Roaming the cold wastelands and stalking adventurers or serving as pets to the mighty Frost Giants, Winter Wolves have a long history in Dungeons & Dragons. They are perfect for a mixed combat encounter and I really like the figures from Reaper Miniatures for them!

The Winter Wolf is a pretty old sculpt by Sandra Garrity. It was re-released as a Reaper Bones miniature some time ago. There is also a new sculpt by Jason Wiebe (SKU 44125), but frankly, I prefer the old version from Sandra Garrity.

Winter Wolves in D&D lore are intelligent and evil creatures. They are also huge. In this way, they are more similar to worgs than to actual wolves. They are also considered a monstrosity in 5th edition D&D, which means basically that they are supernatural beings. And they really mean it, as Winter Wolves can breathe a cone of frost.

They are associated with Frost Giants and other ice-loving evil creatures. Mechanically, they are interesting to put into a combat together with Frost Giants. Lore-wise, this makes them ideal pets for the Frost Giants. And that’s also how I used them in my Storm King’s Thunder campaign. I bought three of them 🙂

Basing and Priming

The Winter Wolves are supposed to be large by D&D standards, so I glued them on 2-inch bases. I decorated the bases with different-sized gravel and sand and then primed everything via Airbrush in Black and White.

Painting

To be fair, these monstrosities do only have fur and not too many different parts to paint. I painted them with a neutral white tone, and then added highlights in offwhite.

Then, I applied a dark-blue wash to bring out the contrasts, followed by drybrushing the finer highlights with offwhite again. Pretty straight forward and also quick to paint.

Finally, I painted the snouts, teeth, and eyes. After that, I applied Armypainter snow effect and tundra grass tufts to the bases.

Here you can see the three wolves from both sides and as a group.