Leave No 3D-printed Stone Unturned

Hello mighty adventurers! Apologies for the no-post yesterday. Sometimes our real jobs bring sudden emergencies that need to be dealt with, and by the time we restore order, the workday has slipped away. That’s old news – let’s get to today’s stone-cold 3D prints!

Let’s get rocky and share some cool dungeon dressings for your ever-growing scatter terrain library. As DM Ben always tells us when selecting new STLs, “Just give me more options, guys!” Sometimes we have enough advance notice to prepare for a future session; other times we scramble at the last minute, and we may even have to skip a piece. The struggle is real, y’all. 😉

We’ve fallen in love with a particular monster miniature and its supporting super-simple color scheme! That’s the theme of today’s DnD blog post. So, let’s start off with these nifty dungeon rubble columns by Cast n Play and their killer Terrain Essentials monthly Patreon. Their talented creators released these really fun Modular Columns from their The Lost Castle Terrain set. We love ’em!

Even better, we have a new, tried-and-true stone paint scheme that makes getting these completed pieces on the game table a snap! Army Painter Speedpaints have a slick, weathered paint called Runic Grey. We layer it on and sometimes circle back with a second coat as needed. For the ground, we just use ASP Desolate Brown for the dirt and ASP Gravelord Gray for the rocks. Optionally, you can circle back over the stone with a very light white drybrush (which looks fab).

Those holes on the top are for you to stack planks across the columns for multi-level encounters (see the render above). If you don’t want to use ’em, you could just flock them over, but we dig the design.

We’re featuring a second miniature today because we’re using the same paint scheme (with a slight twist). Beloved EC3D Designs released a Beasts and Baddies II Kickstarter, and it is just stuffed with fantastic monster miniatures. We anticipate 3D printing and painting nearly every single one eventually – always the mark of a truly excellent series.

You’ll see here we used the exact same paint colors as our Dungeon Columns above – quick and easy. Again, we prefer to apply two coats, as we like the greyish stone color to be slightly darker. They look pretty imposing though, right?! Like, you won’t walk past these stone demons without your guard completely up, right?!

We ended up printing the same Gargoyle quite a few times because DM Ben wants to do a cool dungeon encounter where these things line a long hallway that must be moved through to get to the next adventure point in the scenario. Sadly, we didn’t realize the set had two different Gargoyle sculpts, so we’ll ultimately circle back to at least print a few of that version.

Now, here’s the paint twist for today’s post: we finally got our hands on the new Army Painter SpeedPaint Markers, and this was the perfect DnD 3D-print to try them out on. We often buy directly from the Army Painter website, and since they’re based in the UK, shipping can take a long time to be fulfilled. Demand has been very high. Also, novice painter DM Ben is very anxious about trying new things, so he had to muster up some courage.

Would we use these nifty markets again? Absolutely, but only in certain painting circumstances. For example, with a stone Gargoyle batch, it makes more sense to layer that solid color with a traditional brush. However, for smaller details like the eyes or to clean up the base edging, these markers were insanely convenient. It’s so nice to just pop a cap off, fill in those smaller details, and skip the traditional brush-cleaning step.

We decided to give our Gargoyle either black eyes or red eyes, and these markets made that paint step so frickin’ easy. Give this stone paint scheme and even the Speedpaint Markers a try! We think you’ll really like ’em.

Until next time!