D&D miniatures re-paints - part 3 Drow

Right this is the last batch of my recent painting sessions this time the Drow evil elves of the underdark worshippers of the spider queen Lloth. Ever since reading the Drizzt novels I've been fond of Drow. Sadly cool as they are Drow aren't much fun to paint. The monster manual description is black skin, black clothes, black equipment eerrrr white hair doesn't give you much to work with on the painting front anyway...

... From top to bottom we have.

1) Drow preistess of Lloth

2) Yochlol demon - Handmaidens of Lloth

3) Dinn Do'urden Drider - Driders are what you get when a Drow upsets the godess Lloth half gaint spider half dark elf. This particular Drider is supposed to be Drizzt's brother Dinn although in the novels Dinn fights with two axes and not a sword.

4) Drow wizard

5) Draegloth - apparently this is what you get when a Glabrezu Deamon and a Drow preistess get it on.

6) Drow warriors

next up (when they're painted) more Drow, some Orcs and some adventurers

Cheers Jon

D&D miniatures part 2 - Devils and Demons

A few more D&D re-paints this time various denizens of the lower planes. From top to bottom we have

1) Barghast - nasty creatures that can be giant blue goblins or big canine creatures

2) Chaos creature - large lump of constantly mutating flesh

3) Rage Demon - can't find a description in my monster manuals so I'm going to use it as a hordling from the plane of Gray wastes

4) Spined devil - again I can't find a description so another (rather horrible) miniature to use as a hordling

5) Yugoloths - two Mezzoloths (insect like) yugoloth footsoldiers and a guardian yugoloth.

Next up Drow

Cheers Jon

More D&D miniatures part 1 - Random Monsters

I've been slowly painting up D&D miniatures both from the Legend of Drizzt game and from a big job lot of random miniatures I picked up cheap on ebay. I spent last night photographing the last few weeks work and to night up posting up various random monsters. So from top to bottom

1) Infernal armour - I couldn't find this model in my AD&D second edition Monsters manual but I figure it would make a very acceptable Iron Golem or Helmed Horror.

2) Blue spawn ambusher - I had no idea what this was a quick look on line told me it was some sort of D&D 4th edition dragon spawn (bright blue not being the ideal colour for an ambush predator IMO). I didn't like that idea so I just painted it up as some sort of giant horned lizard

3) Dire bear - Large mutant bear

4) Taer - My monster manual description of a Taer was "vile humanoids, live in caves, throw spears". Didn't give me much to go on so I followed the original colour scheme. I think I need a few more of these to make viable skirmish group.

5) Dark Naga

6) Ent - well it's not really an Ent it's a ???? ravager no idea what that is looks like a treeman to me.

7) Feral troll - this miniature is from the Legend of Drizzt game and is called a feral troll. It's way to big to be a normal troll IMO so after reading through my monster manual I decided it would be a giant troll which is what you get when a troll and hill giant decide to get jiggy with it (eeeggggh). Unlike a normal trolls , who are green, giant trolls have brown skin.

More pictures soon

Cheers Jon

The underdark - first bits of terrain

As well as playing the D&D Legend of Drizzt boardgames I thought it might be nice to have some solo games using the old 2nd edition Battle system skirmish rules. Basically the Battle system skirmish rules are the AD&D roleplaying games combat system tailored for miniature use on a tabletop battlefield. Of course I needed a tabletop battlefield that was suitably D&D....

...I'm building up quite a collection of Drow from the D&D plastic miniatures and have just finished re-reading Daughter of the Drow by Elaine Cunningham. There are some very evocative descriptions of the underdark (the underground world where various races live) in that book so I decided to knock up a underdark board for some skirmishes/dungeon bashes.

I had a spare 4x2 foot MDF board so I stuck some embossed slate style sticky backed floor tiles I bought from a DIY shop. Handily these were a foot square so eight tiles covered the board perfectly with no extra work.

I made a few trail walls and rocky outcrops from pink foam carved to look suitably rock like. I then covered the pink foam structures with grey floor tile grout and sand which dries rock hard. I painted everything with a cheap mid grey undercoat emulation paint. When the grey paint was dry I painted streaks of black,red-brown and brown yellow craft paints with plenty of water to try and match the colours of the floor tiles. A final dry brush of cream emulsion and the effect wasn't half bad.

I wanted some crystal outcrops for my underdark. I looked at some commercial sets like Gale Force Nines which where very nice but a little to expensive for me. Instead I found a bag of broken and smoothed green glass (meant as decorative plant pot toppings) in my local garden centre for £2 I stuck a load of these to some old MDF round bases and treated them the same way as the walls for some nice cheap crystal outcrops.

Plenty of extra scenery to make yet stalagmites, underground water features, lava flows, lots of fungi and some chasms are all on the list plus maybe some underdark dwelling in the style of classic dungeons and more walls and outcrops like my trail ones.

Cheers Jon