One of my players bought a filament 3d printer a couple of years ago. For the last episode of my Storm King’s Thunder campaign, I needed lots of gargoyles – so he used them to test printing miniatures. It was an ugly mess. But for a throw-away gargoyle encounter, it was a nice learning experience 😉
The second Empyrean (25B) from WizKids Monster Menagerie 3 is also a huge model that I wanted to convert into a Cloud Giant for my Storm King’s Thunder campaign. This time, I wanted to add more details to make the figure into a boss type NPC/monster.
Cloud Giant, D&D, dungeons & dragons, repainting, SKT, wizkids
The Empyreans (25A and 25B) from WizKids Monster Menagerie 3 sets are huge models (3 inch base) and are similar in height to the Cloud Giants from Storm King’s Thunder. I guess they are not very popular, because I found them only for a bargain. I decided to turn them into Cloud Giants for my campaign.
Cloud Giant, D&D, dungeons & dragons, repainting, SKT, wizkids
Storm King’s Thunder also involves Cloud Giants. It even starts with one in the introduction adventure. But later in the campaign, Cloud Giants come into play as adversaries. Of course, there are nice miniatures from Wizkids from the Storm King’s Thunder set. I bought two (28A and 28B) and repainted them.
Cloud Giant, D&D, dungeons & dragons, repainting, SKT, wizkids
Right after finishing our 2.5 year-long campaign Tyranny of Dragons, my group started the next big D&D 5th edition campaign: Storm King’s Thunder! Also based on a published adventure module, it heavily features all types of Giants of the D&D lore and an epic story from levels 1 to 11.
After lots of modifications to the dragon’s heads and priming, the 12-inch beast was ready for some color! It took me two weeks of painting a couple of hours in the evening to finish the Dragon Queen. For the red alone, I used up almost a whole Vallejo Model Color bottle. But it was worth it: Tiamat is my biggest painting project to date, and I still love the end result. My players lost their minds, when I placed this beast on the battlemap in the final encounter of the adventure!
The final and ultimate miniature for my Tyranny of Dragons campaign is the Queen of Dragons, the goddess Tiamat herself! I saved this figure for last, and it’s a huge one. It is – by far – the biggest painting project I have done so far. It took me over a month of working on it nearly every day. Why is that? Because I took a 12 by 15 inch resin statue, which I first had to convert into Tiamat, which already took half of the time!
Spoiler warning! The main antagonist of the entire campaign is the Red Wyrmspeaker Severin Silrajin, the high priest of Tiamat in the Forgotten Realms and leader of the Cult of the Dragon. Gale Force Nine has miniatures for all the cult’s leaders, including Severin.
Time for another repaint! This figure of an Aasimar fighter in full armor was a very boring and dark looking miniature in my collection of old D&D minis. The armor reminded me of my Elder Scrolls Online character, which I played a lot a while back. So I decided to try to give the figure the same color tones as my video game character and to paint over the factory paint job.
You can always use more generic bad guy minions. The Royal Guard from the Underdark set of old D&D miniatures line is a general humanoid in full plate armor and a spear. The halforc executioner from the same set is a hooded brute with a bardiche. I repainted both to add them to the Dragon Cultists’ army for the final encounter at the Well of Dragons.