Meet the PC: Harkoth, Dragonborn Warlord

One of my favorite parts about tabletop roleplaying is finding, modeling, and painting the perfect miniatures for our party PCs. I've been doing this for years now, and thought I'd share some of these characters with you.

His all! Yorrik here to talk about some of my own pieces for the blog. Most of my tabletop roleplaying experience has been in the Gamemaster's chair, which means that quite a bit of my creative output is tied up in the preparations for that role. Whenever I get a chance to be a player in a game, I like to add a little something to the proceedings (a little something that I might not have had the time to contribute if I were the GM). When a friend of ours offered to run a little D&D 4E for us, I jumped at the chance to convert and paint some PC minis, and I was struck with the whim to paint them with a particular theme in mind. Fourth Edition is the most "board game-y" iteration of D&D so far (with the use of a battle grid compulsory) so I decided to embrace that idea and paint the five player characters in a color-coded fashion reminiscent of the board game Clue.

The Warlord class is, in my opinion, one of the best things to come out of 4th edition D&D. They effectively gave mechanics to an archetype that many players were already klugding together from the fighter and bard:

an inspiring officer or combat leader that could fight as well as command. Harkoth here was a mercenary sergeant turned adventurer, more bombast and bravado than cunning and strategy. 

I started with Golanth, Half Dragon Warrior as a base. This is a mini where I love the converted elements quite a bit, but feel a little cold on the paintjob. Roshko (the player) wanted his character to use a warhammer, so I pulled an old metal bit from the bits box and made it happen. I eschewed the stylized "dragon scale" shield that came with the model in favor of a smaller, more weathered-looking bit from the Vampire Counts range (from the skeleton box, I believe). The strap across his chest connects to a backpack on his back, sculpted from greenstuff. I felt the pack was necessary to bulk out the model's torso (the mini suffer from a certain scrawniness up top) as well as to give him some adventuring panache. The armor, shield and scales were painted with a similar recipe of red, though the scales had an extra layer or two of orange highlights to give them a subtle difference. The metal areas were painted with typical metal paints, then the whole model was doused in red wash. The base was painted grey and drybrushed bone, then washed red to make it match the mini. If I were to go back and paint this model again I would darken the armor or brighten the scales to give the mini more contrast. That said, I find it to be a great addition to the set, and it served it's purpose by being immediately recognizable on the battle mat.