You must NEVER bring a Bugbear home for tea!

Bugbears are one of those iconic D&D monsters that I've always been intrigued by but never had any models for... until recently! I had some incentive to hurry up and get these guys done for the D&D campaign I just started running, as it is moving into the Lost Mines of Phandelver and there is a requirement for Bugbears...

Both the Reaper Bones and Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures ranges have some great characterful offerings, but with slightly different styles - the Reaper ones being somewhat more stocky and muscled, and the Nolzur Bugbears being taller and leaner. I struggled to decide between the two so got both styles, and actually I think they work pretty well together, particularly when painted in similar styles. 

I have a number of models from both ranges, and find them both to be very cost effective and work well on the tabletop with some surprisingly good detail and plenty of character. The only bugbear (pun intended) I have with both ranges is that the plastic is pretty soft - something that seems to be the case with a number of model ranges these days. Reaper Bones is more flexible overall than the Nolzur plastic, something that can be worked around, but thin weapons in particular are a bit of a problem for both of them. So I first started off by replacing some of the problem weapons on these Bugbears, drilling the hands out and pinning some weapons from Games Workshop 'Ardboyz (Black Orcs to old greenskins like me!). 

I also stuck an old Empire shield on one of the Nolzur models, I thought the size and design suited him perfectly. 

With some of these type of models with moulded bases I try to remove the base before sticking them down, but with these guys I decided I would sort it out with gravel and sand later. As the Nolzur bases are a little thicker, that accentuates their height compared with the Reaper boys, but I figured that was OK. 

When it came to painting, I wanted to keep them nice and simple - they are there to represent bad guys to be cut down by the heroes, so just need to look mean. If the heroes are doing their jobs properly then they shouldn't be on the table long anyway! I also wanted to keep true to my current mantra when it comes to painting - getting things done to an acceptable standard for gaming without spending a huge amount of time. I have a massive backlog of models for all sorts of gaming systems, because my willpower is terrible when it comes to buying plastic, and with a young family I have plenty of other things on my plate. I like playing with painted models if I can, so I am always trying to maximise my painting time by doing things efficiently and keeping it simple but effective. For some models, that means base coats and then Army Painter wash over the top (minimal highlighting), for some models recently I have been making good use of the Games Workshop Contrast paints. I focused on the Contrast method for the Bugbears.

The first thing I wanted to get right was the skin tone. I undercoated the models in black then used Grey Seer over the top, mostly angled from above to encourage some easy shading. I knew I was aiming for the yellowish colour I have seen in the artwork, but wanted an easy way to make the fur stand out a little without it looking boring and brown. I settled on using Darkoath Flesh on the furry bits, then Nazdreg Yellow over all the skin and fur together. Over the Grey Seer, I thought this came out really well and gave just the right sort of tone I was after.

I then decided to keep the rest of the models fairly uniform. All of the armour was done with Iron Warrior (later shaded heavily with Nuln Oil), and leather straps with Gore Grunta Fur. Blood Angels Red was used for the loincloths and armour trim, and a few other details, while Skeleton Horde did for bandages. The furry trim round the armour was painted with Baneblade Brown - not a Contrast paint, but it got washed with the Nuln Oil when that went on, which gave it a nice dirty fur appearance. Wooden shields were painted with Black Templar and the little details of eyes, teeth, tongues etc. were all filled in. A nice little touch was using the new Cryptek Armourshade Gloss on the round shield and a couple of axe details - I really like that paint, it turns the gunmetal silver into some awesome shiny dark bronze-like colour, it's great! Bases were painted with Basilicanum Grey and then Middenland Tufts stuck on the top, and the bases edged with a couple of thin coats of Abaddon Black. Munitorum Spray varnish over the top and they were done! 

The three Reaper Bugbears, the one in the centre counting as a warchief for the whole lot

Four Nolzur's Bugbears. I was very pleased with the weapon swaps making the two in the middle a bit more individual

The full Bugbear Warband. I'm happy with the different shapes and sizes of the models - it could either be used to denote different types of Bugbear in-game or just add variety to them

Wolfie Bonus!!

In addition to the Bugbears, I needed some wolves for the Goblin Cave in the Lost Mine of Phandelver story. I had bought some Corrupted Hounds by Wyrd Games for Malifaux a while ago with this sort of thing in mind - they are great looking models, though clearly unnatural with all the spines! I love the aesthetic of a lot of the Malifaux stuff and used to play it in 2nd Edition (it was popular in a previous gaming group), so I keep an eye on their stuff as I'll either get back into it at some point or be able to use their minis as proxies, as in this case. Malifaux plastics are great quality, not soft plastic at all, but the only issue here is how fiddly and delicate they are because they are so detailed. 

I went super simple on these, very quickly painted them in a short evening session with a couple of contrast colours. Like the Bugbears, I made the more furry bits slightly darker. I painted all four in the same way, and for the two darker coloured hounds I just covered them in Seraphim Sepia. I quite like having the two different colours. It's certainly not my best work but they were painted the night before the D&D session and did their job in the game, so they'll do! 

Bugbear Chief directing his hounds