Epic Encounters: ‘Savannah of the Gnoll Pack’ – These Aren’t Your Regular Gnolls
Steamforged Games is back with a new batch of Epic Encounters and this one brings the Gnolls out to play in the savannah.
I don’t think it’s a surprise that I’m a fan of Steamforged Games and their Epic Encounters. These boxes are fantastic additions to any campaign and doubly so if you’re looking for great minis for classic monsters. Today, I’ve got the Savannah of the Gnoll Pack box to check out and it’s packed full of those infamous dog-men and ways to use them in your role playing games. Also, not-so-spoilery spoiler, I’ve also got the next leg of the adventure and will be covering that later as well.
What’s In The Box? Gnolls. Lots of Gnolls.
Inside the box you’ve got 18 various Gnoll miniatures that range from 6 different sculpts. There’s the double-sided play mat that has 1″ squares already printed on it. And there’s the SUPER handy Adventure Booklet. This is the GM timesaver and for me it’s the hidden gem in the box. Sure, you could always write up your own reasons and campaign plot points for why you’re throwing these awesome Gnolls at your players…or you can just pick and choose the goodies from in this booklet.
It’s got an entire adventure in there with scalable DCs for checks, monster stats, plot hooks, and more. And it’s all setup in a way that any GM can use in a nice, concise booklet. It’s maybe not as detailed as a some other hardcover adventure books, but you’re also not paying for full hardcover price for just the adventure. Let’s get to the good stuff now: The Miniatures!
As mentioned you get 18 different miniatures across 6 different sculpts. They are listed as follows — starting from the top:
- 4x Gnoll Ferals
- 4x Gnoll Seekers
- 4x Gnoll Reavers
- 2x Gnoll Strigas
- 1x Gnoll Fang
- 3x Gnoll Hyenas
Again, all of these various Gnolls have their own unique rules in the booklet. You could use other rules from another source but these are all designed to work with the 5th Edition rules as is. You can do a bunch more legwork if you want to — and by all means, make them part of your story. But these make excellent backbones to build off of if you’re in a pinch. And the models look great on the tabletop right out of the box.
Gnoll Fang and Gnoll Hyena
The Gnoll Fang is kind of like the “Big Bad” or Gnoll Chief character. I really like the sculpt on that one and he could be a fun antagonist for this adventure. I also like the Gnoll Hyenas as it’s kinda funny that they are named that. Gnolls are described as dog-men or hyena-like so it fits.
Gnoll Feral and Gnoll Seeker
The Feral and Seeker are more akin to goons in the pack. You get four of each and they are great for harassing your party from afar and up close in a fight.
Gnoll Reaver and Gnoll Striga
The Reavers are a bit tougher and will be more of a challenge in a fight where as the Strigas can be airborne assailants and/or magical threats. Depending on how you want to run them in your games, of course. Again, the great thing about the stat blocks for these monsters in the booklet is that you can tweak them based on the party level and they scale well enough. Plus, these Gnolls are probably going to be very different than Gnolls you might have thrown at your party in the past. There’s a few curveballs you can throw at veteran adventurers and their players, too.
I really can’t recommend these Epic Encounter boxed sets enough. I was actually going to go out and pick these up myself. Fortunately for me, Steamforged Games beat me to the punch and sent us review copies. I can’t wait to show off the follow up to this one. It puts the EPIC into Epic Encounters…
These aren’t your Regular Gnolls…
