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 😉
Ankhegs are insectoid monsters as big as a horse, they burrow underground, can detect vibrations in the earth, and spit acid when they are not attacking with their claws. In D&D, these beasts are interesting opponents in dungeons, caves or while travelling overland. I don’t exactly remember where I put an Ankheg encounter in the Storm King’s Thunder campaign, but it was definitely there. Reaper has some great Bones miniatures for these monsters, why not just take three of them?
And yet another miniature that has nothing to do with my Tyranny of Dragons campaign. I have to take some more pictures of the final baddies before posting them, so I present to you something completely different in the meantime: Reaper’s Burrowing Horror is their version of the D&D classic “land shark” or “bulette”. It was part of the Reaper Bones Kickstarter and only took one evening to paint.
Another curiosity from the Reaper Bones Kickstarter is the Chthon. This worm-like creature more or less resembles a Dungeons and Dragons Grick. There were several of these miniatures in the Kickstarter. I have never used gricks in my games until now. I don’t know if I ever need one, but it’s nice to have even three of them to throw at my players.
The second part of the Fire Giants features the Fire Giant King and the Fire Giant Queen from the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter. I painted them together with the Fire Giant Warrior and Bodyguard. Together, these four miniatures look fantastic, even though they are not large enough for the Dungeons and Dragons scale for Fire Giants.
The original Reaper Bones Kickstarter included four fantastic Fire Giant miniatures. I used them for an underground mining raid on the dwarven stronghold of Gauntlgrym while my players were visiting there during my Tyranny of Dragons D&D campaign. I’m going to post them in pairs, starting with the Fire Giant Bodyguard and Fire Giant Warrior!
In 2014, I painted the Orcs from Reaper Bones’ first Kickstarter. In 2016, I got more Orcs from the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter. I was not perfectly happy with the first batch of orcs, especially the black skin color and the 40 mm bases I used for them. The arrival of the new orcs gave me enough reason to take the older miniatures apart and paint all of them again.
bones, monster, orcs, reaper, repainting
The Doomvault in Thay has lots of high level monsters for players to face. I needed a succubus for my campaign, and I found a fantastic miniature in Reaper’s Troll Slayer Sophie that was already part of my Reaper Bones Kickstarter. Sophie is Reaper’s mascot, and new Sophie miniatures were released each Christmas and on ReaperCon or in the Kickstarters. They may be cool collectibles, but this version actually could be used on a gaming table.
The translucent plastic miniatures are not too much work to paint. Most of the time, they are translucent, so you can see much of it in the respective color. I didn’t need the Crystal Golem from the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter for my ongoing campaign at the time. But I hadn’t painted in a while then, and I just wanted to get a miniature done quickly.
How about a very different kind of monster? When I found this one in my bag of the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter, I was startled at first: Is this really a miniature or a molten lump of plastic garbage? This Faceless Horror figure only begins to look like something when you prime it and see more of its contours. But then, it looks scary as hell!