The Zombie Abominations Boxset

The decision to go with two evil races for our Kickstarter was pretty easy for us at Minion Miniatures.  Lots of people had ideas.  Dwarves and Goblins... they go together like chalk and cheese.  Nah!  Elves and Drow, that would be awesome.  I had already decided to do my two favourite races of the fantasy genre... Goblins and Undead.

Obviously the Goblins were covered briefly in my last post.  Now is the turn of the Zombie Abominations.  Undead?  Certainly... but where are the skeletons you ask?

Zombie Gravewalker - These guys will be the models available in the Zombie Boxset

We knew that skeletons would have to be a boxset in their own right and over the years they had been done pretty well by other companies, even in plastic.  So the decision was made to concentrate on zombies and the machinations of the Necromancers.

The Liche Priest - An even more powerful version of the Necromancer; a death magician with power of eternal life and the knowledge of the art of death.

The Zombie Abomination faction originally came into the play with the idea of once human mages, obsessed with eternal life and power after death, fleeing the civilized world and being driven deep below ground in order to continue their heinous experiments.  With a supply of fresh cadavers and corpses scavenged by their loyal ghouls from surface graveyards, the Necromancers could begin their ghoulish and grisly work.

The Necromancer - Death Follows in his Footsteps!!

The design focus of the Zombie abominations was practicality.  Would a zombie know what it was supposed to do if given unlife?  We suspected the dark magic would perhaps give it a basic understanding of destroying its masters enemies but understanding how to use a sword seemed a bit of a stretch.  We decided that as well as bodies the Necromancers Ghouls would be sent to scavenge through the Underdeep, salvaging equipment from tombs and long dead adventurers.  This equipment is then bolted directly into bone to stop the zombie losing it or dropping a weapon in battle.  Gruesome but cool eh?

The Flesh Golem...

The idea for the Flesh Golem was to give it a horror film feel.  A giant creature covered in drapes or a mask to hide its disgusting features.  This fearsome beast has a more direct philosophy and understand entirely what it must do without fully understanding its body.  This is because these behemoths, made from the flesh of many creatures, are given life through daemonic spirits.  The body is piloted by a bound demon who delights in the pleasures of killing in a physical form.  It is loyal to its master for this very reason, drawn from the void to do its masters bidding.

The Zombie Hulk

The Zombie Hulk was always a roleplaying favourite of mine when I used to run fantasy adventures.  A towering form of flesh, rotting away in the caverns of the Underdeep, again given life by demonic possession.  Often these creatures are the result of necromantic accidents.  The power of death magic if wielded incorrectly can lead to many creatures bonding as one, sometimes this even leads to the unfortunate Necromancer himself adding to the fleshpile.  These creatures then wander the deeps, possessed by demon and necromancer alike and finding other creatures to absorb into its flabby folds.  They have but one mission, to consume.  However, their desire to consume flesh makes them attune to the arcane winds of death and they soon find themselves in the company of another Necromancer who understands their needs and has the power to control them in battle.

The Goblin Plastic Boxed Set

The goblin box set was the original intention of the Kickstarter.  We initially decided to try and release a simple plastic box set of miniatures for roleplayers, wargamers and for us to play our skirmish game Underdeep.  Over the course of a year this small project gained momentum and we decided to publish the rules and finally to add another race to the initial release... The Zombie Abominations.

Today I am going to show you the early concept art for the Goblin Box Set.  We always wanted the set to be multi part and plastic and to be comparable in quality to the other leading manufacturers.  We spent a lot of time trying to develop the goblins into a species that felt familiar but at the same time lacking the grins and big noses of the often stereotypical goblin.

I worked with Grigor, our artist, to develop a face that was full of malice and evil.  We also wanted to link it to caverns and the dark and decided to give it a bat like feel with large ears and a bats snout.  The artwork soon fell into place and we began to design the tribal/clanlike society in which the goblins live.

Below are some of the concept sketches for the goblins of the Goblin Boxed Set.  I have also attached an image of one of the renders used to make the three up models which are in turn used to make the plastic tools to manufacture these miniatures.

The tolling costs are very expensive but it makes collecting these miniatures cheap and allows those wanting to field larger forces the ability to do so.

The boxed set will hold enough pieces to make 24 figures with either a mixture of spears, swords and shields and bows.  The Kickstarter will also give us a two additional command miniatures if the first stretch goal is reached making the boxed set an impressive 26 miniatures.