are related to compatibility with other systems. As it is, it’s not quite a pick-up-and-play product (it’s more like a 95% pick-up-and-play product which is still pretty good!), and there needs to be some DM intervention. Preparation is minimal though, especially when compared to coming up with an adventure as much fun and creative as this from scratch.

Overall, this is an excellent set and highly recommended whether you just want the miniatures or want to play the whole lot. If goblins aren’t your thing the Epic Encounters range now covers a lot of tastes, and since I have almost all of them, I can vouch for what you get. Look out for more of these reviews in the future when I can muster a group to have some more Epic Encounters.

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