Wizkids Pathfinder Leshy Window Box Set Review

Recently arrived after a bit of a delay is this box of Leshy miniatures for Pathfinder. It's classic Wizkids pre-painted stuff, but at the higher end of that scale. You're getting eight miniatures, which are all based on the book art of the Leshy, a popular PC option in Pathfinder.

The Leshy are spirits inhabiting small plant bodies. With the recent Pathfinder Remaster they moved from an "Uncommon" player option to a "Common" player option, essentially becoming a comparable player option to Humans, Dwarves and Elves. That said, they gain their sustenance from sunlight, with their "rations" being very pricey, so they're not well suited to underground campaigns.

(There's a weird point on this one, where Fungus Leshy are mentioned a living in the Darklands, Pathfinder's Underdark, but the PC Fungus Leshy still need sunlight by the book. Still, this is a weird little side annoyance for me, and not super important.)

Here, left to right, we have a Lotus Leshy, a Seaweed Leshy and a Flytrap Leshy. Flytrap Leshy aren't a specific PC option (though there's a monster stat block), but mechanically they work just fine using the Cactus Leshy options.

The great thing about Leshy, being spirits inhabiting humanoid shaped plant matter is that you can really have a wide range of different themes or vibes.

Next up we have the Gourd Leshy, the Sunflower Leshy and the Fruit Leshy. Sunflower Leshy are another "monster option" that fits into other character classes just fine.

The paint jobs on these models are at the higher end of the Wizkids pre-painted scale, and really quite fancy. They've gone with brighter colours, which suits the general feel of Leshy in general, but there's a couple of spots, such as on the Gourd Leshy, where a little more shading would have probably brought them up an extra notch.

Finally, we have a Cactus Leshy and a Fungus Leshy. They're all very distinct with individual silhouettes so easy to tell which is which. All the sculpts are oozing character.

Leshy are small in the rules, and here you can see one being a little shorter than an Aenor goblin who was what I had around to compare them to.

The recent NPC Core book introduced an NPC profile for a "Gourd Witch", which is a pumpkin headed Leshy with a witches hat and witch spells. I'm only shocked I hadn't thought of it myself before now.

As a few Leshy face off against some marauding goblins - would I recommend buying this box? It is really pricey for what it is, but the quality is at the top end of what Wizkids do. For me, it was a must buy because getting the 'official sculpts' and not adding to my painting queue was an easy choice. There aren't many other good options for small plant folk right now outside of 3D printing. It's not going to be everyone's aesthetic, but if you've got the budget as a Pathfinder GM who uses miniatures, I'd recommend them.

Product Review - D&D Icons of the Realms - Ship Scale Boxes

 

For the last of my "Wizkids boxes I bought in the Black Friday sales" reviews, here's a review of some Spelljammer "ship scale" miniatures. The first one I picked up is the "Astral Elf Patrol", which consists of two dragons and two ships - a Star Moth and a Dragonfly.

The dragons are fine, meant to represent Ancient Dragons in the ship game. Ironically, their base sizes are quite reasonably sized for a normal Adult Dragon in normal miniature scale, with the miniatures only a little too small. Miniature scale creep has gotten ridiculous of late, and they may end up being useful gaming pieces for normal D&D.

The Dragonfly (the smaller ship) is fine and does OK for what it is. I'm less fond of the Star Moth. The huge plastic wings don't fit particularly snugly, so will come out if you so much as breathe near them. This leaves you with the dilemma of gluing them in, which makes the whole thing an absolute nightmare to store - there's a reason they were packed separately in the box.

The Star Moth also feels a little bit "plastic toy", as well? The big see through plastic doesn't help with that, but the bold, blocky colours go on to make it worse rather than better. If you compare it to either of the dragons, they don't necessarily feel like they come from the same line? With there not being many other options for the classic Spelljammer ships, it's a bit of a disappointment.

The next box, "Threats from the Cosmos" is a monster box with four creatures. First up, we have the Cosmic Horror and the Tyrant Ship. The Cosmic Horror is excellent. It's a spooky Far Realm monster that has been painted up all gribbly. I don't see it's normal state line will see much play - a CR18 space gribbly isn't one for regular play - but in 28mm scale, some summoned horror could easily be represented by this.

A Tyrant Ship is a Beholder ship, carved out of rock with disintegration rays. The paint job is deeply disappointing - while it's canonically carved out of stone, the colours they've chosen to represent that look more like the model has been roughly undercoated rather than a good stone texture. It's a swing and a miss, really.

We then have an ancient red dragon, which is fine, and a murder comet swarm. And here's where there's a little bit of a rant coming. A murder comet is a medium creature - so the scale of the murder comets here is completely wrong. There's no stat block for a murder comet swarm, so you're left having to come up with something. And by having a non standard stat block, it's not much use for a 28mm scaled encounter either. At least if they'd had a "giant murder comet" miniature with a normal base, it could then be used as a normal murder comet at normal scale. The paint job is dire, too, using metallic silver to try and approximate the art of a glowing gas ball, where the whole thing would have been much better undercoated blue then an airbrushing of white over the top to get a simple but good effect. Just a catastrophic miss on every level.

Last up, we have "Attacks from Deep Space", starting with an Astral Dreadnought. This thing is huge and heavy. I dropped it on a metal miniature and the metal miniature broke. Lets get an idea of scale.

So yes, this is a Big Chunky Monster. The painting is great, the sculpt is great. Just excellent. It's another high CR monster (CR 21 in this case), so it's much more likely to be encountered as some kind of puzzle encounter rather than a straight up fight. You might be trying to escape it, or trying to trick it into swallowing you so you can recover something from it's magical stomach - donjon. You can definitely make some memorable encounters out of this.

The rest of the box consists of a giant gelatinous cube (again, lacking a published stat block for the current edition, but a nice concept for an encounter), and three smaller ships - a turtle and two lampreys. The sculpts of these are fine, but both of the lampreys fall victim to the "bold bright colour" paint job issue, making them look like children's toys again.

Spelljammer ships and creatures are always going to be incredibly niche purchases, and these boxes vary from "key to populating a basic ship table" to "forgettable", with unfortunate mixes of ships and monsters when you're most likely to want duplicates of the ships (if, you know, you're made of money). All in all, these are such a missed opportunity - some better choices with the paint jobs and different combinations of boxes could have made this a far more appealing product.

Product Review - Pathfinder Battles - Fists of the Ruby Phoenix Martial Arts Masters

 

Another cheap box of Wizkids miniatures I picked up from Thistle Tavern is the Pathfinder: Fists of the Ruby Phoenix - Martial Arts Masters" box. This is a box which is paired with a Pathfinder adventure path - the aforementioned "Fists of the Ruby Phoenix".

This isn't an adventure I own, but the concept is a martial arts tournament on an isolated island. The box looks to be significant or unusual characters from the adventure.

There's a "Kongamato", a primeval dragonkind which is basically a big dangerous predator type. The mini is one of the better ones in the set, and easily re-usable as some sort of draconic or primeval beast.

And then there's a yeti monk. 

Another excellent figure, this one doesn't exactly have a common use in the average fantasy RPG. There's particular genres where it will be perfect, but for the majority, it simply won't fit or make any sense. So, a niche figure that's very marmite. I love him, but I have no idea when I'll run something that will need him.

A more usable figure is the onidoshi - an Oni miniature that is really high quality and looks excellent. Pathfinder uses these villains primarily in Tian Xia, but they are found elsewhere as well. They have a canon in D&D lore too, and are recognisable enough within D&D tropes that they end up not feeling out of place in "generic" D&D. Without knowledge of the existing milieu of D&D, they might feel out of place in a western fantasy.

Next up, we have a named witch whose hair is an animate weapon, and a Tengu in some kind of special combat form. The former's shtick has now been adopted into the standard player options for the witch, meaning that it's not super niche in Pathfinder. The model could also be a flying character with a lot of hair.

The Tengu is terrible. The model arrived bent, and while I used hot and cold water to bend it into position, over the course of about a day it slowly bent back into position. The weapons look bad, the teeth look bad. It's non-standard form means it ends up being incredibly, incredibly niche. A catastrophically awful miniature with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

The lower of the two here is a named ghost character. It's a cool see through miniature with a bunch of detail and weird items. It's not going to suit every ghost you want to use, but a specific character ghost it will be excellent for.

Then we have I Don't Know What. It's . . . very 90s? It's a lady who seems to be wearing underwear, a half put on robe and a weird hat. There might be a reason for her looking like this, but I don't own the book to know the context. It's a mediocre humanoid figure before you take into account the dubious choice of clothing.

So, seven figures, of which I think two are actively bad, and five are good. I am very excited about the yeti monk but will probably never use him, while the Oni is the one most likely to see some play. The pricing on this box at recommended retail price is absolutely extortionate. I picked it up at "we need these out of our shop because they haven't sold" prices, and it seems likely they lost money on stocking them.

Pathfinder definitely has some good Wizkids products - their Goblins frameworks box* is stellar - but there's also some catastrophic misses. Some models I pre-ordered for "April 2024" still haven't delivered, so there's all sorts of different problems the range is having right now. Hugely discounted boxes are going to end up defaulting to be the massive misses. My overall opinion of the Wizkids range remains "do your research and be very picky".

* Don't go looking for the blog post where I "definitely assemble them in March". It was massively optimistic and I completely failed to achieve that.

Product Review: Pathfinder Battles: Impossible Lands - Masters of Magic

 

I had a pretty restrained Black Friday, but did take the opportunity to grab a few heavily discounted Wizkids pre-painted boxes from Thistle Tavern. I've previously bought cards for Flesh and Blood from them, and was after a play mat I really liked, but on an impulse grabbed a few Wizkids figures.

This box was discounted to £11 from the £35-£40 range, and when I received it, I became gently fascinated by the choices made to put these figures together in a box that led to such a large discount.

Pathfinder's setting is the world of Golarion, and they facilitate a wide range of different game styles by having different areas of their world hit different tropes. The Impossible Lands are where a bunch of the weirder concepts are: here lies the wild west / steampunk gunslinger city, a post magical apocalypse wasteland, a high magic land, a land ruled by undead, a fey cursed lost kingdom and a small India themed high magic island.

So, first up we have a Rakshasa Maharaja and a Japalisura Asura. These high level fiends are a good medium level adversary, campaign villain or boss fight, but their complexity means you're getting a mildly disappointing paint job for a premium price. Finding any miniature that meets these monster descriptions is likely a challenge, but given their leader / manipulator energy, I'd probably end up searching for a higher quality miniature I could paint myself so they weren't a bit of a disappointment for a climactic battle.

Next up is an Ifrit Pyrochemist and a Manticore Paaridar. So, a mortal linked to the fire plane who's become an alchemist specialising in firey bombs, and a monk from a niche group who's absorbed monster energy in some way to try and improve their physical prowess.

These are excellent odd profiles to add into a fight as a henchman, specialist hireling or leader of a bunch of goons. You'd want to craft some narrative around the encounter and design the fight around them, but they'd be memorable and interesting.

The next models we have are Nex and Geb. These are the ancient rulers of the high magic land and the undead land, each of which is named after them. You might meet them as a quest giver but if you end up in a fight with them, you'll have an entire nation after you.

Frankly, these are baffling choices to have made, let alone put into such an eclectic box. You might need one or other of these in a weird, niche campaign, but even adventures set in their respective lands might never see either of them.

And finally . . . Nethys the god of magic, and Anong Aronak, the leader of the Dongun Hold.

I'm straight up stumped here.

No-one is going to be straight up fighting a God in almost any campaign, and picking a neutral deity not one of the evil ones, and making it a human sized figure at that, is pretty baffling. I thought maybe you could use this for the 10th rank "Avatar" spell that allows level 19 and 20 clerics to take the form of their god as a powerful divine shape change . . . but that spell makes you Huge, so this model remains utterly pointless.

Alongside that is the third "ruler of a country" model - in this case the dwarf who rules the dwarf hold who makes firearms for the wild west steampunk town. Probably more usable than the other two ruler figures by sheer dint of being a slightly more reasonable power level, it remains weirdly niche by not being a prominent figure from Alkenstar, where most of the adventures happen, but the lore obscure neighbouring dwarf hold that helps excuse the setting's firearms.

So, in short, these perfectly tolerable figures will be unlikely to all be used in the same canon campaign, make little sense to be in the same style of adventure, and all see only weirdly niche uses. They have plenty of options in weird homebrew campaigns, but they're never going to be your first choice purchase. It's a weird one for completionists and lovers of the whackier settings Pathfinder has to offer. And even then.

I definitely only got this because of how cheap it was. I don't understand why it exists.

Overcoming insurmountable hurdles

 

As a "nice easy" start to my holiday hobby, I decided to assemble the Wizkids Frameworks Kobolds set. I got them out of their box ages back and it was starting to annoy me. Oh my goodness these were a faff to assemble!

The feet were separate to the legs, with the torso, tail, head and arms all separate. Some had two part heads, and some needed things gluing into their hands, or a two handed weapon lined up across the two arms.

So rather than the Kobolds being a quick assembly job on the first day of the holiday, it took me all week to finally get them done, as they were so fiddly I kept on needing to take breaks.

All in all, I'm not impressed with these Frameworks kits. They're pricey for what they are, the detail is pretty soft, and they're far, far too difficult to assemble for a kit that's supposed to be the next step up for people after pre-assembled miniatures. Better options exist in plastic, resin and 3D printing, depending on your preference.

On Sunday, I'd arranged an Infinity game where I was running vanilla Combined Army. As I mentioned last week, they're my planned first force for N5 in October. Mid-week, I wrote a list using Bit and Kiss, who I hadn't assembled yet. And then, at 10pm on Saturday, the Kobolds finally finished, I remembered I hadn't done my Infinity assembly.

My goodness, was I pleased to see two part assemblies when I opened the blister.

All in all, it took me about 20 - 25 minutes to get them both cleaned assembled, including cutting the holes in the bases for their slotta tabs. That was an absolute delight after the Kobolds, and really reinvigorated my hobby keen immediately.

Of course, first thing Sunday morning, I had an idea, changed my list, and ended up not needing to take Bit and Kiss. Because of course. But it's two more models assembled, and my keen restored...

Phandelver Monsters

 

The latest lucky dip D&D miniatures set from Wizkids is the Phandelver set, based on the new, updated Phandelver campaign. The campaign book is mediocre, and this miniature set kind of matches it. There's a whole bunch of standard models like goblins and zombies with pretty shoddy paint jobs, but going through the store I go to for individual minis, I picked out a handful of the better sculpts and paint jobs.

First up is a Roper. A classic D&D dungeon encounter, this is a nice fun sculpt I thought was worth picking up. It's a good low to medium level encounter for D&D characters. Interestingly, I've noticed that while it's CR5 in D&D, its a hefty Level 10 in Pathfinder, making it a much tougher encounter for medium level PCs in that system.

This Young Amethyst Dragon is a CR 4 creature who hates Far Realm creatures. It works as a nice potential ally to PCs in the right type of campaign. It doesn't feel like it's the right level for acting as an opponent to a party whose Warlock has done a deal with a Far Realm entity or similar - that feels like a challenge that should come in later in their arcs.

I already have some excellent Reaper Wolves that I've painted up, but thought I'd pick up another. This one just isn't as nice looking and is a little glossy. The difference really highlights to me the benefit of painting things yourself if you have the time.

The Nothic has a slightly better paint job. He's a nice little weird aberration that could either be a low level encounter, or be a weird minion for some higher powered thing that should not be.

In the Phandelver game I ran, Stirges absolutely wrecked the party in large numbers, so I felt it would be worthwhile to pick up five for a nice little flock of bloodsucking horrors. They're a staple low level weird animal encounter that I enjoyed running online before, so will now be able to do in person as well...

I also got a Flameskull, which is another classic in the original Phandelver adventure. My party did not have a good time with it, as they failed some stealth rolls trying to spy on it while they were incredibly low on health and healing, so it lobbed a fireball right into the middle of them. It was sad times.

The Flameskull is, accurately, really quite teeny. Here it is next to a hero with a sword planning to put an end to its fire based reign of terror. It's a fun little critter that works well as part of a larger encounter, able to put out a lot of damage while remaining relatively fragile once hit...

So, all in all, I did OK at skimming through the Phandelver set, but I wouldn't be taking a risk on any of the blind boxes. People who split the boxes and sell the individuals are the only reason I've ended up investing in the models from this set, as the hit to miss ratio is particularly low in this range.

Wizkids Seas and Shores Miniatures

 

One of the things that I picked up last year and hadn't shown on the blog yet were the "Seas and Shores" pre-painted miniatures from Wizkids. I broadly find that the animal and beast type monsters are the best part of these ranges, so I was keen to see what I could pick up.

Hippogryphs are a monster I'm really keen on and they're weirdly hard to find good examples of. This one is fine, so I'm pleased to have picked him up. Meanwhile, giant lizards are a reliable staple that can easily add into a dungeon, cave or wilderness encounter, or as some humanoid's trained monster for a bigger fight.

Two weird fiendish monsters here. On the left is the Hydroloth, one oof the neutral evil "Yugoloth" fiends who in D&D hire themselves out to other evil factions, as well as having their own evil schemes. The Hydroloth is the aquatic variant. The thing is, they're really quite high level monsters so it's going to take a lot of time before you've run enough high level D&D campaigns that you want to add variation to the monsters by adding fiendish mercenaries. I really love the idea, but am already growing very tired of Wizards of the Coast's poor treatment of it's staff and mediocre products, so am already trending Pathfinder-wards rather than using Wizards IP in my RPGs quite so much.

Meanwhile, the Wastrilith is an abyssal demon, so just a straight up awful violence and corruption monster. Demons don't really appeal to me much as a monster because they're kind of just an evil force of nature trying to wreck things and rarely have interesting or complicated plans. So they're fine as generic antagonists, but if you want a campaign with depth and the villains doing something interesting, demons are rarely your "go to" pick. Still, any fiend is useful as a potential bound summon or horrible side quest, so I picked him up despite the dubious pink paint job.

A few larger aquatic creatures come next. The Plesiosaurus is a bit more unusual, but a historically accurately sized dinosaur is something that puts a strong vibe into an encounter or campaign. The giant octopus is probably one of the nicest models in the whole set, and is a reliable and dangerous low level aquatic encounter. Finally, the giant eel is something that can hit people in the shallows or an underwater cave and feel very gritty.

Moving onto the weirder monsters. Here's a Aldani, a Peryton and an Amphisbaena. The Aldani are lobster-folk, originally from the Tomb of Annihilation and the Chult setting. That's a bit niche from a D&D setting point of view, but it was an interesting one to pick up. The Peryton is a weird folklore monster that I've been wanting for ages. It's got a good folk horror vibe, I think. The Amphisbaena has two D&D profiles - one medium and one large, with the medium profile from the Theros setting.

One thing that annoyed me with the Amphisbaena model is these obvious joins that rely on you looking at it from the front angle. I feel like with a bit of smarter planning, the connections could have been made less obvious.

Finally, I picked up three reef sharks and a giant crab. Because the shark is very simple, and often comes in numbers, I bought three. Some of the smaller monsters it makes little sense to only buy one, because you'll never have them on their own in an actual encounter.

All in all, the animal monsters in the Seas and Shores range are fantastic, and figures you'll want to use a lot in marine adventures. This is probably the set with the most "hits" for the set that I've seen so far. I still won't be getting any blind boxes, but the split services are worth a look.

Wizkids Bigby Glory of the Giants General Release Miniatures

I'd picked up a few bits and pieces of the Wizkids "Bigby Glory of the Giants" release as well as the limited ones, so thought I'd share what I picked up.

In a fit of disorganisation, I got the normal release Frostmourn as well as the one I got in the limited set. Still a big tall spooky girl, still got some freaky weird posing because of a naughty artist using AI to help his posing.

A Spectral Cloud is an undead Cloud Giant. A good mid level scary monster that doesn't feel like a boss fight, but more a tough challenge when some dungeon delve suddenly goes horribly wrong.

A Firegaunt is an undead Fire Giant. I've got a proper old set of dead giants from this set - ironically, more than the number of living giants I own now! It feels like a good premise for an old tomb of some lost giant empire or something.

Here's a Deinonychus and a Dilophosaurus. The first has a simple profile for a low level beast, while the second doesn't have a published D&D profile. A good acid spitting dinosaur would be a good addition to a combat. I wonder if it got cut for space in the book?

Ettercaps are a classic D&D monstrosity. This is one of the best monsters I've seen from the Wizkids pre-painted lines, and I kind of love him. It's definitely a monster that you'll get use of in any traditional D&D campaign.

Finally, we've got a giant lynx and a giant badger. This is a different paint scheme to the limited giant lynx I already have, which mean I could do an encounter of a pair of giant lynxes now. A giant badger is a low level threat, but could work as a summoned ally by a PC, or part of a swarm of animals summoned by an evil druid.

Oddly enough in this set, I'm more impressed by the medium sized creatures than the big giants. There's a few gems hidden away in the line, but I certainly wouldn't buy any blind boxes in the hope of getting the few I like out of the set - a split box service is definitely the way to go from my perspective.

Wizkids Pathfinder Mwangi Models (and a flying Kobold)

 

I noticed some older models from before I started picking up Wizkids pre-painted models were going out of stock at my usual supplier, so I picked up a couple. These two are both from the Pathfinder Mwangi Expanse line, a setting I'm really excited about. It also has a whole bunch of unique monsters so grabbing any that aren't painfully bad is a priority as it's unlikely to be easy to find another in the future.

The big lad is an Asanbosam, a large humanoid predator that lives in the jungles. Based on a Ghanan myth, they have cold iron teeth and claws, and drink blood. Paizo have linked these, saying it needs large amounts of iron in its diet to maintain its claws and teeth.

The Rompo is another beast, but this one is a lone scavenger who usually prefers to feed on leftovers from another predator's kills rather than getting into a fight directly itself. This could easily be used as an encounter in itself, where PCs need to retrieve something from or investigate some dead bodies the Rompo is feeding from. The other encounter idea that springs to mind is the idea of a Rompo starting to follow the PCs from a distance and picking up the remains of their kills. If a PC notices it, it reinforces the skills of PCs who know about local wildlife as being useful - and is also a small detail that makes the wider world feel more realistic and complete.

This model was sold as a "Kobold Warlock", but neither D&D nor Pathfinder has a stat line for a winged Kobold spellcaster. D&D does have winged Kobolds, while Pathfinder doesn't so it's most likely going to be useful as a custom monster stat line in D&D.

Bigby Presents Glory of the Giants Limited Models

 

Alongside the usual Wizkids pre-painted blind boxes, they also released two "limited edition" monster sets that consisted of alternative paint schemes. One was a Death Giant Necromancer, the other a box of five miniatures. The "should you buy these" really comes down to whether you like the sculpts and paint jobs. Both the recent Phandelver and Planescape limited boxes have models I actively dislike in, so I gave those a miss, but these ones had some models I liked, so I got them.

Here they all are. The big giants are nearly action figure sized, but are to scale with the intended size of them by the D&D rules. I've been quite annoyed by the incorrectly sized minis in this range, so "actually the right size" is a low bar I'm pleased to see they're hitting.

One box was the "Death Giant Necromancer", which matches the art of the Death Giant Shrouded One. I suspect the miniatures were ordered before the book was finalised, and some names changed before final publication.

This is a really lovely miniature that will work well as a boss encounter, whether end boss or mid adventure mini boss. At a very chonky challenge rating of 15, this is a high level campaign antagonist. The spooky ghosts floating around her and fancy scythe are really nicely done.

The profile is an interesting one that probably needs some reading by the DM before running the encounter. I don't want to give it away, but it has some nice mobility, and a bit of self-synergy with one thing that causes the Frightened condition and an attack that gains a benefit if the target is Frightened.

I feel like some low level flunkies who can cause the Frightened condition would significantly add to the tactical choices of an encounter with a Death Giant Shrouded One, but you'd need to be careful about how much better that makes the Shrouded One.

The two normal sized models in the set are a Goliath "chef" armed with a giant fork, and a giant lynx. The Goliath is a bit of a niche model, but would work well as an NPC in a giant focused adventure, or a quirky PC.

The other model is a giant lynx. Its lore is that it is an intelligent fey, which sometimes works with some types of giants. That's plenty of flexibility for encounters - whether a wilderness fey encounter, a 'pet' of a giant that holds a secret, or an intelligent ally to some other creature.

A Fire Hellion is a fire giant that has entered into a pact with a devil for additional martial prowess, and has ended up becoming a fiend themselves. It's a hefty mid level brawler who can be a real threat to a party. In particular, it's ability to instantly kill any humanoid or giant it reduces to zero hit points rather than have them begin to make death saving throws something that can be a major threat to PCs.

The Stone Giant of Elemental Evil miniature is a bit cartoony for my liking. I've never quite clicked with the "Elemental Evil" antagonist group. They're quite a simplistic villain, without much explanation as to why anyone would join or be interested in their goals. I've yet to see a good idea for how to adapt them to something interesting.

The stat block itself is a nice brawler profile that's a bit tougher than a typical stone giant. It's nothing special, but perfectly serviceable. It's got an interesting look. Perhaps the elemental evil cults see someone doing something destructive unwittingly or for their own reasons, and offer them support and muscle to meet mutual goals? Otherwise, I'm a bit unsure when I'd get any use out of him.

The Frostmourn is an undead Frost Giant. The weird posing of the right hand is due to the original artwork the miniature is based on having used AI in the artist's early posing process. It's a pretty shoddy, disappointing pose and look, and the replacement hand painted art is such a step up from the AI. While Wizards didn't deliberately use AI, the problem artwork was all relatively shoddy. It's a bad sign for Wizards' quality control, and very disappointing.

Again, the undead giant profile is fine. It's nothing you couldn't homebrew, but is a solid profile. Vengeful undead ice giant is a niche but viable idea. I think I'd be most tempted to use it in a ruin of an ancient giant empire.

All in all, I think the set is OKish. The Necromancer / Shrouded One came separately and is, I think, the far better purchase than the wider set. The five model set is "fine, I guess", but I'm not as keen on it as the Death Giant piece. In many ways, the comparison between the two reinforces the difference in quality of both sculpts and paint jobs in the Wizkids pre-painted lines, and reinforces my decision to be more selective about what I pick up.