Miniature Monday: Don’t Forget to Follow Through

Greetings, weekend warriors. You fought, you pillaged, and your legend only grew. Or you blew three death saves, and it’s time for a new DnD character. We’re not here to judge…just inspire. Let’s go!

We run a pretty loose content schedule here at 3DRPG Studios in sunny Chandler, AZ. We either have a current ongoing campaign encounter to build against, or a particular STL just leaps out at us, and we earmark it for one of our free Wandering Monster tables. We also have two ongoing gameboard themes going: The Forgotten Rails and Beneath the Sands. So, we rarely have head-scratching 3D-print selection moments.

DM Ben had a couple of long overdue follow-up projects on the office whiteboard, and this weekend felt like a good time to tackle a couple of those lurking chores. Besides, any hobbyist who stares at an unfinished project long enough just wants to get ’em done.

In mid-June, we teased these mysterious Guild Mages by the dastardly Dutchmogul. He made a whole squad of these arcane hoodies and even better, they’re a free download. DM Ben was testing a new cloak color (ASP Charming Chartreuse) at the time and loved it. So, he wanted to 3D print the rest of these TTRPG sculpts for a future encounter.

DM Ben mostly stuck with that forest-esque green cloak color again but wanted to try a dark blue version for their spooky leader. From there, he went with complementary colors: ASP Hardened Leather and FAN Cultist Purple (fitting). We also use FAN Barbarian Flesh as our go-to skin color. We had some old primed metal washers, so we stuck those on for quick, easy bases.

We’re picturing the players inadvertently teleporting into a forest sacrifice ritual via the Kinda Sorta Portal. DM Ben just has to flesh out those one-shot encounter parameters a bit more, but that would give us a d10 for a roll. Notice the size variation from mini to mini – always a fan of that.

Our second hanging hobby project revolved around this Zaratan monster by mz4250. We initially made this swampy version to reflect its most likely habitat, but DM Ben asked for a second rocky, riverstream version. He really likes it when the team creates slightly alternate versions of the same type of monster so that it’s easier to track them on the gameboard.

DM Ben colored this version up as well, as he wanted to try that recent stone scheme from our Cast n Play Lookout Tower on some more traditional rocky-esque terrain. We also tried a few new basing textures from Green Stuff World: Brown Mud and Swamp Mud. From there, it was just some simple grass tufts and a few blue water droplet spots to make it look like it could be crawling out of some water terrain.

Here’s a fun side-by-side comparison. We like ’em both for different reasons, but you certainly couldn’t go wrong with the more traditional swampy version. We hadn’t finished off the top rock effects last time, so you can really see how AK Interactive’s Swamp Green Water Gel pops here.

Nothing glamorous about today’s post, but now we’ve finished off two different minis and can better use either group in a more immersive encounter. Smells like…victory.

Until next time!