Advent Calendar - Day 6

Minotaur

The minotaur is another old-school fantasy monster that when I think about it I'm surprised I haven't painted before.
In addition to being a staple of D&D since the beginning it has also appeared in  various versions of Warhammer.

My first exposure to the minotaur in D&D was the awesome invisible ink solo adventure Maze Of The Riddling Minotaur.  The titular monster hung out in the centre of the maze as should be expected.

My inspiration for coming back to the minotaur was the most recent awesome cinematic battle featuring a minotaur.  I am of course referring to the mass battle in Anchorman 2.  This might mean that if I decided to do a ghost at some point it may well end up being the ghost of Stonewall Jackson.

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-5

Myconid Sovereign

Today my mushroom-men are adding a boss to their ranks.  In addition to being larger and tougher than the regular Myconids the Sovereign also has the ability to use fungal spores to animated fallen foes as spore-infested pseudo-zombies.

I think at some point down the road this could be a neat hook for an adventure as that sort of ability is traditionally associated with evil creatures.  It feels like it could lead to a traditional comic book style encounter where a (relatively) peaceful character is encountered but the protagonists mistake his intentions and their relationship begins with a fight due to a misunderstanding.

It feels good to be getting some truly different and distinct creatures done for my games!

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-4

Death Knight

It seems like tradition (for my anyway) that any advent calendar has something in it that is at least mildly disappointing, today's addition is unfortunately that thing for me.

I wanted to add a Death Knight and not finding any great actual Death Knight models readily available I turned to the Games Workshop's undead line and chose their fantastic looking Wight Lord model.  The Wight Lord hits (as a Death Knight) on everything I'm looking for; armoured, regal, conveys might beyond a skeleton, crisp excellent detail...but there was one REALLY obvious thing missing to me; he's not Lord Soth.

Death Knights have existed in D&D since the beginning but with the release of Dragonlance in the late 80s Lord Soth became THE Death Knight.  In addition to featuring heavily in Dragonlance  fiction and modules Soth was eventually dropped into my personal favourite setting Ravenloft where he got two more novel and another published module.  There are certain characters who become so iconic (if I say "wizard" don't we all picture Gandalf in our minds?) that even when there are other versions of that same character you somehow just can't move past the image of the 'alpha' version.

Although my plan from inception with this project was that these models would be used for D&D this might be the one figure I can't quite muster putting on the table and declaring what he is because I can't shake the feeling my players will feel and think what I feel and think.  If he fails to see the table as a Death Knight in any of my games I'm sure he can return to his intended purpose as an Age Of Sigmar hero where I can appreciate him for how perfect he is rather being hung up on my own image of what a Death Knight should look like.

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-3

Skeleton
(couldn't put off the undead any longer)

Today I'm doing up the newest in a long (never-ending?) line of additions to my undead army; the humble skeleton.

Although animated undead have existed across fantasy stories forever I think I'm a product of my generation in that my first recollection of a skeleton that really stuck with me was Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animated skeletons from his films based in mythology.
In the D&D games I've run over the years my players have traditionally found skeletons and zombies to be a truly alarming monster to encounter not because they are powerful (they certainly aren't) but because they begin to dread what greater undead creature might be lurking giving life to these mindless drones.

Although I already owned a ton of skeleton figures I had to get the Shadespire Death starter when it came out due to how unique and characterful the skeletons in the box looked.  This guy stood out to me as a piece I could both use to simply put a 1HD undead model on the table and into my game as well as being visually an extremely interesting model that would appeal to my players.

What do you think?  Is a new take on an old model appealing to most of you or do you prefer the feel of a "classic" model that brings you back to an earlier sense of gaming nostalgia?

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-2

Myconids (Mushroom Men)

Today's entry is an old monster first introduced way back in the 1st edition D&D module Scourge Of The Slave Lords; the Myconids.

Scourge Of The Slave Lords had encounters in a wet dark underground cavern that was meant to be a naturally occurring setting rather than a man-made or constructed underground tunnel system.  As such some creatures that would exist in that environment were introduced.  Myconids traditionally exist in the neutral part of the alignment scale which generally means whether they are hostile or friendly depends largely on the actions of the players playing the game.

On a personal side-note Myconids are one of the few creatures that have existed in D&D for 30+ years that neither I nor any of my gaming friends owned miniatures for.  That's not hugely significant but it just feels weird to me that after playing D&D for more than three decades with groups who play with miniatures that there was any monster that had been around this long that none of us had painted before.

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-1

When deciding on the first entry for my Monster Manual Advent Calendar I was initially planning on an undead model as I'm currently beefing up my force for Age Of Sigmar as well as painting some Shadespire miniatures, but in the spirit of following the Monster Manual I decided instead to kick off with one of the most basic and prolific D&D monsters; the Orc.

The Orc (along with the goblin) were the staple foot-soldier/bad-guy in Tolkien's writings and as such generally densely populated most old-school D&D campaign worlds and games.  In both role-playing art and miniature sculpting there have been tons of different interpretations of the image of the Orc but the one I've gone with today is a sculpt by Antediluvian Miniatures based on the look of the Orcs from the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon.

For you modern pop-culture types; this is what the kids from Stranger Things picture as an Orc when they play D&D. 

More to come.  Some expected "classic" monsters and hopefully a few surprises.

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-0

Hi all,

After a long (2 month?) absence my buddy Darren has talked me into playing along with a paint plan/challenge/project he's doing over at his blog Metal Miniatures a 24 day advent calendar themed miniature collection.
Darren will be alternating back and forth between two projects, I've decided to do a single project all 24 days that will sort of follow something I had been working on before I stopped blogging a couple of months ago, 24 entries from the D&D Monster Manual.

The plan is to feature a new model for 1 Monster Manual entry per day from the current D&D Monster Manual from a variety of manufacturers.  Although there will be some horror and undead models I'm hoping to also use this to build my growing collection of classic D&D monsters as well.

Starting tomorrow, I'm back on the horse.  Can I post 24 days in a row?  I guess we'll find out together.

-Jay