We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Brandon Sanderson, the huge bestselling author of the Stormlight Archive and Mistborn series, is involved in two projects related to miniatures. Both of them are very cool, but they are both very different.

Brandon Sanderson and I have been friends for more than 20 years. I was in Brandon’s writing group (along with my brother, Dan Wells) back before any of us were published, somewhere around 2001. He has always had fascinating and fun ideas, and he’s always been brilliant, but it would be surprising to all of us that he blew up into the massive success that he has. (No one would be expected to be such a groundbreaking bestseller as Brandon Sanderson, who recently had the most successful Kickstarter in history, raising $41 million for four books.)

The first major Brandon Sanderson miniatures project is a miniatures video game called Moonbreaker. Brandon did the worldbuilding and character work on the game, and then my brother, Dan Wells, wrote the stories.

Moonbreaker: A Brandon Sanderson Miniatures Game

Moonbreaker is a cool miniatures game for the computer, but I love it for the awesome painting feature. There are a lot of games where you can create a character’s look, choosing their color scheme and features, but Moonbreaker takes this to the next level with a painting feature that actually lets you paint the characters like you’re painting models.

You can choose a certain part of a miniature and change the color–painting it–but it’s far more than that. You can drybrush it with whatever drybrush color you want. You can wash it with whatever wash color you want. You really are painting the miniatures, using the same techniques you’d use on models, except you’re using a mouse instead of a brush.

I’ll be honest. I haven’t played much of the game. But I have painted a bunch of the miniatures. (The game hasn’t been released yet. It will launch with Early Access on September 29th on Steam.

Brandon Sanderson Miniatures Kickstarter

Brandon announced today that he is launching a second Kickstarter campaign, this one for a set of Stormlight Archive miniatures. He is working in partnership with Brotherwise Games, and the Kickstarter will consist of four sets of six miniatures (including fan favorites like Dalinar, Shallan, Syl, Veil, and three different versions of Kaladin–Bridge Four Kaladin, Captain Kaladin, and Shardplate Kaladin.) There is also a massive Chasmfiend, and an even larger statue of Kaladin fighting Szeth.

The miniatures are all 34mm scale, which makes the Chasmfiend a huge 145mm. The statue is 300mm. They’re going to be made from PVC plastic, which I’m not thrilled about, but it’s nothing to lose sleep over. And, as expected, there are a ton of little add-ons and stretch goals (it looks like they partnered with Army Painter to produce a paint starter set).

If you haven’t read Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books, I would highly recommend them. However, be aware that they are LOOONG. If you’re a fantasy person but not sure if you’re ready for a 400,000 word book (that is the first of a long series of 400,000 word books) I would very much recommend Mistborn, which is my favorite Brandon Sanderson book series.