Focus on a D&D 5E mini: raven

Why bother with a raven miniature?

There are lots of reason why you would want to have a raven mini. Ravens are cool, for one. Ravens give a horror campaign a gothic feel, as well. Ravens are really common animals, so it is a great Beast for a druid wild shape that won’t trigger suspicion when trying to move unnoticed. Ravens are also one of the few Beasts which can speak in common. They are very smart, for an animal. Any story with a wereraven will want one of these minis as well. Perhaps most importantly, the designers at Wizards of the Coast quite like them, as they keep putting them into their books, requiring people playing their campaigns to have raven miniatures.

What about this mini?

This metal miniature, like the ochre jelly baby, the cat, the weasel, the toad, the pixie, the sprite, the giant boar, the giant weasel, the giant riding lizard, the violet fungus, and the hezrou miniatures, is a bit problematic. This unpainted metal miniature is from Otherworld Miniatures, a company which I have bought many minis from over the years. It has very recently closed as a result of the owner’s retirement, so their minis are no longer available for purchase directly from them. However, it’s closed so recently that Otherworld Miniature products are still available in retail shops and on the internet. As a result, I’m putting a number of videos of their miniatures up now so if you like their mini(s), you can scout around for them before they are all gone. Supposedly, they were going to sell their molds to another company, but nothing has been heard on that for months, so it’s anyone’s guess who has the molds or if anyone will be making more of their minis at this point. If you want one of their minis, this is probably the time to look for them, in case they are not available in future. I have quite a few of their miniatures, because I really like them. This particular one is part of the pack Lesser familiars #FS15a and also includes the cat, the toad, and the weasel that I have also featured. All of the minis in this pack were sculpted by Stephen May, and are as beautiful as we have come to expect from his miniatures. This raven miniature fits well on a base size of tiny, as ravens are supposed to.

UPDATE: Fenris Games got about 100 of the miniatures from Otherworld Games, and Crooked Dice also got some of their miniatures, so if you are looking for any of their minis, keep an eye on their websites as they add the new (to them) models, which is great news!

I would love to claim that I have painted this miniature to look like a particular species, but let’s get real: it’s a teeny tiny mini and most crows and ravens are black, just like this one has been painted by me. That said, I do love ravens. I remember fondly my time studying American dippers (Cinclus mexicanus) in the creeks in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and watching ravens go about their business, making those eerie croaks in the mist covered forest mornings.

We have no ravens here in New Zealand (introduced rooks (Corvus frugilegus) are the closest that we have) but before people arrived in New Zealand and drove them to extinction, we had an endemic raven species, the New Zealand raven (Corvus moriorum), which was the 4th or 5th largest passerine in the world at the time. As with so many other animals, we finished them all off, sadly. But I digress. This miniature makes me happy because it is scaled the way it should be, and I liked this mini because it isn’t a raven sitting on a gravestone like you so often see.

How useful is this mini, really?

Ravens are included in 10 published Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition books:

That is nearly a quarter of the official books- that alone makes it worth getting a raven miniature, as you will clearly be bumping into them regularly. When you add in the fact that they are also familiars, are a popular wild shape, are a popular pet, are a popular window dressing species around graveyards, battle sites, and gothic settings, and that any story with wereravens will also require them, it is well worth picking one up.

But why are you doing this?

As usual for these videos, my aim is to provide good views and sizing information for miniatures so you can purchase knowing whether it is what you want. As I already mentioned, the raven’s size is tiny, as it is meant to be, so that works. Also, I want to thank wildlife artist Sherrie York, leading reduction linocut artist, for graciously allowing me to use one of her pieces, Shivano Sunset, as the backdrop for the minis.