Here are the first couple of finished Dragon Cultists for the Horde of the Dragon Queen. In the book, the higher ranking cultists wear black, gold and purple. These Dragonclaws are elite fighters, so they also got a litte bit of purple on them.

Beside the acolytes, initiates and basic cultists, the lowest member rank within the Cult of the Dragon is the Dragonclaw. They have more or less individual dragon masks. In the comic ‘Legends of Baldur’s Gate‘ (Issue #2) from IDW they look very cliché and .. ahem … not evil at all.

But this image shows some similarities the Easterling Warrior miniatures, so I’m feeling pretty good about choosing them for the cultists.

In the last post, I talked a little bit about the color scheme of the Cult of the Dragon. Officers wear purple, gold and black, lower ranking members all wear black. I also decided on having five factions within the cult. One color for each head of Tiamat: Red, black, blue, green, and white. But like the officers, some of the ‘generic’ elite fighters could also wear purple cloaks. The miniatures are definitely more interesting visually with an additional color next to the black clothing.

Basing and Priming

I choose three Easterling Warrions and did not change anything about them. I added a bowstring to one archer and then glued them on a 25mm base. Then I put some sand and small stones on them, let everything dry, and gave them a black priming with the airbrush. After that, I sprayed white primer for shading and lighting.

Painting

First, I blacklined the seperate areas of the miniatures with Reaper Paint Brown Lining color from the ‘Learn to Paint Kit 3’. The basecoat consisted of Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Black for the cloth parts, VMC Flat Earth for the leather straps at their boots and gloves and Vallejo Game Color Gunmetal Grey for the armor parts. For the cloak, I mixed VMC Violet with VMC Light Prussian Blue roughly 1:1 to get purple.

I didn’t do any wetblending with these minis. I just drybrushed some hightlights on the basecoat and put on a black wash on everything exept the brown leather parts. For these, I used VGC Brown Ink. After that, I redid the upper highlights on the cloth and cloak. I then used VMC Silver to highlight the metal armor.

After drybrushing the base, the wodden weapons (bow and spear shaft) were painted and washed. The archer also got his arrows painted, washed and drybrushed for highlights

I decided that I would not try to give them a vague hint of eyes beneath the masks. That’s what Games Workshop did with their Easterlings in the preview pictures, but I did not feel I would either need it or be patient enough to achieve it. They are perfectly fine for me with black eyes.

In the last step and a couple of days later, I put static grass and flocks of grass on the base with white glue. After that, I sealed the miniatures with Armypainter Matte Varnish spray.

So here are some pics of the finished miniatures, ready to poke some holes into the PCs: