Formidable Forest Foes

The other week, we 3D-printed an homage to one of our favorite Bond villains, Shady Tree and his Acorns (from “Diamonds Are Forever”). You can check out Part 1 and Part 2 for all the monster details, but today we thought our woodland warriors deserved a rival faction!

The party has acquired its first Bastion, but they quickly realize they’re not alone in The High Forest. The group’s first encounter with Shady Tree could be adversarial or inquisitorial. Roleplaying will determine what happens next on that front. Still, something was missing here.

DM Ben wants to build a Hatfield–McCoy rivalry, but instead of two fighting families from West Virginia and Kentucky, we’ll have angry acorns facing off against mighty mushrooms for forest bragging rights. One group uses its might (the mushrooms) and the other uses its mind (the acorns).

The group ultimately has to decide who to side with or if they can broker a tentative truce. The last thing the party wants is chaos surrounding its new home base. This new DnD storyhook should be a fun sidequest and give DM Ben some new home-brewed encounter options.

Thankfully, the mighty Schlossbauer and his magnificent free STL library offer a slew of 3D-printing options on the fungi front. We sliced: Myconid Sprout v2, Myconid v1, and Myconid Sprout v4. And we could have kept going! Schlossbauer has a fantastic collection of funky forest creatures, and we’ll certainly print even more of them as we flush out more of this new home-brewed DnD storyline.

DM Ben stepped up to the painting palette and took a swing at coloring these misunderstood myconids. The creepy mouth feature initially drew him to these fun models. Besides, no one wants to be the recipient of that bite attack.

Nothing too crazy on the paint steps:

• Prime Flat Black.
• Slap Chop Base.
• ASP Desolate Brown (body).
• ASP Palid Bone (tops).
• ASP Moonlake Coral (mouth).
• FAN Pink Potion (mouth edging).
• Burnt Umber (base).
• Traditional Flock (base).

ASP stands for Army Painter Speedpaints, and FAN stands for Army Painter Fanatic Paints. Palid Bone is made for mushrooms, so you can never go wrong with that color selection. And even though it’s labeled Desolate Brown, you actually get this awesome, darker green on our slap chop base. We love that color combo here.

All of these miniatures are meant to be fighting soldiers of varying combat degrees. Our weapon-toting foot soldier will be considered a Myconid Adult (AC 12, HP 22, +4 att/2d4, Pacifying Spore (DC 11 Con or be stunned). For the biters, we found this fun Walking Mushroom stat block on Reddit (AC 16, HP 11, att +5/1d6+3, Dust Kick, Vertical Vulnerability)…maybe giving the taller one more like 25 HP.

DM Ben is pondering an introductory encounter in which a group of mad mushrooms is in a tense standoff near the party’s home base. Each patrol demands that the other respect the precarious boundary lines or face the consequences.

Shady Tree is the leader of his Angry Acorn clan, so now we’ll need to create a Mushroom in Chief for the other tense tribe. We’ll save that 3D-print pick for next time!