Another of the few remaining outstanding models from The Legend of Drizzt Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Boardgame to show today. This model is a “Drider”, which is to say a hybrid of “Drow” (aka Dark Elf) and “Spider” (you should already know these things).
Apparently this particular Drider is also a relevant character from the Drizzt “universe”. I googled it and it turns out that Dinin is Drizzt’s Brother. I may or may not have read the relevant book back in the day (I read a few of the first ones) but don’t recall a whole lot about them now, 20+ years later except that they were enjoyable enough pulp fantasy affairs to read while travelling on a trip overseas.
Again, I wanted to give a “naturalistic” look to the unnatural colour, and so have mottled the spider-abdomen on old Dinero here. It’s a little washed out in the photo, but you ger the idea.
In something that should come as no real surprise, I painted Din Djarin here alongside the Giant Spider from Massive Darkness a couple of weeks ago. I’d wanted to hold off posting him until I had some more of those D&D models from the same set completed to post alongside, but as I’ve lost a lot of time over the past three weekends with other matters and the month is drawing towards the end, I decided to just get him posted up today.
The main reason I’ve needed to get him posted today was of course for the Monster March painting challenge, over at Path of an Outcast I’ve got one more week to see how much more I can get painted and posted…
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
I know part of the color choice was to make him look a little less spider-looking, but it actually works really well with the Drow skin. The end result is that you’ve probably ended up with the coolest looking take on a Drider that anyone’s done (at least from eyes)! I imagine there is a Mind Flayer or two in there? If you’ve painted them in a different color scheme, I would be interested in seeing them side by side at some point. At any rate, great work! 😃
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Thank you!
Remaining for the game, I have 4 named Drow, 3 heroes, 1 Mind Flava Flav and the last Drow Swordsman (that I found). So… maybe a weekend or two that aren’t taken up by various bullshit and I should be able to get them all done.
I initially gave him blue skin but tuned it to be a bit more purplish so that it would blend with the spider body (that I painted first). I used to play EverQuest & World of Warcraft so between their Dark Elves and Night Elves I figure there’s a lot of skin tone variety that can work well for the Drow and their subsets.
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Yep, and different D&D artists have given them different skin anyways. Originally they were described as having pure black skin. But you can imagine how unnatural that would look in a color painting. Nice to hear that you’re not too far off from finishing the box! 😃
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Yeah I do recall that now that you mention it. I was “Oh, okay.” When the Dark Elves in EQ were dark blue. Of course, EQ was also my first encounter with Driders, which they called Drachnids. Creepy bastards…
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Bonkers concept for a character, but very cool paint job mate – he would make a good Champ of Slaanesh as well!
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Thanks Alex – D&D has a whole race of these! I guess it’s kinda like how serpents, Gorgons and the Naga tie in with Warhammer’s Witch Elves. D&D’s versions have a spider fetish instead… 😮
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That’s brilliant, but so creepy! 🙂
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Thanks John! I’ve got one more large spider on the painting desk, but it might not get done until Monster MayHem at this rate and with the other minis higher on the current food chain, so you’ve got a bit of respite…
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The colour choices work really well together, and help blend the two parts together so they look like they belong, great idea making the drow skin closer to the spider.
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Thanks Dave. The colours were about as much as I could do to make this model look passable for a blog post. Of course it’ll look fine in use on the tabletop which is the main thing. 🙂
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Great work on this one. I must get my Reaper version done as it is almost finished, and has been for nearly 12 months!
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Haha I know the feeling. This one has been floating around for about a decade now, so it’s nice to get finished – if only because it’s another step closer to having another boardgame fully painted…
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Lovely bit of painting, but I have to say I’m not that overly impressed with the actual figure, with this one.
Sorry defiantly no reflection on your work, which is top notch as always mate.
Cheers Roger.
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Not at all, Roger. It’s from the Drizzt box which features such miniature luminaries as that “Cattie-Brie” figure I finished some time ago. These earlier boxes vary wildly in individual mini quality, usually taken from the D&D prepaint range. They predate the more current use of the much improved Nolzurs sculpts by quite a few years…
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You did a great job with an inferior sculpt here, mate. I really like how the spider color ties into the previous one. Little touches like that add some logic and sense to the worlds we create which is always a good thing.
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Thanks mate. Logic tells me that I shouldn’t bother painting these badly-sculpted D&D figures at all, but since I’m so close to completing this particular board game completely I reckon I’m just going to try and push through in the next month, espcially since they will only need “good enough” paintwork on them to make the boardgame look a lot better. After that, I’m planning to actually play through the boardgame’s campaign this Winter since these games are simple but still pretty enjoyable with a co-op friend or two.
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I admire you’re ability to power through and paint these minis. I struggle to paint sculpts that “aren’t good enough” which I’m sure I mention frequently 🙂 I’m glad you’ll be able to play through the campaign later this year. I think that will make the time and energy put into painting these well worth it.
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Yeah, I just find that if I lower my standards a bit then I can get them done. You’d certainly relate as to how much the aesthetic of a painted game has a quality that lifts it above the same game with unpainted models – even if the game is fun on its own merits.
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Yes, I can. It makes all the difference in the world, I would say and there is plenty of wisdom in that approach.
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Yeah, especially so when the models just aren’t that great – these D&D games compard to something like a Warhammer Quest game make it so much easier to get them painted in that way since you don’t care about the models nearly as much…
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Oh man, I haven’t thought about Driders in years. They used to frequent the games of D&D my friends and I played. Great work on the models, and thanks for the trip down memory lane.
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Haha thanks! My main experience with them was via their totally-not-copyright-infringing cousins in EverQuest’s Kunark expansion, the Drachnids!
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Fabuis would be proud! great post man. I am currently looking out for Drizzzt novels as I really want, or rather, have been wanting to read his tales for a few years now.
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From my memory of reading the first few they’re not bad at all. I certainly enjoyed them at the time I read them about 20-25 years ago now, so I’m sure at least many of them will still hold up as a fun read.
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