Bonus review: dwarf miniature, Wind Rose concert merch

brothers of the mine, rejoice!

Hello, pen friends! Welcome to a short bonus review (category: not a pen), based on the premise that you likely fall somewhere on this Venn diagram:

This blog is generally in the pens/metal slice with tabletop-and-fantasy stuff sympathies; today’s review is squarely in the metal/tabletop-and-fantasy slice.

We are reviewing this thing:

This is a miniature of a singing dwarf that I bought at the merch table for Italian metal band Wind Rose, and I wanted to tell you about it while their North American tour was still going so you can get your own.

(And yes, I know: many of you are European. Feel free to take your excellent and safe public transportation to see Wind Rose whenever you want. They play Europe all the time; they just started coming to North America last year. LET US HAVE THIS.)

If you are unfamiliar with Wind Rose: I am sorry. I first went on about Wind Rose at great length in this review of a Ryan Krusac pen; known as “the dwarves of heavy metal,” they have built a pretty long career out of writing songs from the perspective of Tolkien’s dwarves.

They blew up in recent years after covering a song about Minecraft entitled Diggy Diggy Hole; here is a video I took of them kicking off Diggy Diggy Hole last week:

The entire set was like this. 10/10 mugs full of mead.

But enough context: on with the review.

I’d already picked up a shirt on Wind Rose’s last tour, so when I saw Wind Rose was selling “miniatures” at their merch table—and after I waited for the absurdly long line to die down—I went and snagged one of these. It cost $30 and is made by Artisan Guild Miniatures.

It is made of grey resin with a really nice texture, and the parts come separated so you do not have to clip or sand any of them.

Parts? Yes. Because it comes with options for the head and hands.

You can choose between Head (Regular) and Head (Helmet), as well as whether you want the dwarf to be singing into a horn thing or a microphone.

i chose ‘microphone’ and ‘helmet’

All of these parts are ball-jointed, so you can pivot them to any position that you like. You can use a drop of superglue to lock everything in place once you’re happy.

The amount of detail is kind of wild, enough that my wife repeatedly commented that it was much nicer than she expected when I was putting it together.

The detail is really impressive when you consider this is a bit smaller than a Lego Minifigure; here it is with its new battle companion for a size reference.

In conclusion: I’m always intrigued-but-cautious when bands branch out from the classic t-shirt/vinyl merch options. That is, shirts and vinyl can get old, but bands and labels have generally figured out how to do those things well—totally new types of merchandise, on the other hand, can suffer from quality problems (“cool idea, bad execution”).

I’m happy to say this miniature threads the needle—it’s way better than what I expected to get, and I wish more bands in this genre made these. Strong recommend if you find yourself at a Wind Rose show this tour.