Last year in more normal times Northumbrian Tin Soldier ran a Kickstarter for the totally reasonable idea of creating a set of cat people to replace the classes of  D&D 5th edition. Thus was born the Curious Case of the Cats of Crumptown. Now this majestic collection of feline fighters is finally available for all your tabletop needs.

Cats of Crumpton // A Warlock, A Bard, And A Paladin Walk Into a Bar

The Cats of Crumptown are or were domestic cats but through prolonged contact with the arcane magicks of the Darkewood, they have become sentient and achieved human levels of intellect. These curious kitties live in the port of Crumptown near to the Darkewood and the Realm of the Nightfolk.

The collection contains all twelve of the classes for dungeons and dragons and are cast up in metal for 28mm gaming, so even though they're made for D&D they could easily be worked into games of Burrows and Badgers or other fantasy games. Finally seeing the full collection painted really brings out the quality of the sculpts and just how fantastically characterful they are.

The Kittenguard // Northumbrian Tin Soldier

The hero classes are not alone in being released upon the forests of the Darkewood, there are also twelve Kittenguard Knights. Split into four sets of three, the Kittenguard represent four knightly orders with a distinctly feline feel. The cats are members of the Orders of The Feather, The Fish, The Bowl and The Box.

They have a similar style armour so if you want you can paint them as individual Orders, or give them a coherent feel across the miniatures. There are some beautiful touches from the brass ball of wool on top of a staff, like a Roman hastile, to fish skeletons, or bells on their collars, they really have a cute cum quirky design to them.

If you want to lean into the cat motif there is even a set of treasure tokens to use as objective markers in your games, or just have as scatter terrain on your table.

The cats are not the only new creatures to come from the Darkewood, if you're after some villains to oppose your fantastic feline fighters there are a couple of additional packs you can pick up.

A Murder Of Crows // Nightfolk

The Murder of Crows is another in Northumbrian's ever-increasing range of dark fantasy Nightfolk. These blaggards are lead by the Cawwlock from deep inside the Darkewood and can be used as antagonists for your cats or equally as a party of feathered characters instead.

Despite being crows, I can't help but feel that the skull wielded knife bird is probably a Raven called Quoth, although that may be the Pratchett fan in me. My favourite has to be the heavy hitter, in three-quarter plate that looks like it would have to be bolted into its wildly impractical armour every time, and I love it, it reminds me of old school comic drawings from my y0uth from something like Oink!

The Lamplighter

If you still think your players may need some help then the Lamplighter  is one of the most dangerous and skilled professions in Crumptown. The town is protected from Nightfolk and other denizens of the Darkewood by the light of many glowing and flickering candles and lanterns, set on the very edges of the shambling streets and alleyways.

Heavily laden with candles flint and tinder the lamplighter makes his way from lamp to lamp, candle to candle, his nightly race to light the shadows before the oncoming gloom allows the Nightfolk to walk abroad. He has an old school rat catcher look with a hat covered in candles but I suppose in a town filled with nothing but cats having a rat problem is probably very unlikely.

It's marvellous to see these miniatures hitting retail as I'm sure the Kickstarter was missed by many people so now everyone has the chance to pick up these darling figures. What do you think of the Cats of Crumpton, will you be making a furry Frostgrave warband, or sending your players into a dungeon to follow a ball of string anytime soon?

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