Why bother with a draft horse miniature?
As with the other horses I have covered, the draft horse is a pretty unlikely Beast to be attacking your party, but it is very likely that they will be using one to help them pull really heavy things, like wagons, or for villagers to use for plowing or other heavy work. This is another miniature that you will probably want, not because it is a likely foe, but because it’s commonly found in the world.
What about this mini?
This pre-painted miniature comes from one of WizKids‘ sets of blind booster boxes (explained here), one of the Pathfinder Battles lines, the Rusty Dragon Inn, Draft Horse #26/45. It looks fine, has a large base like it should, and it does the job. It won’t be winning any painting competitions, but then neither will I, so who am I to complain. I always think to myself that I will repaint these pre-painted blind booster box minis after I finish painting my other minis, but realistically that is never going to happen since my pile of unpainted miniatures is so daunting, so this paint job will have to do.
How useful is this mini, really?
Draft horses are included in 10 published Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition books:
- Acquisitions Incorporated
- Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus
- Curse Of Strahd
- Ghosts Of Saltmarsh
- Monster Manual
- Phandelver And Below: The Shattered Obelisk
- Quests From The Infinite Staircase
- Storm King’s Thunder
- Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
- Xanathar’s Guide To Everything
That’s 1/4 of the published materials, so it’s probably worth getting a draft horse mini, because you’ll be using it at some point. These guys are not likely to be used often for riding, unless you have a PC that is absolutely massive, since they are so much slower than a riding horse or a warhorse, but if you need something crazy heavy to be pulled or carried, this is the horse for you.
But why are you doing this?
As usual for these videos, my aim is to provide you with good views of all angles of the miniatures featured, along with accurate sizing information for them. As I already pointed out, the draft horse miniature is on a large sized base as it is supposed to be. In addition I would like to thank exceptional wildlife artist Sherrie York, a reduction linocut virtuoso, for graciously allowing me to use one of her reduction linocuts, Shivano Sunset, as the backdrop for my miniatures in the video. Check out her other reduction linocuts; she is, in my opinion, the best linocut artist of our generation. If you know a better reduction linocut artist, let me know as I would love to see their work.