Slow is the Way to Go

Greetings, fellow miniature collectors! We’ve got some dandy 3D-printed minis to add to your collection, so you’d better slow your roll and enjoy today’s TTRPG picks!

Turtle warriors – god bless ’em. We absolutely love these hard-shelled, hard-chargin’ fighters and have a simple paint scheme that lets us 3D-print a bale of them for all our DnD needs. Let’s start with three from one of our favorite STL creators.

Mz4250 is a staple in our beloved 3D print community, and we’ve featured a slew of his STLs on our little ol’ blog. Even though his tremendous library is free, please consider tipping him or subscribing on Patreon to return the love. We’re featuring three of his prints today.

• Tortle Oogway Circle of the Stars Druid
• The Kappa
• Tortle Fighter with Morningstar & Shield

Mz4250 also has a soft spot for these slow but calculated warriors with a whole series of Tortles, so be sure to check his other sculpts.

DM Ben gained some confidence with hard shells when he recently colored up these Grakyura monsters by STL Miniatures and also this Dire Turtle by Dragon Trappers Lodge. Hence, he was all for coloring these new Tortles over this past holiday weekend.

Circle of the Stars Druid was a bit tricky because the cape color was a bit of a mental roadblock. We also inadvertently snapped off his fancy staff while removing all the supports (whoops). Sometimes, you just gotta persevere and do your best. We still have his body and base in shipshape, and his large staff has simply become a small cane. Mz4250 painted his version much better than ours, so we suggest you check out his mini.

Next up is this pure awesome Kappa Tortle. Mz4250 did a trip to Japan and was a big fan of this lore. A Kappa is also known as a river boy. Let’s review the paint steps:

• Prime Flat Black | Slapchop Base.
• Body/Skin: ASP Rigor Mortis + FAN Dark Tone Wash.
• Shell P1: Layer FAN Angel Green.
• Shell P2: GSW Ochre Desert to the middle of the shell (e.g., the Scutes).
• Lightly drybrush FAN Ancient Stone to all the raised edges.
• Spear: GSW Skeleton Brown + ASP Pallid Bone + Polished Silver.
• Stipple the Scutes one more time.

For the base, we did another round of the AK Interactive Water Gel Swamp Green material, since it looked so good on the previous Crocodile miniature. We forgot to do his monk-ish hair a different brown color, but we’ll circle back on it.

Lastly, DM Ben did this heavy Tortle soldier with morningstar and shield. He should have tried one of the alternative brown-shell schemes, but we still have plenty more variations to color up.

Same paint steps as above, but here is our go-to jam for armor these days:

• Layer ASP Enchanted Steel.
• Drybrush FAN Rough Iron.
• Apply a Black Wash.

Pretty darn good, right?!! This was our favorite of the three. We’re still pondering the 5e stats here, as the core block is a bit too weak for our spot in our campaigns. On the other hand, this version is a bit too beefy. So, we’ll flush those numbers out a bit more on future Tortle 3D prints.

Until next time!