My players were headed to the tomb of the draco-lich Ebondeath in the Mere of the Dead Men in my Tyranny of Dragons campaign. I wanted to have a death knight there, and OF COURSE the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter also had a fitting miniature to offer here as well.

The Skeleton Champion (77285), like all the other Reaper Bones skeletons I posted over the last few days, was sculpted by Bob Ridolfi. It looks really cool with a full set of plate mail armor, a torn cape and a scepter made of skulls. This guy screams Death Metal! I think it fits perfectly for a Dungeons & Dragons Death Knight.

Basing and Priming

I chose to do nothing too fancy here and just glued the mini on a standard 1-inch base. Then, I added pebbles and sand and primed the mini via airbrush in black and white.

Painting

The miniature’s color theme should work in unison with other undead minis I have, so bright red would be optimal. Most of my skeleton warriors wear red rags. Also, I wanted to potentially use this miniature as a Dragon Cultist in my Tyranny of Dragons campaign, and not only as an old Death Knight. So I wanted to also use purple – the Dragon Cult’s primary color. The armor would of course be black!

I had to try several combinations for the purple and the red until it looked good enough. Now, I am happy with the color contrast – the cooler purple in the cape and the warmer, more saturated red cloth on the armor. The figure was overall very fun to paint, I just love these undead sculptures! And of course any excuse to not have to paint faces is always welcome 😉