Wednesday 21 August 2019

D&D Monsters - Into The Sewers

As part of my long term goal of building up a collection of monsters for D&D (and other) roleplaying, I've recently painted some creatures for some encounters that take place in a sewer.
Amongst other nasties, the party have encountered rat swarms, for which I used the rat swarm from Reaper's Bone minis (I believe it was part of their first kickstarter).

Four Reaper rat swarms

And as seen from above

These are nice minis, and there is a surprising amount of detail.  I hadn't realised until I was painting, that the rats are swarming over a skull.  Nice!  The painting was pretty straightforward.  A basecoat/undercoat of VGC Beasty Brown, a highlight dabbed onto each rat body of VGC Leather Brown, then pick out the tails and noses with VMC Dwarf Flesh and paint the skull appropriately.  The whole lot was given a wash of a 50/50 mix of Army Painter Strong and Soft Tone washes, then the base was painted VGC Charcoal Grey.  I did some of the swarms with a few darker coloured rats for variety.

I am tempted to paint up one or two of the WotC pre-painted rat swarms.  These are much bigger, being on a 'Large' base.  I could use the huge swarm and it could split into up to four smaller swarms, dividing hit points between them, and they could join up to form a bigger swarm again, recombining their remaining hit points.

But I wanted something truly impressive for the sewer, and one monster fits the bill.  The Otyugh.
I have a couple of these minis, so I prepared one for repainting, keeping the other to use in case I needed it in a hurry.  Well I got it painted, and it acquitted itself well last session, nearly killing Citronella, the dwarf cleric, before being badly wounded and slinking off to lick it's wounds.  It's also memorable for being the first time the party have really worked well as a team, and they managed to crank out an impressive amount of damage (over 100 points in two rounds).

The original Otyugh with the WotC paint job

My painted Otyugh

The Otyugh wasn't much more complicated to paint, the effect was a series of lighter drybrushes (khaki, bone white) over a basecoat of VGC Earth, followed by a wash of AP 
Strong and Soft Tone wash, then a final drybrush highlight.
Teeth and spikes were picked out, and the creature seems to have patches of some sort.  I initially painted these as bone plates, but didn't like the result, so repainted them a kind of mossy green.  Perhaps something grows on it's body?  Drool was added to the toothy maw with all purpose glue.

I also painted up a group of undead for the later stages of the adventure. 

Firstly a newly painted undead, one of the Reaper translucent bones minis.  All this needed was a green ink wash and the bones painting in, starting with a dark brown then highlighting up to off white. I really like the ghostly effect.



This is a much older mini from the first or second Reaper bones kickstarter.  I painted it last year, but this will be the first time I'll get to use it.  The paint job is similar to the Mantic wraiths I did here.  I'd love to see undead with the armour of this figure using the translucent Bonseium of the first mini.  the ghost pirates in Bones 4 are kind of like that.



If you want to see the tiles I built for the sewers, you can find them here.

EDIT; oopsie, I realise I've already posted the wraith above before.  The pictures here are better though, so I'll keep them in.


2 comments:

  1. Some great minis there, I particularly like the translucent wraith.

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    1. Thanks. I actually have three of them, heroes beware!







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