Video Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the Gallant Goblin. I’m Grady Wang and today we’re continuing our coverage of Spelljammer ship scale minis with ATTACKS FROM DEEP SPACE. Oh no, the wormhole is opening! Wait, that’s Deep Space Nine. Anyway, this is another fixed set box of prepainted minis from WizKids—the fifth of six, so we’re in the home stretch now—and thank you to WizKids for sending it to us to review! Unlike most of the previous sets, there’s five minis in this box instead of four, and there’s some pretty cool ones joining the mix. You can go back to our first video in this series, which covered both the Welcome to Wildspace box and my thoughts on ship scale minis for fifth edition, which you can see in the i in the corner of the screen.

But before we dive in, our sponsor Hit Point Press is finally compiling the their biggest, baddest Big Bads together in, not a bestiary, a bosstiary. Yes, the Big Book of Big Bads is a two-volume collection coming to Kickstarter. The first volume is 25 existing Big Bads plus six new bonus ones, each complete with backstory, tactics, minions, and more. The second volume is called Creatures & Curios and will feature over 100 additional monsters and magic items, plus the books present the Big Bad Bureau as an organization you can work for to take down Big Bads, tying together the various boss fights into a longer campaign. Sign up to be notified as soon as the Kickstarter launches at BigBads.com

Let’s start with the ships. First up is the turtle ship, which absolutely would work as a giant sea turtle that you encounter underwater. You could even touch it up with some more colorful paint to fully transform it, or go with the duller paint scheme or use it as a construct. The turtle ship is one of the few spelljamming vessels that can go underwater, as it has sliding panels the crew can close when diving. Its metal shell gives it a high armor class of 19, and the interior is quite large, making for spacious quarters and room for cargo.

Lamprey ships are some of the oldest spelljamming vessels and are the favorites of the psurlon, a race of worm-like aberrations who are frequent allies of mind flayers. It is named for the metal hooks on the front, which resemble a lamprey’s jaws and perform a similar function, allowing the ship to attach itself to an enemy vessel that the crew want to board. Once grappled in such a way, both spelljamming vessels’ speeds drop to 0 feet until the metal jaws release or the lamprey ship is destroyed. And like fish, the ship does not do well on dry ground, often flopping over on its side if the crew tries to land it.

Next is the scorpion ship, which can land on the ground and walk around on its insectile appendages. The claws do not do a lot of damage but can grapple up to a Huge sized creature. Each claw only requires one crew member to operate, so they’re effective for taking enemy heavy hitters out of combat while the other weapons and crew on board mop up the rest of any attackers. Scorpion ships are designed to be warships and serve that purpose well with metal armor that gives it a high AC of 19 as well as a ballista and a mangonel on board to hit individual and siege targets.

Along with our three ships are two monsters your spelljammer might encounter in the Astral Sea. First up is the giant gelatinous cube. There’s no specific new stat block for gelatinous cubes in Boo’s Astral Menagerie, but it provides guidance for converting Monster Manual stat blocks for astral adventuring. That guidance is add a trait so that the creature doesn’t require air. An absolute revelation, I know. A regular gelatinous cube is a large creature with a CR of 2 in the Basic Rules. Dungeon of the Mad Mage introduced a giant version but the only change is that its size is gargantuan. This mini is sized essentially the same as other gelatinous cube minis, but without the removable top to make it engulf minis, and with a huge-sized base instead of large.

Finally, we have the main attraction of the set, the astral dreadnought. It is also on a huge size base, but that tail extends basically the length of another 3-inch base behind it, so you could use it as a gargantuan mini and your players are unlikely to question it, especially when they are too busy trying to keep their characters from being eaten by it. There is, of course, an enormous astral dreadnought that was one of the premium figures for the Spelljammer booster set, and you can see our review of it in the “i” in the corner of the screen. If you don’t want to splurge on that one, this is a completely valid substitution for the same stat block, which has a CR of 21. Its size is on par with ancient dragons from before the big scale creep we’ve seen in recent years, as well as other gargantuan minis.

For the most part, I think whether you get this set is going to depend on whether you want the astral dreadnought. The other minis are fine—the ship minis can be used as creatures or constructs and the gelatinous cube works as a regular gelatinous cube—but none of them are highly desirable minis and you can get gelatinous cubes on the aftermarket which actually let you put minis inside them for about the same or lower price as a fifth the cost of this box. But if you don’t want or can’t afford the really big dreadnought, this is pretty much your alternative.

If you want to get more use out of these minis though, I’ve written up three clockwork sentry stat blocks that you can use for your turtle, scorpion, and lamprey ships which are available for free on our website at gallantgoblin.com. The link should be showing up in the “i” in the corner of the screen, where you can find a blog post that contains a transcript of this video as well as the three medium-sized construct stat blocks you can use for these ship minis when your party is invading a particularly well-defended, or at least monitored, lab or dungeon.

The Attacks from Deep Space box set is available now and has a Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price of $59.99 USD, though you can shop around for sales. 

We have one more box of ship scale minis to cover, Asteroid Encounters, so be sure to hit that subscribe button below if you haven’t already and the bell icon to be notified as soon as the video come out! We also have various playlists of all our mini reviews, official D&D accessory reviews, and more!

Thank you for watching today! If this video was helpful to you, hit that thumbs up button, and don’t forget to check out our sponsor, Hit Point Press’, Big Book of Big Bads Kickstarter, and you can sign up to be notified when it launches at big bads.com

You can also join our Discord using the link in the video description as well as find us on Facebook and Instagram. Until next time, please stay safe, have fun, love each other, and we’ll see you next time at the Gallant Goblin!

Sentry Stat Blocks