There comes a time in the life of a Dungeon Master, where your players are up against an undead wizard, a lich. These creatures are cunning opponents, often the big bad evil guy of an adventure or a whole campaign. My players were headed to Thay, where undead wizards reign supreme. A good excuse as any to use a lich miniature!

Again, the lich (77280) was part of the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter and is sculpted by Bob Ridolfi. The lich is an iconic D&D monster. It is also a very high level opponent, so you don’t always get the chance to actually use one in a Dungeons & Dragons game.

There are very good painted version of this miniature posted online! Here are my favorites! They are fantastic, just look at the colors and the glowing eyes! My version won’t quite hold up to them, I think 😉

Basing and Priming

As the lich should work with all the other undead I painted, I based him on a standard 1-inch plastic base, using sand and small pebbles as decoration. I then primed the miniatures via airbrush in black and white.

Painting

The versions posted on the internet look great, and I really like the color choices some people made. But as I said, I wanted the lich to be visually recognizable as part of the other undead. Therefore, I wanted to use bright red and purple. As this guy should seem very special, I also decided to use gold for the armor. This makes him somewhat colorful, I know. I would also have liked him in gray/metallic armor and could not decide at first. Finally, I went for the gold option.

There would be no nice vegetation on the base for this guy. I imagine, liches ares not encountered on some muddy field, but in the deepest cave/dungeon/hole you could find. Here he is, with his skeleton gang!