Urban encounters are where a lot of campaigns actually live — back-alley ambushes, dockside brawls, cult activity in the wrong part of town — and they need a genuinely mixed bag of miniatures to feel real rather than staged. This week's five picks cover everything from a heavy street-level threat to chaotic civilian interference, which means a GM can pull from this list across multiple sessions without repeating the same beat. All five arrive as physical resin models in plain unpainted grey, ready to prime and paint the moment they land on your doorstep. Have a browse through our urban encounter miniatures collection if you want to see what else we've got stocked alongside these.
Orc Spearmen
A squad of orc spearmen is a brilliant option when you need a credible street-level threat — the kind of organised muscle that a crime boss, a warlord's advance party, or a gate-crashing raiding force would actually field. Duncan Shadows sculpts these with the sort of military cohesion that reads as a unit rather than a random mob, which matters when you're placing them on a city map. Grab the Orc Squad Set 4 if you want opposition that your players will treat seriously rather than roll their eyes at. They ship in plain grey resin, unpainted, so you can uniform them up in whatever faction colours suit your setting.
Pirate Cannoneers
Dock districts and harbour-side encounters genuinely benefit from having the right kind of rough, seafaring muscle on the table, and this Cast n Play set delivers exactly that. Cannoneers work brilliantly as mid-combat artillery support — position them behind cover on a warehouse rooftop or a moored vessel and let your players figure out the threat before they're in range. The Pirate Cannoneers set is a solid pick for any GM running a port city campaign arc. As always, these arrive in plain unpainted grey resin, ready for your brush.
Cat Swarm
This one might seem like an odd inclusion but hear us out — a cat swarm is one of the most useful pieces of chaos you can drop into an urban encounter. Whether it's a familiar gone rogue, a conjured distraction, or just the genuinely cursed alleyways of a city that's home to too many strays, it adds texture to a scene in a way that a generic monster token never could. The Cat Swarm from Epic Miniatures is a brilliant way to introduce environmental unpredictability without derailing your whole session. It arrives in plain grey resin, unpainted, which means you've got free rein on how sinister — or adorable — you want these to look.
Pirate Cook & Swabbers
Not every urban encounter needs to be a fight, and this is where the Pirate Cook & Swabbers set earns its place on the list — it's genuinely useful for encounters built around a tavern, a ship's mess, or a dockside market where things are about to go sideways. The cook makes for a brilliant reluctant combatant or bystander NPC, and the swabbers add low-threat bodies that bulk out a scene without demanding your players treat them like a boss fight. Pick up the Cook & Swabbers set if your campaign spends any time around harbour or working-class city districts. They land on your doorstep in plain unpainted grey resin, supports already removed.
Scarlet Monastery Bundle
If your urban campaign has a darker undercurrent — a hidden cult, a corrupted institution, something the city authorities would rather not acknowledge — this bundle from my3dprintforge is a genuinely strong centrepiece for that arc. It's the kind of set that works as a self-contained encounter location's worth of miniatures, giving a GM enough variety to run multiple scenes without needing to pad it out. The Scarlet Monastery Bundle is a brilliant choice if you want a ready-made roster for a city's secret underbelly. Everything in the bundle ships in plain grey resin, unpainted, so the full horror of whatever's lurking in there is entirely in your hands.
Urban sessions are some of our favourite games to build encounters for — there's something satisfying about a city that pushes back. If any of these five end up on your table, we'd genuinely love to hear how you used them — drop us a message or let us know in the comments below.