Tomb Thursday P2: Guard Duty

Full disclosure: the 3DRPG team has an obsession with guard miniatures. So, today’s Tomb Thursday DnD blog entry couldn’t be more on point. Let’s celebrate the poor dudes who are just trying to make a living! 😉

Back in the day, you wouldn’t just walk into a tomb. There would be guards all over the place, albeit some a little more committed to the cause than others. Here’s a closer look at our for-hire desert sentries and how we plan to integrate them into Aether Studios’ marvelous series of Egyptian 3D Printed Tiles.

If you’re going to build out elaborate Egytian-style DnD gameboards, you should definitely pick up Iain Lovecraft’s Desert Adventures Kickstarter. You can see all the incredible set pieces here and trust us when we say, they 3D-print beautifully. We’re really looking forward to sharing many of them with you along this sandy TTRPG journey.

Today’s featured desert miniature was a bonus miniature from the campaign: the City Guard. This STL is packed with detail and feels so authentic.

We asked Resident Painter Kimmy Utha to color this first set of guards up for us. We have a standing guideline that says anytime we send her multiples of one specific mini, she’ll do a subtle color tweak on each one so that it’s easier to call them out during a battle. In this instance, she gave each of them slightly colored “pants.”

Aren’t they magnificent though?! Our biggest regret is that we only sent her three of these 3D prints. We’ll definitely send her more as we would a full squad of these authentic fellas.

Now, Kimmy Utah has done some excellent base work for us, and we give her free rein to color everything we send her. We rarely change anything she sends us back, but we wanted to try some subtle flock on these City Guards just to see how it might look.

Typically, we’ll grab multiple kinds of flock that are part of the same family. Then we give ’em a good mix and sprinkle ’em on the miniature bases. These are from a fab company called Basecrafts, which we initially thought had gone out of business. However, we found them on a UK modeling website, and this unexpected discovery just made our day.

We didn’t cover the entire base, but are flip-flopping on whether we should have. We’ve always found that flock looks best when it’s just applied in subtle touches. The flock mix here was Basecrafts Fine Sand, Coarse Buff, and Coarse Sand. Would cover the whole base or do a sporadic flock? Let us know on Instagram!

We plan to use these guards in three specific scenarios: patrolling a desert city, escorting VIPs, and protecting the entrances to high-value tombs or high-brow city locations. If the party is in a place where it’s more of a “Mall Cop” vibe, DM Ben will go with a lower stat block (AC 16, HP 11, +3 att/1d6+1) but include a strength-in-numbers strategy.

If they’re guarding a super sensitive like a burial chamber, we’ll be using this DnD 5e Tomb Guardian stat block: AC 15, HP 60, multi-attack +5/1d6+3. We love the idea of these guys being bored out of their fricken minds so DM Ben plans to give the adventurers plenty of opportunity to gain a surprise round.

These sandy sentries are so darn cool! How many of these city guards would you 3D-print? You’re answer better be “a lot.” 😉

Until next time!