WizKids Rocs And Rolls With New ‘Icons Of The Realms’ Miniature

Welcome to the table,

In the tabletop gaming landscape, sometimes bigger really is better. As someone who runs a slow-burn low-magic game laced with folklore and horror, I do not often have occasion to unleash large threats onto my players at the gaming table. Dragons, in my opinion, even when they are freshly hatched, can outsmart and overpower a party of players unless they are very dialed in and not prone to licking orbs, touching cursed swords, or sticking their hands into random bags that radiate with necrotic magic. In my experience, most players will, of course, do all of those things without a second thought. So a dragon is going to destroy them before they even see it, much less have a chance to meet it when it’s grown to the size of a building.

Because of this, it becomes difficult to have those big monster fights in a meaningful way at the table with low to mid-level parties and not totally obliterate my players in the process. One of the ways I have found over the years around this is introducing a Roc to the situation.

Enormous legendary birds have appeared in a multitude of cultural mythologies throughout the history of human civilization. Typically, these entities are birds of prey so massive in size that they can swoop down and pick up horses, cows, and, in some cases, they can fly off with elephants laden with armor and riders.

These massive creatures make for fun foes at the table because you gain the advantage of a large creature that is imposing at the table, and yet does not have the added danger of magic and breath weapons.

Now that is not to say that Rocs are not a hard fight to win, they have a wealth of hit points and their beak and talon attacks can get nasty if you are not careful, but in the grand scheme of things, they are, or at least can be, less disastrous to a party than a black dragon with a withering sword or a blue dragon slinging spells from a lich’s spellbook.

WizKids has a rad new Roc miniature coming to market, and if the render above is any indication, this thing is going to be really fun to run at the table. I mean, the thing is going to have a massive 11-inch wingspan, and when you measure things like I do, that is around the size of a Subway five-dollar foot long. Though I am fairly certain those sandwiches have not been five dollars for a while. Also, the last time I think I was in a Subway was when you could still use those little stamps they gave out, so it has been… years.

Nevertheless! WizKids always has radical minis, and the paint and sculpt of this one looks like it is going to be an absolute delight. You can pre-order yours now at the link.

Until next time, what is your go-to big monster fight at your TTRPG table?