Lego D&D Minifigure Series Review

When many Dungeons & Dragons fans, such as myself, first heard about the Lego D&D Minifigure Series, many rejoiced over the perfect combination of properties. Some thought that such themes would go together just as well as milk and cookies, ice cream and Summer, Lego bricks and well, other bricks! Now they are out and people have spent some time with the minifigures, some are curious to find out if the minifigure series is just as good as it was hoped to be.

To start things off, the D&D Minifigure set consists of twelve detailed minifigures, five of which have multiple head options for the choice of a masculine or feminine character. Each comes with double sided face prints for happy and alert facial features, to help players quickly change up from their characters being calm and natural into their battle faces. The print quality overall is really well done, there are hardly any miss print details on the minifigures and some noteworthy prints are the sparkling makeup details around the eyes of the feminine head for the Elf Bard. The part quality is impressive for Lego with some sets in the series coming with additional smaller pieces in the event of losing any during the building process. Many of these minifigures represent character classes and species depicted in the D&D franchise with an attention to detail, such as the Tiefling Sorcerer where its hair piece has horns moulded into it and given an extra torso piece to show off its tail. These additions really help to show off the unique traits of the characters for players and fans of D&D alike, especially since all of the torso and leg options that the minifigures come with have their hands, feet and any other features that could reveal the skin of the character are covered to allow for any minifigure head piece to be switched with the other minifigures in the series for player customisation. The added printing of cobblestone pathing on the bases of each of these minifigures also helps to add into the theming of the set to fit in in the tabletop as character minifigures adventuring around dungeons, villages and castles.

Now it can be perceived, by the number of customisations and the presentation of the minifigures, that the intended use of the minifigures in this series is as actual minifigures in the game Dungeons & Dragons. Fortunately, my group and I have been able to get a few games in person done with these minifigures as our characters to test if they could replace actual official tabletop minifigures. The Lego minifigures themselves are slightly bulkier than the average D&D minifigure, but still fit in with the scale of the other minis on the table, the ability to change the poses meant some players were free to animate their minifigures to fit with the situation; if a player character was frightened, then it would crouch down in fear or if a player character was about to dash, they would position the legs to look as if it was running. However, this was where the limitation of the product started to show; although the minifigures could change poses and many players customised their minifigures with extra lego builds to bring across their character, but in the end they are not as customisable as some minifigures from services designed for D&D players. Another negative was that the bases the lego minifigures were placed on were oddly shaped to standard playmats, with the rectangle shape of the base it both crosses over the sidelines of the grid and fit just too small within the back and front lines.

Outside of the player character minifigures, there are a selection of significant Non Player Character (NPC) minifigures in the set ranging from across the many fan favourite campaigns produced by Dungeons & Dragons. The NPCs in this series are mostly named characters, such as the Lawful Evil vampire lord Strahd and the Chaotic Neutral tasha the Witch, but with only one option for a generic monster or villian with the Mindflayer and its pet Intellect Devourer. As a positive, it is an affordable and detailed way of getting your hands on characters you want to include in your games or if there is a specific campaign, such as The Curse of Strahd, that you want to use an officially styled Lego version of. However, this really is annoying from a Game Master’s perspective as if you look for specific minifigures or try to reuse & repurpose them for generic characters, it will not be as effective as custom minifigures from dedicated services. The Lego style of minifigures are also much more family friendly and not as intense as some of the officially licensed minifigures that provide a variety of theming and designs that can fit a range of tabletop games and settings.

In conclusion, this is a fantastically designed Lego Minifigure Series that should be collected by all fans of Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop games alike. It is another great series of Lego Minifigures to collect as many do from the Lego Minifigure Series’ across the years. The flexibility of customisation for players and the ability to change the poses of the characters from encounter to encounter is great and boosts the interactiveness of the game for players across the tabletop. For Game Masters, the minifigures provide an easy way to collect important NPC’s and to expand their collection of minifigures to use on the table. However, there is still room to improve upon with possible future releases by having minifigures represent more of the generic and famous monsters & villains of the settings, allowing for better replayability and draw for the series overall.