D&D Monster Manual 20: Wrath of Ashardalon – Otyugh

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Dungeons and Dragons Wrath of Ashardalon - Otyugh

Almost everything I wrote about Bellax the Gauth yesterday applies to today’s model – the Otyugh. It’s from Wrath of Ashardalon – which we’ve been playing – so it queue-jumped The Tray because “need it for the game”. It was sitting int he box, though this time it wasn’t even primed, let along base coated. It looked like a simple, quick, “easy win” as far as painting goes. It got painted from start to finish (including spraying time, drying time, and base-putty time over two days. It also has a name that sounds like a good reason to get tested for COVID if you were say it out loud three times. And finally, it’s a bloody stupid and impractical/unrealistic looking monster. Because D&D, I guess.

Dungeons and Dragons Wrath of Ashardalon - Otyugh

I checked some reference pics and found that it tends to be reprsented in that ochre/pale green/brown nspectrum, so I went there and did the pseudo-realistic-ish thing of making it slightly darker on the top and lighter below. Contrasts were used as part of the toolkit on the mouth, teeth and inner tentacles, but not as an experiment – simply as part of the painting toolkit, along with regular washes, wet blending, drybrushing and a little bit of normal picking out of highlights.

Dungeons and Dragons Wrath of Ashardalon - Otyugh

The model comes across a lot better than many of the others from these boardgames, but you can still see the lack of/very simple detail on the “teeth” on the ends of the tentacles. And, you know, I attempted to make them look not shit, but there’s also a cap on how much effort I’m willing to put into a model of this limited quality.

Dungeons and Dragons Wrath of Ashardalon - Otyugh

Here’s our scale shot alongside the other cough-noise monster – the Gauth – as well as the Dancing Dragonborn. As the Otyugh is bigger than an ogre, and is most definitely a monster model, I’m sumitting it for Ann’s Miniatures of Magnitude Challenge for May & June. Hopefully I’ll get a few more done before the end of this month that also fit the bill!

31 thoughts on “D&D Monster Manual 20: Wrath of Ashardalon – Otyugh”

    • I realised I needed to show the relative size of the Baby Beholder as well, so it worked for the three of ’em.
      And yeah, you could go all Golden Demon on these boardgame models with multi-layered shading, fancy freehand and whatnot, but ….there’s really no point!
      Speaking of. I just finished the trio of Grell now. Well, the last wash is sdrying and they still need spraying. But you get the idea. Talk about garbage models and a stupid design! They really got a quick and fast paintjob – and it’s still more than they deserve!

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  2. Ah, I remember these things back during my AD&D days. As you say, certainly Covid-worthy. If I remember correctly they more or less literally like living in shit. I think back around 1980 or 81 I wrote up an adventure for my friends where the boss was a Xorn with magical spells and very high intelligence and his upper level minions were a bunch of Otyugh. The secret entrance to the Xorn’s inner sanctum, which was the interior of a huge geode, was beneath one of their enormous crap piles (mostly the accumulation of waste from slaves) through which the Otyughs had burrowed an elaborate network of rooms and passageways. One of the players coined the title, “Dungeon of Dung.”

    Good times those … and certainly a worthy addition to the Miniatures of Magnitude challenge!

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      • Hehe, speaking for the cleric, who is my most recent character that I’ve been playing, “ALL the gold!” 🙂

        “How much is that in practical terms,” asked the wizard.

        “All of it.”

        “All that I have?”

        “No, all of the gold that exists, has ever existed, and will exist.”

        “I see,” says the wizard and begins casting 10th level spell.

        “Wait,” says cleric, “If you can do that why do you need us to go into that dungeon again?”

        Cleric looks around and realizes both barbarians and the druid left for the dungeon already.

        Bard shrugs and says, “Druid said they are going to ‘clean it it’ and make it into their base.”

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    • Well, their environmental choice certainly answers some questions. Though if I knew about that beforehand, I maye have ….decorated the model and/or it’s base a little more. I guess I could go back and add some, but maybe not?
      Just looked up the Xorn. Goddamn, D&D has some silly looking shit in it! 😀

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      • Hehe, yeah, there are certainly some goofy-looking monsters in D&D’s history, lol. I don’t know, I think your Otyugh looks just fine the way it is. 🙂

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  4. The colours you’ve chosen and technique have added a lot to this weird beastie, and another one finished, plus bonus entry in Ann’s challenge

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    • Thanks Dave! We pled through an adventure that had a chance of actually spawning it yesterday. We got a magical gate and cultists instead, so off-table it remains for now…

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  5. Very nice work, funnily enough I’d never heard of these till last week and now like buses two arrive!
    Here a link to the other one….

    IMG_1496

    You might like to enter Keith’s “Monster May(hem)” month next year, as you have painted up several worthy entries this year without even realising it!

    Cheers Roger.

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    • Ah yeah – I might have even managed to do so as these would have gone up a week or so ago but I just couldn’t be bothered writing any new posts last week! I did that thing that I do where I set up several days worth of posts and then schedule them to go up over several days – makes it a lot easier sometimes. So when they ran out, so did my new posts!

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    • Oho! Good spot, Wudugast! Maybe I’ll get some actual use out of this thing as it’s a boss monster in the boardgame (so rarely seen) and then once we finish Ashardalon we’re going to be onto the next one – and I haven’t played D&D/Pathfinder in quite a few years…

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  7. I was thinking the same about not being very realistic haha. I was wondering what does it do with those limbs, exactly? How does it eat, etc.? It does look pretty fierce though and I think you did an excellent job painting it. The skin has nice texture to it which really brings the whole thing to life.

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    • Oh, .it gets worse. Much, much worse. My best guesses are that the guys who came up with a lot of this stuff were stoners with untethered imaginations. And by untethered, I mean they didn’t worry about things like biological niches or physiology. “A Wizard did it!” I guess…

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      • Me neither, though more than a few of them mostly make me facepalm. Maybe because I’m so used to Warhammer is why that IP’s stuff doesn’t offend my delicate seinsibilities int he same way – or maybe it’s because most of the truly way-out-there Warhammer stuff are literally daemons, so “A Wizard Did It” is inherently baked in.

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  8. Nice work! I remember seeing these in the old Monster Manual, but we never had to encounter one.
    Probably had to fight one in a D&D computer game at some point, I’m sure. Colors look spot on!

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    • Thanks mate! My entire experience with these things in all my gaming so far has been noticing it was in the box and then painting and posting it. Well, I lie. I must have also seen it in the box when we originally opened it up about 8-ish years ago. 😉

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  13. Pingback: Miniatures of Magnitude Painting Challenge Round-up | Ann's Immaterium

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