The first mission of the new Storm King’s Thunder campaign brought my players into an old ruin, searching for a hidden treasure after the events with Tiamat from the previous campaign. Little did they know, that there was something stalking them: a displacer beast! This was my next mini from Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures, as they do have the official license to produce displacer beasts.

Displacer Beasts are feline predators with six legs and spiked tentacles on their backs. They are some kind of magical accident let loose on the world. As they are from the D&D setting, they are monsters more or less unique to Wizards of the Coast, such as mindflayers or beholders. That means non-official miniatures cannot really make displacer beasts as they are shown in the Monster Manual.

WizKids new figure line Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures comes with the full license, so they are able to sell unique figures none else can sell – even the real beholders and displacer beasts.

The displacer beast (72576) is from Wave 1, and it even has the same pose as in the Monster Manual.

Preparation/Priming

Again, I forgot to take pictures during painting. Sorry!

There was not much to prepare for the figure. Nolzur’s come primed in grey, and I learned that they don’t take it well if you put more Vallejo primer over the existing coat of paint. So, I just glued the miniature on a large (2-inch) base and decorated the base with pebbles, twigs, and sand.

Painting

The displacer beast was very easy to paint. I just mixed some purple with very dark gray for the fur color. It almost looks black, I dry brushed a lighter tone of the color afterwards for highlighting.

The rest was just painting the eyes, mouth, ears and tentacles. I used the colors from the picture in the Monster Manual here.

Overall, painting this figure took only an hour or so. And then again one hour for the base decoration 🙂

I must say, I like the Nolzur’s Miniatures, they are at least as good as the “classic” Reaper Bones, but come with a better primer and are not so “bendy” like the old white Bones figures. After an evening of painting, the displacer beast was ready for the ambush on the gaming table 🙂