Time for some dragons! In the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, my players were to face at least one of each type of chromatic dragon. They already faced an Adult Green Dragon that I already posted some years ago. I didn’t have miniatures for all colors at that time, but I had some models for Red dragons. Here is the young fire dragon!

My players were already level 10 or so, so they encountered this young dragon as part of a group of Red Dragon Cultists coming to assassinate them in their sleep. Spoiler alert: They mopped the floor with the cultists, but then had their hands full with the dragons. Yes, dragons as in plural. I’ll post the other dragon next.

But first things first: The Young Fire Dragon (77026) was sculpted by Sandra Garrity. It is a very classical looking dragon, but not really perfect for a Dungeons and Dragons Red Dragon. I think it’s good enough with its horns and bigger scales.

The talented people of the internet have created great versions of this miniature, with quite some different color schemes! Some of my favorites can be seen below.

Basing and Priming

I’ve put the Young Dragon on a large (2-inch) plastic base. This gave me enough space to decorate quite a bit, so I added all kinds of small rocks, pebbles, and sand. This dragon lives in a mountain climate, so I thought having many rocks couldn’t hurt.

I primed the miniature the usual way by airbrushing it in black and white.

Painting

My dragon should be a young red dragon, and I wanted to adhere to the color scheme from the Dungeons and Dragons monster manual. The style of the dragons has changed a little, but anyone playing D&D knows that the silhouettes and colors of the (chromatic) dragons are very iconic since 3rd edition. It’s very easy to keep apart the five chromatic dragons, at least.

I really liked Slashhamster’s painted version, and it was really close to the D&D colors. Only the wings should be yellow instead of black in D&D. I kept the images from this version on my laptop in front of me when painting the miniature, as I loved the bright red scales!

There was nothing special done with this miniature. Just base coating, adding darker areas of base coat in the shadows, dry brushing the highlights, applying a wash to accentuate the shadows and edges, and reapplying the highlights. As the wash did bring down the saturation of the bright red, I dry brushed most of the scales again. I think it has gotten a more gritty look because of this.

Finally, I had a lot of fun with the base! I love to add stuff to painted bases, and here I could add different types of highland vegetation 🙂

Here is the finished miniature!