In the very first session of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, players of the adventure face an immense threat: An adult blue dragon attacking a village. I didn’t have a miniature then, but both my players and the dragon escaped. Before the finale of the campaign, I knew they had to face the blue dragon Lennithon again. And this time, I had this fantastic red dragon miniature from Reaper that would become my Lennithon.

Reaper’s Pathfinder Red Dragon (89001) is by (dragon expert) Julie Guthrie is a very dynamic miniature. It’s not too big, but impressive enough. In D&D, it would fall under the category “adult dragon”. However, in D&D, red dragons do not traditionally feature a nose horn quite this big. That’s why it felt more like a blue dragon to me. There are other features from a D&D blue dragon it lacks, but it would be good enough.

Here you can see the difference between a Pathfinder red dragon and a Dungeons and Dragon blue dragon:

Other painters also love this miniature, there are tons of cool paint jobs in show off forums. Here are some really cool versions:

Preparation

The miniature had to be assembled. It didn’t have too many seam lines, and I didn’t bother fixing them with green stuff. Paint will do.

Basing and Priming

The miniature has some nice ruins under his feet. I wanted to place him on a rocky desert base, so I glued the dragon on a 4-inch plastic base and added some stones, pebbles, and sand to it.

Then, I primed the miniature as usual using the airbrush and black and white primer.

Painting

I always find dragons not too hard to paint. Of course, you could paint each scale individually with a color gradient and use stippling techniques with a sponge to give the wings a more leathery texture. I didn’t do any of that. Instead, I base coated the whole miniature, applied some basic highlights and shading and then used dry brushing to reapply highlights. I must confess, I wanted the mini ready for the next game session and did not have enough time to do something too fancy here.

For the desert base, I used several color tones from brown, olive, mustard, and dark/light sand.

Even if this miniature was a little rushed at the end, it took me about 4 hours, including the base. I am not very happy with how the wings came out. I think they are too light and are missing a more textured surface.

Overall, I like the result, and I am especially happy with the base. The dragon worked very well on the battlefield!