More Dungeons and Dragons enemies

My continuing quest to have an extensive collection of painted monsters to cater for (almost) any Dungeons and Dragons occasion...  

Owlbears

I already stuck photos of my first Owlbear in a blog post (HERE), but wanted to include him in a comparison with the second one that I just painted. The first was the standalone Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures one, while the second comes from the Monsters Paint Set (Army Painter / Nolzur's). I think the two models complement each other really well, slight different poses and I wanted to paint the second one with more brown tones on the feathers. The paint sent owlbear has enormous talons on its forepaws and looks a little more feathery down its back and legs, so feels a little more owl-y whereas its counterpart feels a little more bear-y. 

I like them both! 

Both owlbears were painted using Contrast paints to start with, then drybrushed fairly heavily - they each have a lot of sculpted detail that works really well for that sort of technique. 

I can't wait to get the new one on the tabletop. One owlbear has caused the party a great deal of trouble in the past, having two of them charging in should be suitably entertaining! As its only a CR3 monster, the owlbear is a real challenge at the first couple of levels, but by the time the party hits levels 4 and 5 then one just isn't going to cut it. But a pair should be a good fight! 

Hook Horror

Continuing the theme of classic D&D monsters, I painted this Hook Horror (again from Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures). I was particularly keen to get a Hook Horror after listening to the Drizzt Do'Urden novel, Exile, where (SPOILERS!) a pech was turned into a Hook Horror by an evil mage. Drizzt named the beast Clacker and he managed to fight through his Hook Horror instincts to actually help the dark elf ranger in his quest. 

Hook Horrors are classically nasty pieces of work that should cause trouble for a party. I decided to introduce one as a roaming monster in The Lost Mine of Phandelver, as I figured the evil Black Spider would have access to these sort of Underdark monsters and be able to unleash them on the party to stop them thwarting his plans. 

Painting this beast was incredibly simple, just painted with Contrast paints and then the whole thing was washed with Army Painter Dark Tone wash to accentuate the definition of the details and dull it down slightly. Nothing else needed doing really, I liked the effect from just those simple steps. 

Umber Hulk

Again, I have posted this beast before, but I took some better photos of it - I think my photography skills have improved, plus I really like these little collages to show the different angles of the models, so here he is again! A bit of an unconventional paint scheme on it, but I like the pale shell. 

Ankhegs

I've loved Ankhegs since playing Baldur's Gate on PC and roaming around a farm, slaughtering the bugs to get enough of their carapaces to outfit my party with Ankheg plate armour! Of course, that was after getting surprised by them popping out of the ground and wiping my guys out with their acid attacks when I didn't know what to expect from them... Anyway, Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures again supply some nice Ankheg models and I got two, painting them up very quickly with some Contrast paints. 

I then got some gribbly slugs from Heresy Miniatures - great little monsters. These can stand in for so many different things, but I figured that if I painted them green then they could be Ankheg larvae in the first instance. I've seen some unofficial rules for young Ankhegs, but equally they could use stats for Giant Centipedes or something. Whatever I use, I like the idea of having a bunch of larvae being protected by two adult Ankhegs, I think that could provide a good scenario for some adventurers to deal with. 

These were painted very, very quickly with contrast paints. I wasn't 100% decided on what shade of green to use, so I messed about with them a little bit - I like the variation. A couple of them have a yellow Contrast over the green, which gives an interesting sickly brownish colour that I think works well. 

Big Boris

Big Boris is a bit of a poster boy for Heresy Miniatures. I have a couple of other versions of him waiting to be assembled and painted, but this hulking dude with the massive axe deserved to be put on a skull-covered pedestal and painted up! I have no idea what I'm going to use him as at the moment, but it will definitely be cool when he does stride onto the tabletop! 

Fomorian Crusher

This is a great model from Games Workshop for Warcry. I think that game has provided them with a lot of scope to make some interesting standalone models, without worrying about how they fit into a larger army. Of course, this brute takes cues from the old cyclopean Fimir (I have two of them, awfully painted, upstairs!), and the Forge World Fimirach. The name is almost the same as the Fomorians in D&D, but aside from him having one eye he looks fairly distinct from them. As soon as I saw him, I knew I wanted to get hold of him. A great model, with a huge amount of potential uses. I haven't played Warcry as much as I would like to, but this model could proxy for a bunch of stuff in multiple games. 

I decided to go kind of weird with the paint scheme, with the dark purple skin and light hair colour. I was really pleased with it, and yet again it was a chance to use Contrast paints as much as possible to speed things up. I think he works. I particularly like the pauldron on his shoulder where I used the new Cryptek Armourshade Gloss paint from GW - that really is a nice pot of paint, giving an instant effect of ancient, burnished metal. I've used it in a few places. It reminds me of good old Tin Bitz (loved that paint), but with a better sheen to it and a nicer finish. 

Anyway, I'm using this Crusher as a stand-in for a Hill Giant that will be hiding out in a crypt to surprise the players tomorrow night so we'll see how they enjoy that! I could have used a more regular giant model (I have a few to pick from), but I've used them in Age of Sigmar a lot recently and I really wanted to get this model on the tabletop. However, I figured chucking a Fomorian at a level 4 party would be a bit overly tough, particularly as the current quest is supposed to be just a little diversion and they have a couple of other things to deal with during the session as well... still, I'm sure there'll be plenty of moaning about how many HP the giant has anyway!  

*Edit* they actually dealt with the giant quite efficiently, now that the paladin has finally learned how to use his Divine Smite to do some serious damage! The giant did do a lot of damage to a couple of them, but no lasting injuries, so all ended well. 

Ogroid Myrmidon

Another Warcry model that I thought was fantastic as soon as I saw it. A mix of ogre, minotaur and daemon as far as I could tell, with a healthy dose of Ancient Greek about the spear and shield... He was much bigger than I expected when he turned up, but he does look great.

I painted him at the same time as the Fomoroid and decided to sort of reverse the palette a little, going for lighter flesh and darker hair. Again, almost entirely Contrast paints, but very effective I think. And I couldn't resist using Cryptek Armourshade again on his shield - gives it such a nice finish. I have yet to use him in a game yet, but I can well imagine some pit fighting scenario where he stomps out on his cloven hooves to take no prisoners. 

I can see a lot of conversion potential for this guy in particular if I end up getting another one at some point - after clearing a lot more of my unpainted models first! 

I See You!

 In my efforts to continue to expand my menagerie of monsters for games like Frostgrave and D&D, I painted these Beholders a while ago - just got round to photographing them nicely while I was doing a few extra shots for the D&D campaign. 

Beholders are a classic D&D enemy, so I knew I needed at least one. I ordered the Nolzur's version, but wasn't sure how good it was going to be based on the pictures online, so I also ordered the Gale Force 9 Xanathar model. When they both turned up, I wasn't disappointed by either of them - they are both great models with some lovely details and strong character. Now I just need to get the party up to a high enough level that they can take two of them on at once - it may be a while!!! 😅

I decided I didn't want to use the flying bases for either of them. I've sort of gone off the clear plastic flying bases - they can be a pain when assembling a model, as you don't want to hit them with spray undercoat, but then they can also go frosty when using matt varnish spray when they're painted. And, at the end of the day, you can still see them either way. So I used a couple of Warhammer 40mm Hero Bases, attached to 50mm lipped bases to give them a more stable footprint (though the Xanathar needed some extra pennies under the base to add weight for a bit more stability as well). Getting the flying base off the Nolzur's nodel was a bit of a pain as it was pre-attached and quite thick, but it came off eventually. 

I'm really happy with the finished result. I wanted the bases to be a bit different to my normal grey dungeon bases, representing some ancient sandstone architecture, which gives a good contrast to the models without distracting from them. They appear to be floating just in front of these bits of stone, which was exactly what I wanted so that worked well. I think each of them needed a couple of pins to get them securely attached, but now they're rock solid. 

In terms of painting, I went for contrast paints followed up by some drybrushing. The contrast blue didn't work so well on Xanathar so he needed some extra layers. Overall, very pleased with both models and look forward to using them at some point.

As a bonus, these are a few of the earliest D&D enemies I painted up for the campaign we were playing a long time ago (when I was first introduced to the game as a young, inexperienced Half-Orc!). The spiders are classic old Games Workshop spiders that I had in my bits box for years, and work perfectly on those small bases. The crabs and cave fishers were both from Antediluvian Miniatures, who make some great stuff (I'll be putting up photos of some of their dinosaurs at some point). 

These were just generic creepy crawlies for dungeons, painted nice and quickly with basic colours and heavy washing, but they do the job perfectly. I wanted to add a fair bit of rockiness to the bases to give a sense of them crawling over objects to get at the adventurers, plus add some variation to the models, which I think worked out well, seems like even the monopose spiders are swarming along a dungeon floor to get you!  

Something gribbly this way comes

As part of my whole plan to get more of my vast collection of plastic painted in a short timeframe, I got a few interesting monsters painted up ready for use in D&D or Frostgrave (or anything else really...) 

These were just some fairly random monsters that I'd bought over time with the expectation that they would be useful at some point - I expect a few of them will be turning up in my current D&D campaign (don't tell the players!) 

Hydra

First up is the Hydra from Reaper Bones. I had been wanting to paint up a Hydra for a while but struggled to decide which one to get... I backed a kickstarter with a wonderful Hydra model in it (to be in a future post), but until that one turned up I decided to grab this beast and give it a go. As with all the Reaper Bones stuff, it was cheap as chips (less than 20 quid for a huge model), and surprisingly well detailed. The soft Bones plastic makes less of a difference with this larger model where the pieces are thicker. Overall, great model. 

I decided this hydra would be green, with the next one being something slightly different. Painted with Contrast paints, undercoated black and then Grey Seer, the underside was painted with Skeleton Horde while the main body was painted Militarum Green. The thing I particularly liked was the effect on the spines and top scales. I painted the spines in Iron Warrior to make them metallic (it is a magical beast after all), and then used Cryptek Armourshade Gloss over those silver spines and the green scales immediately underneath. I think that gave a really interesting transition from the green scales up to the spines, make the top of the beast look heavily armoured, and was quick and effective to do. The only thing I forgot before taking the photo was pupils in the eyes!  

Owlbear

The Owlbear feels like one of those classic D&D monsters that you have to fight one day! This one is from Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures and is a great model with a load of character and nice detailing. Again, it was all primarily Contrast paints and I knew I wanted a nice pale owl breast, dark brown bear fur and dark blue feathers on top. After using Leviadon Blue on the feathers, my wife convinced me that they needed to be a bit more blue, so a couple of lighter drybrushes made them stand out a bit more. I was happy that the blue shows a bit of sheen but isn't dramatically contrasting with the brown fur. 

Umber Hulk

Another classic D&D monster from the Nolzur's range. I feel like I might need to get some more of these in the future once I find some good alternative poses - I have good memories of fighting a group of these in an underground section of one of the Baldur's Gate games, so I think just one won't be enough. But it's a start! 

I wanted this one to be interesting and didn't just want to make it brown all over, so my wife (she's a good painting adviser!) suggested doing the shell like a pale crab. I was really pleased with how it came out, with the fleshy bits underneath looking nice and warm with the dirty, pockmarked shell on top. I'm looking forward to getting some other Umber Hulks in the future.   

Purple Worm

Purple Worms are great D&D monsters and are the basis for one of the Frostgrave scenarios. This particular model is a Devouring Eel from Wyrd Miniatures game, The Other Side (I've played Malifaux in the past but not this newer game). The models are really nice, but for some reason the plastic used on these Other Side miniatures is the softer kind, not the same as the hard plastic Malifaux models - but they come all in one piece. Maybe it's to make it easier for beginners? Anyway, I do find the soft plastic trend annoying, but this model does look great, and once I stuck it down the base and glue some of the curling bits of the body together it was much more stable. I did have to put a couple of pennies uncer the base to keep it from tipping over, but that's largely because I didn't want to use a bigger base for it. 

This was a nice quick paint job and I decided to go a bit weird and contrasting with the blue spikes / teeth and green tongue - this was purely so they would stand out against the colours I had painted the body, but I think they were really nicely and highlight the unusual nature of the beast. 

I've got a number of other beasts that I've painted or are waiting to be painted - my goal is to have a big box full of all sorts of monsters so that most scenarios in a D&D game can be catered for with the right model, or at least a close approximation. 

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