Nobody Likes a Crab

Greetings, fellow dice rollers! Another start to the work week can mean only one thing – it’s time for another edition of Miniature Monday!

We’re on a bit of a 3D-print-and-paint sealife kick, as we’ve learned a fun, new wet basing technique for our miniatures. We’ve also been building up our pirate roster, so the need for some aquatic enemies is growing. Let’s see what new enemy claw combatants just joined our library!

We’ll start with this pesky Giant Crab by The Dragon Trappers Lodge. This snappy lil’ fella is from their Dungeon Classics December Patreon release. We really don’t like tiny minis as they’re such a pain to paint, and it’s not like our older gamer eyes are doing us any favors at the game table. Hence, we bumped up this STL to a full d20 square to give him a little girth.

The trickier part was securing these bodies to their bases, as there wasn’t much surface area to apply the Loctite Super Glue Gel to their tiny, narrow legs. Thankfully, there are enough legs to go around, so the glue dried ok. Still, we’re a little concerned about these bases popping off, but that’s the way the 3D-print crumbles sometimes.

We started with a larger miniature and then decided the smaller ones above would be a humorous “momma bear and cubs” scenario. This Crab Demon is by mz4250 and once again, is a free download. This monster is much larger and covers a 2×2 d20 square area.

DM Ben was the colorist for all 3 of these 3D-printed monster miniatures and enjoyed painting them over the holiday break. All the paint steps were very reasonable for his novice skill level and he wanted to do more of the water-effect basing.

Here are the very easy steps:

• Prime Flat Black | Slap Chop.
• Body & Claws: layer on ASP Nuclear Sunrise.
• Claws Touch-up: spot apply ASP Grim Black.
• Base 1: Apply a heavy drybrush layer of Burnt Umber.
• Base 2: Go back over with a lighter drybrush of ASP Forest Sprite.
• Base 3: Dab a few spots of ASP Tidal Wave.
• Base 4: Flock some sand spots.
• Base 5: Finish with a layer of AKI’s Water Gel Effect (the best).

For the smaller crabs, we put Citadel Contrast Snakebite Leather on their soft-shell backs and lightly dusted them with white so the markings showed up.

Again, that water effect is tough to see on our pics, but trust us when we say that it looks so fr@ckin’ good! We always get really jazzed when we can add a tried-and-true new painting technique to our arsenal. It allows us to gain even more confidence going into the next painting sesh.

We have plenty of use-case options here, including: creating a beach encounter (if they rest near one), adding them to a future pirate scenario, or even using one of them in a Find Familiar spell. They could even be a fun, unique spell component side mission quest, handed out by one of the town shopkeepers, like Rishardo Montalwand from Castco.

For the monster stats, we’re going to use the Giant Crab 5e stats: AC 15, HP 13, +3 att/1d6+1 bludgeoning damage, grapple DC 11. For the momma, we’ll go with the Huge Crab 5e stats: AC 15, HP 161, +9 att/4d10+5 bludgeoning damage, grapple DC 14.

Until next time!