There are also quite nice Frost Giant miniatures by WizKids. Unfortunately, I often dislike the factory paint job. I bought the Frost Giantess from the Storm King’s Thunder booster set (#29A) in Ebay and was surprised to find Smurfette with a sword in my mail. Other than that, the figure looks pretty cool!
Harshnagg the Grim features a prominent role as an NPC in the Storm King’s Thunder D&D campaign. WizKids has a very cool miniature for him in the Storm King’s Thunder booster line, and I had to have it. The old Frost Giant veteran features two hand axes and a cool dragon skull helmet.
Back when the WizKids Icons of the Realms miniatures first came out, they already included a Frost Giant miniature. Way smaller than the later minis, they were based on the Frost Giant artworks before the Monster Manual for 5th Edition was released.
The party helped the people of Triboar to defend the town from a Fire Giant raid. Led by a single giant, a bunch of magmins and orogs tried to raid the town to get an old giant artifact. This was the first encounter with a true giant in the Storm King’s Thunder campaign – and the party was at level 5. I bought a Wizkids Miniature from the Storm King’s Thunder set before. After giving it a repaint, I used it for this encounter (and many others later).
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!
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.
As they were approaching the later episodes of the Tyranny of Dragon campaign, my players faced the mighty Red Wizard Rath Modar. The new D&D miniatures line from WizKids has a Human Red Wizard (#019) in their “Tyranny of Dragons” set. I did not really like the factory paint job, so I repainted him.
When my group and I were starting with the HotDQ, they approached the village of Greenest as part of a caravan from Candlekeep. They would find their first battle at desolate river mill, overrun with wolves. I repainted two WizKids D&D minis for this encounter.