Meet the PC: Broecksiog, Gnomish Druid

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.

Our final hero from the King for a Day is Broecksiog (pronounced Brock-Shogue), our Gnome druid. In this setting gnomes are more like forces of nature who take physical form. So one day a a gnome might pop out of a grove of trees, mountainside, or waterfall and feel like learning what it's like to be a squishy humanoid for a while. Broc popped out of nature with a green bread & a pair of stag horns. He joined our party, mostly because he wanted to see what kings were like, and decided to go along for the adventure

The mini comes from the Stonehaven Miniatures' gnome range. I even got the mini for free. I contacted Stonehaven about a miscast I received from the Elven Adventurers kickstarter, and asked if I could purchase the gnome and consolidate shipping. They said they'd simply send me both for free. Great customer service. Unfortunately Broecksiog wields a staff rather than a halberd, so I trimmed & reshaped the blade a bit.

Here are a few shots from before I clipped off the glaive portion.

Keeping with the seasonal theme, and the fact he had a green beard, I wanted our druid to wear natural Spring colors. I wasn't sure what color to make the surcoat, but I wanted something light, so I eventually landed on light blue. Lavender might've been a better choice, but oh well. I'm fairly satisfied.

With that, I've completed the whole party. Here's our motley band of misfits:

This is one of the first times I actually completed an entire group of PCs before the end of the campaign (the other that I can remember was a D&D Castlevania game a few years back). As a whole group I think they stand together fairly well, while being individually pleasing minis. I'd say that Bran, the cleric stands out as being the most different compared to the other minis, just because he's taller, & doesn't share many colors with the rest of the party.

Star Wars Imperial Assault: Fenn Signis & Jyn Odan

Over the Summer I ended up taking a few community college classes to brush up on some of the subjects I might be teaching this school year. During a few lectures I'd open a firefox window on my laptop & skim over gaming rumors, GW minis, painting blogs & whatnot. It was a bit of a distraction, but it kept my mind from wandering too far.

During one break a guy approached me, said he noticed I was looking at miniatures, and asked if I knew anything about painting, and if so, if I ever did commissions.

Why yes, yes I do.

Apparently he really enjoys Imperial Assault, & wanted a few of his figures painted up nicely. A week later he handed them off to me along with his phone number and a request that I try to paint them close to their character portraits. Unfortunately I promptly lost the number after one of my kids "helped" clean out my laptop case. Regardless, I did my best on the minis he entrusted me to paint:

The original character portraits:

The minis are kinda soft, like most PVC, but still sturdy enough to hold up to some handling. I boiled & reshaped the weapons & Jyn's posture a bit, but other than that they were fairly stable. They're far better minis than the Fantasy Flight Adventurers I painted last year (David & Maki). Both are fairly well detailed, and although Jyn's face suffers a bit from the flatness you can see with PVC sometimes it wasn't the worst I'd dealt with. 

Painting-wise I stayed fairly close, Painting Fenn's visor was an entertaining challenge that required a good bit of blending. I think I fudged the color of Jyn's coat a bit. The portrait shows a darker orange than I painted. Maybe I'll add a wash of Fuegan Orange to tone it down. We'll see if he likes it.

~Muninn

(Good news, while tidying my kids' room tonight I found his number, so I can actually give them back.)

Meet the PC: Nightbreeze, Elven ranger

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.

I think this makes my fourth or fifth elven ranger character (1, 2, 3, 4th hasn't been photographed yet)

Again from "King for a Day," Nightbreeze is our deadly, stealthy, two-weapon-wielding, ranger. In the campaign world there are a handful of godlike dragons that rule over the mortal, fey, and shadow realms with an iron claw, and Nightbreeze left her home to find out how to kill the dragon that rules over her elven nation. She first went to the dying king (since he once led a party to slay one of the dragons) but became wrapped up in the party's quest to find his successor.

I thought the best mini to represent her was Reaper's Deladrin.  I knew I'd need a weapon swap, so I chose to use the Bones version. I needed two identical elven-looking blades on the cheap, so I found some loose Lord of the Rings minis at my FLGS and stole their swords. I paid a bit more than I wanted, but it works well.

I wanted to strike a balance between summery and stealthy, so I went for citrussy olive green armor, a dark blue undersuit, and deep green cloak. I had been planning on painting to scarf a light grey, but Yorrik reminded me that we'd just come across a yellow magic scarf that was perfect for a two-weapon fighter like Nightbreeze.

More later,

~Muninn

Meet the PC: Myev, Kobold Warlock

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.

Myev is one of the weirder members of our King for a Day band. She (or He maybe? You can never tell with reptiles) is an emissary from a nation of swamp kobolds attempting to open up trade deals with a neighboring kingdom. Unfortunately, the king was on his deathbed & his successor is missing, so She/He joined the hunt for him, & continues to try to negotiate along the way. At one point she tried to offer military support, cuz who doesn't want an army of kobolds? Myev follows a Cthulu-like entity, although we haven't really gotten into that facet of the character.

There weren't a lot of options for Kobold magic users, so I decided to go the easy route & use the Kobold Sorcerer. Yorrik had it already, so all the better. Yes it has sunglasses, a fact I didn't realize until I started painting. It's like a little lizard Morpheus.

 I wasn't sure about how to paint this mini. I'd blocked out seasonal-themed colors for the other PCs, but Myev here was the fifth character. I knew the player wanted Myev to have grey-green skin, so I started there. I then added some maroon to complement, & decided to make everything else dark & swampy. It makes the green pop fairly well, so I think it plays nicely.

~Muninn

Meet the PC: Tarn Hillhaven, Human Bard

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.

Continuing the minis from Yorrik's "King for a Day" campaign, today's PC is Tarn Hillhaven, a Skald attempting to find his missing lord. It just so happens the old king was on his death bed & declared the missing noble his successor, so now the PCs are trying to find him before the whole kingdom erupts into civil war (it might have already, but we're in the mountains at the moment). He's more of a long-range character, shooting his bow, casting spells, & buffing the team from a distance.

When I was deciding on color schemes I'd originally wanted to do a seasonal theme, where the cleric, Bran represented Winter, our druid in Spring colors, the ranger in Summer, and Tarn here in Autumn colors (I'd forgotten we had a fifth PC, a warlock). I figure bards should be more vibrant, so I liked orange & a reddish purple for him.

This is actually the first mini I've painted up from my Bones II kickstarter. It's the Pathfinder Eando Kline mini. I mentioned in my last Meet the PC how hard it was to find a good human minis wielding a bow, so I decided to look for something I could do a weapon-swap with. Fortunately Eando here has two empty hands.

One of the good things about Bones minis is that they're really easy to carve, so it was really easy to cut a gap in the back of his hand, fit the whole bow into the gap then refill the back of the hand with greenstuff.

Meet the PC: Vincent, Half-elf Ranger

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.

A while back I took part in a 13^th Age game led by Yorrik. It was my chance to finally play a Dwarf Rogue, and my buddy Anthony’s first time joining my gaming group. He gravitates towards wizards, but decided to branch out for this campaign, & opted for a Ranger. Specifically he chose a half-elven military scout. 

In 13^th Age, each character has a “one special thing” built in as part of the character, a defining characteristic, or interesting story element. Vincent’s “one thing” was that he was cursed to tell the truth whenever he’s asked a question. It made negotiating kinda difficult.

The mini is the Ivy Crown Archer from Reaper’s Crusader line. I actually bought this mini during my trip to Reaper HQ two years ago. It is remarkably difficult to find a bow-wielding human that doesn’t look like he’s been living in the woods for a decade, mountain man style. This guy, while not perfect, fit the bill for a military bowman.

  

To make him accurate, I modeled a some pointy corners to his ears to make him a half-elf, and replaced his sword with an axe. overall a simple conversion. I chose to give him an earthy red uniform matched with brown & bronze to give him a more utilitarian look. He's supposed to have a wolfhound companion, but in the last encounter the big boss monster swallowed it whole. If we ever play again, and if he gets a new animal companion, I'll paint him something new.

~Muninn