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Whether it’s a freshly printed miniature or terrain piece, we really try to do bulk painting for our tomb pieces because they share so many core colors. Sand is everywhere in Egyptian desert themes, so efficiency is key, as there are only so many precious hobby hours in any given joyous weekend.

Let’s start with our nasty crouching tiger. This sneaky Scorpion Cultist is by the masterful mz4250 and is a free download. There’s no denying this one absolutely belongs in your new tomb or even in a nearby town (because the adventurers are getting too close for comfort).

DM Ben was pressed into service for these guys due to timing and backlog with good ol’ resident painter Kimmy Utah. These 3D-printed miniatures are a bit on the smaller side, so there were definitely some nerves going into this paint sesh.

• Prime Flat White.
• Skin: FAN Barbarian Flesh.
• Necklace: GSW Tropical Turquoise.
• Cloth: FAN Holy White (several coats).
• Cape: ASP Blood Red + Red Wash.
• Wash: Soft Tone.

Basically, these were the same colors we used on those creepy Tomb Servants. He just had different angles to contend with.

As longtime 3DRPGers know, Aether Studios is our official terrain tile partner for our ongoing Beneath the Sands series. And we’re going to share some basic, yet very important tiles that you’ll want to 3D print a mittful of.

Let’s start with this special request we floated to the President of Aether Studios on their very friendly Discord channel many moons ago. This 6×6 d20 floor tile is sooooooooooooooo helpful. You’re going to want to run off and batch paint a bunch of these critical tiles. Now if only we could get Dwarven Forge to see the light and do something similiar for all their terrain themes, right?

Also, these smaller 4×2 rectangular floor tiles are incredibly handy when you build out your tomb rooms without a view. We would recommend batch printing and painting a bunch of these very handy Egyptian tiles, too. For all these floor tiles, we suggest using our tried-and-true (and very easy) TTRPG desert paint scheme.

Just as important as the key floor tiles, you want a big bunch of wall tiles. Thankfully, Aether Studios knows how important these tiles are to your gameboard builds, so they include all sorts of amazing variations in every desert-themed set.

DM Ben paints these mostly the same way each time, using Dwarven Forge Pokorny Paint Deep Lava to get that weathered red look you see so often in actual historic tomb photos. If you want to mix those tiles up once in a while, add in some ASP Hoplite Gold to some of the awesome wall decor pieces.

Also, they have a plain version (that isn’t totally smooth – thank goodness) and these really handy corner pieces so all your tomb rooms just aren’t square boxes. It’s a personal call whether you want to add different wall accent colors to the hieroglyphic walls and some of the slick symbols. DM Ben just does them randomly to a few pieces if time allows.

Until next time!

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Turtle warriors – god bless ’em. We absolutely love these hard-shelled, hard-chargin’ fighters and have a simple paint scheme that lets us 3D-print a bale of them for all our DnD needs. Let’s start with three from one of our favorite STL creators.

Mz4250 is a staple in our beloved 3D print community, and we’ve featured a slew of his STLs on our little ol’ blog. Even though his tremendous library is free, please consider tipping him or subscribing on Patreon to return the love. We’re featuring three of his prints today.

• Tortle Oogway Circle of the Stars Druid
• The Kappa
• Tortle Fighter with Morningstar & Shield

Mz4250 also has a soft spot for these slow but calculated warriors with a whole series of Tortles, so be sure to check his other sculpts.

DM Ben gained some confidence with hard shells when he recently colored up these Grakyura monsters by STL Miniatures and also this Dire Turtle by Dragon Trappers Lodge. Hence, he was all for coloring these new Tortles over this past holiday weekend.

Circle of the Stars Druid was a bit tricky because the cape color was a bit of a mental roadblock. We also inadvertently snapped off his fancy staff while removing all the supports (whoops). Sometimes, you just gotta persevere and do your best. We still have his body and base in shipshape, and his large staff has simply become a small cane. Mz4250 painted his version much better than ours, so we suggest you check out his mini.

Next up is this pure awesome Kappa Tortle. Mz4250 did a trip to Japan and was a big fan of this lore. A Kappa is also known as a river boy. Let’s review the paint steps:

• Prime Flat Black | Slapchop Base.
• Body/Skin: ASP Rigor Mortis + FAN Dark Tone Wash.
• Shell P1: Layer FAN Angel Green.
• Shell P2: GSW Ochre Desert to the middle of the shell (e.g., the Scutes).
• Lightly drybrush FAN Ancient Stone to all the raised edges.
• Spear: GSW Skeleton Brown + ASP Pallid Bone + Polished Silver.
• Stipple the Scutes one more time.

For the base, we did another round of the AK Interactive Water Gel Swamp Green material, since it looked so good on the previous Crocodile miniature. We forgot to do his monk-ish hair a different brown color, but we’ll circle back on it.

Lastly, DM Ben did this heavy Tortle soldier with morningstar and shield. He should have tried one of the alternative brown-shell schemes, but we still have plenty more variations to color up.

Same paint steps as above, but here is our go-to jam for armor these days:

• Layer ASP Enchanted Steel.
• Drybrush FAN Rough Iron.
• Apply a Black Wash.

Pretty darn good, right?!! This was our favorite of the three. We’re still pondering the 5e stats here, as the core block is a bit too weak for our spot in our campaigns. On the other hand, this version is a bit too beefy. So, we’ll flush those numbers out a bit more on future Tortle 3D prints.

Until next time!

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Today’s Hovertrain chatter features some intriguing follow-ups to earlier posts, all for the good of the game. One of the coolest features of our little ol’ DnD blog is that it really pushes us to be creative and try new 3D prints and paint schemes. Hopefully, we’re giving you some handy Bardic Inspiration, too.

DM Ben is all about creating a slew of new criminal factions to form this deep, dark underworld against The Forgotten Rails. Everyone wants a piece of the action or sees a slew of new heist opportunities. We think it will be really fun to have all these competing “families” trying to outmaneuver one another for a bigger piece of the pie.

We teased these slick Shark riders by Aether Studios in some earlier posts. Now, this same series does offer some stand-alone shark miniatures, but we haven’t been able to try painting any of those 3D prints quite yet. So, we thought we would show off some other fin gangsters by resident painter Kimmy Utah because they’re so darn cool.

We’re going right back to one of our favorite watering holes with EC3D Designs and Depths of Savage Atoll Kickstarter. These supportless STLs were a stretch goal, and boy howdy, are we glad the KS reached it. The biggest challenge here was honestly not printing a mittful of these. And we might still snap and do so.

Kimmy Utah really knows how to paint sharks, as we’ve sent her several nail several apex predators previously. The only thing we might do is add some AK Interactive Wet Effect (featured in our 2024 Gift Guide) to the fun bases she did. We’re also huge fans of the live-action One Piece series on Netflix, which has a great Shark storyline in season one.

Thankfully, we get a solid, go-to DnD 5e Stat Block for these Shark-folk. We have a sixth-level, six-person party in our office campaign, so this CR 4 is perfect for a small gang of these upright fish bruisers. We dig the stats just as they are here: AC 16, HP 73, multi-attack Harpoon x2 +7/2d6+5 and Bite +7/1d8+5. They also have some nasty abilities, including Blood Frenzy and Grapple.

Let’s finish today off with an alternate paint job on a Construct miniature we showcased last week. Despite being DnD players since the 80s, we’re not great on all the official lore. Hence, sometimes when we see 3D prints, we don’t necessarily know whether it’s an official monster or something under a different creative name (to avoid copyright issues).

So, we only realized that this Mighty Servant of Leuk-o was an official monster while doing our research for last week’s post. For its new paint job, the steps couldn’t have been easier:

• Prime Flat Black | Slapchop Base.
• Body: Layer FAN Imperial Navy.
• Edging: FAN Greedy Gold.
• Wash: Dark Tone.

And then DM Ben decided to go with a flocked base as he felt the original one was too much of a snoozer.

Until next time!

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Now, when we say we have a VIP passenger, that moniker stands for “Very Important Puncher.” The Forgotten Rails architects are preparing for an initial AI revolution of sorts from the general public (how fitting, right?), and so they continue to crank out a slew of security Constructs. So far, their mechanized police force includes:

• Constable Construct (melee).
• Copper Construct (ranged).
• The Destroyer (door rammer).
• Living Bomb (crowd clearer).
• Flickering Knight (train car security).
• The Silencer (single target).
• The Hunter (think, SEAL Team Six).

Unlike previous armed units, today’s 3D print is all about physical damage and knocking out the target. Certain targets require interrogation before extermination.

For today’s featured 3D print, we channeled the magnificent mz4250 and his insane STL library.  He’s just a madman when it comes to his DnD creativity and sheer volume of work. Like, we literally have no words. You can follow his posts on Patreon to snag free files or become a $5 monthly subscriber for organized access to all his brilliant work.

We’re picking this amazing Mighty Servant of Leuk-o to represent our new mechanical thug thumpers.

We decided to experiment a bit with the miniature’s size. First, we printed a 3D model to fill a single d20 square, then followed up with a second, larger slice to cover a 2×2 d20 area. Our sweet spot for larger miniatures is that 2×2 coverage, as those monsters are big enough to indicate a tougher fight without taking up too much precious space on our limited gameboards (not to mention storing them). We’ll still occasionally use a 3×3-plus d20-squared creature, but it’s the exception to our general build rules.

DM Ben was the painter on the spot here, as we needed these bulky bruisers for today’s article, so he colored them up over the weekend.

• Prime Flat Black | Slapchop Base.
• Body P1: Layer ASP Broadsword Silver
• Body P2: Edge and dab FAN Mithril.
• Metal Plating: ASP Talos Bronze.
• Fingers/Feet: FAN True Brass.
• Middle Dimples: Matt Black & one in WAR Elven Armour.
• FAN Dark Tone Wash

We decided to do a very simple, darker base so that everyone’s wide eyes only rested on the bruiser construct itself.

While doing our usual research for this article, we came across a really cool, alternate paint scheme that we’re absolutely going to try. It’s from the WotC prepainted version. We’ve only painted these two miniatures so far and have two more primed in black. So, we’ll just do a light grey drybrush over those, and then we’ll apply this dark blue-and-gold trim combo! Watch for the comparison in a future Train Tuesday.

We almost added more blue lights, a signal that shows the Construct is active and receiving orders. However, that paint tweak sorta breaks the design parameters we set earlier, so we resisted the urge.

Let’s finish up by getting the DnD 5e stat block for this big hitter. We loved this Warforged Titan version we found on Pinterest. It’s the kinda profile we’re going for, and its Challenge Rating (CR 8) meshes with our sixth-level party of six adventurers. Core stats include: AC: 18, HP: 100, Damage Resistances & Immunities: a lot, and Multi-attack: +9 (3d6+6 bludgeoning) & 15 ft. reach. For the smaller bot, we’re just going to halve its HP. DM Ben thinks the group could take on 2-3 of these pummelers, but there will be some eyebrow sweat for sure.

Until next time!

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We want to open with a quick word of thanks to y’all for this recent three-day hiatus as DM Ben proudly watched his youngest daughter receive her diploma from Northern Arizona University. He had to drive up to Flagstaff over the past weekend and needed a few days to reset after such an emotional day. He also had zero hobby time, so that made new posts earlier this week rather tricky.

Let’s kick things off with a couple of simple, yet important pieces of Egyptian scatter. There aren’t many showstoppers when it comes to these types of desert 3D prints, but when used in combination with awesome miniatures and slick terrain tiles, you can really set the mood around your game table in the best of ways.

Our featured statue comes from Iain Lovecraft’s epic Desert Adventures Kickstarter. Monuments were always the rage back then, so we need to ensure we represent their Gods in our underground tomb.

DM Ben keeps it simple here with our swell sandy paint scheme. We like to scale back our statues and monuments for several reasons, including storage space and room on the game table. You can certainly do some bigger statues and buildings, but that can be such a brew-ha. There’s nothing wrong with scaling your 3D prints back during slicing.

We also did a weathered mummy sarcophagus, but it’s so generic that sourcing this STL would take forever. If we had to guess, this one is probably from our pals at Aether Studios (the official terrain tile provider of this sandy blog series).

Next up, we have this frickin’ insane Subek miniature by the magnificent mz4250. We shudder to say where we would be without this epic creator in our 3D printing community. All his STLs are free (but we encourage you to check out his $5 monthly Patreon). We love the pose and details on this DnD mini. Just look at these snappers, will ya?!

Resident painter Kimmy Utah is so darn slammed these days (especially as a younger mom) that the rest of the team has been doing more of the painting lately. We just manage our expectations and continuously remind ourselves of the Arm’s Length Rule to get through the stress of it all. This is probably one of the smallest miniatures DM Ben has ever painted, but one must answer the call!

Armed with a Google Army Painter step-by-step suggestion, DM Ben took a deep breath and grabbed a brush:

• Prime Flat White.
• Skin: WAR Scaly Hide + Green Wash + Strong Tone Wash.
• Tongue/Inside Mouth: FAN Moonstone Skin.
• Teeth/Nails: White + Strong Tone Wash.
• Arm Bracers: ASP Hardened Leather.
• Belt: ASP Hardened Leather & FAN Bright Gold.
• Clothes: WAR Voidshield Blue + Blue Wash.
• Head Cloth: GSW Komodo Khaki + Brown Wash.
• Feet Tips: FAN Uniform Grey.

We were really surprised by how great Army Painter’s Scaly Hide is as a reptile color for that creature type. You can also darken that scaly skin a bit more by going over it with a light drybrush of black. Also, be sure to do some solid flocking on that base to help immerse players in their surroundings.

Let’s briefly talk DnD 5e stat blocks here. We found this “Aspect of Sobek” premade stat block on d20Radio.com and thought it was excellent. Depending on where your characters are level-wise and the number of guards on the board, you just might want to knock the HP back from 105 to more like 52-ish. You can also use this Google Search phrase (“dnd 5e sobek soldier stat block”) and get another nice alternative.

We also wanted to take a moment to congratulate all the 2026 graduates and their families on such an amazing achievement. Nothing about college is easy these days, so we consider a diploma to be the mightiest of feats. We’re proud of each and every one of you! Care to take a guess on which daughter is DM Ben’s in the pic above?

Until next time!

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