Train Tuesday P66: Shady Tree & His Angry Acorns

Now that our inaugural Hovertrains are 3D-printed and painted, we can flush out some DnD scenarios to incorporate The Forgotten Rails Hovertrain setting into our ongoing campaigns. Let’s see what fell from the content tree today.

Hovertrains need routes to run on, and imposing new fandangled imminent domain land rules are suddenly being declared across The Sword Coast! Omin Dran’s shocking decree isn’t sitting well with some. Many of the forest’s inhabitant feel they were here first and that this roaring, arcane industrialization will destroy their way of life. Sound familiar. 😉

This premise got DM Ben thinking. He always wanted to incorporate an old Gen Con late-night hotel movie watch into his games. We had four of us crammed in a single hotel room, and after a rousing game of D&D, we would hop back to our room and play some classic films.

We were watching James Bond’s “Diamonds Are Forever” and our convention DM (Ben’s mentor) demanded we watch it because of a gangster named Michael “Shady” Tree. You can even catch a glimpse of the following morning’s Gen Con giggles here. Well, thirteen years later, we’ve come full circle.

This encounter has been building, as previously we introduced a new home-brewed NPC: the Dwarven Path Finder. Their job is to chart routes for the Hovertrains to run on, including areas of The High Forest. Well, these innocent fellas are just trying to earn a paycheck, but Shady Tree and his Angry Acorns don’t want them anywhere near their neck of the woods.

So, we needed to 3D-print our forest fighters and turned to Knightfall Studios for help. They crafted this magnificent free Acorn Warrior STL that we instantly fell in love with. And we’re especially jazzed to introduce these new miniature monsters into our Dwarven Forge Wilderness terrain!

We printed up a starting squad of ’em over the weekend, and DM Ben took the task of coloring them up for game day. The only kicker is that the acorn’s weapon is a bit fragile and breaks easily if you’re not careful. No big whoop though as without an axe, it just looks like the angry fella will go fisticuffs on your a$$.

Usually, DM Ben wouldn’t go near anything with tiny eyes, but this model cut him slack in that regard. He just shaded the face in a lighter color so it would pop against the darker body. Easy peasy, and we think they turned out great! We’ll be sure to share some paint guide notes in a follow-up post so you can crank ’em out for your DnD campaign.

Pretty darn fun though, right?! Definitely a monster that the players won’t be expecting. And who knows, maybe they’ll negotiate and strike a deal with Shady Tree rather than fall in line with Corporate greed and destruction.

We’ll save the boss miniature for a follow-up post as we have a couple of cool 3D Prints in mind and just need to paint ’em for your reading pleasure.

Until next time!