D&D Monster Manual 94: Temple of Elemental Evil – Bugbears & Doppelgangers

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Bugbears & Doppelgangers

I’ve decided to keep hitting the D&D models in an effort to knock those remaining numbers down so we can play the boxed games at our leisure. Today’s fodder is a trio of Bugbears and a trio of Doppelgangers. Or to put it another way – a trio of decent-for-boardgame models and a trio of trash.

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Bugbears

The Bugbears are some of the better sculpts to come out of these Adventure Boardgame boxes – solidly “Nolzurs” quality, which makes total sense.

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Bugbears

They do at least manage to have a little bit of character along with some reasonable detail. Of course, I’m judging these things on a sliding scale. They’re not Citadel nor Rackham nor Tre’ Manor or even FFG Boardgame sculpts. They’re very comparable to random Reaper models, for example.

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Bugbears

But yeah, ultimately they’ll do the job, and I’m happy with this trio of Wookiee-wannabes. Browns and metals, pretty simple, but enough details on them so I needed to have my eyes open to paint them over the course of a few days.

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Doppelgangers

The Doppelgangers on the other hand are much more on the trash side and were two coats of Contrast over white spray, two or three layers of drybrush, a little bit on the faces and eyes, and then the bases. I guess it’s probably a byproduct of trying to create finely detailed models in this scale in this material.

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Doppelgangers

They look pretty much like Greys to me, but I guess this is their “unchanged” form before they use their polymorphine to take the shape of that Ork Bodyguard model before assassinating the Warboss to put an end to the WAAAGH for the God-Emperor of Mankind. Or summat like that.

Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Figures D&D Temple of Elemental Evil – Bugbears & Doppelgangers

I thought I’d add in a Player Character model here so the size difference can be seen. The Bugbears have a bit of bulk to them, while the Doppelgangers look pretty weedy. If you enjoy looking at Bugbears, why not wander over to Faust’s Blog, Double Down Dice and check out his recently-painted gang of bears that don’t actually look like bugs.

May 2023 Monthly Round-Up & Monster MAYhem Challenge

Here’s May’s Round-Up! I wanted to get this one up closer to the first of the month, but had that thing happen where there was a lull in getting models finished, followed by a flood at the end – and I prefer to have more individual posts for a model type or two over larger volumes – makes it much easier for me to find my stuff later. So now that you’ve had several days of non-stop D&D Boardgame models, we get the round-up and in a couple of days we can get back to the D&D models (and hopefully some other stuff!)

Looking at this picture I actually noticed that there’s a total of zero Warhammer/Games Workshop models here. I’m not even sure how unusual that’s become. The funny thing is that I really don’t feel that in my painting sessions, but perhaps that’s because I’m actually regularly working on some GW models, even if they don’t hit the finish line every month while I concentrate on these various boardgame projects.

The breakdown of the month’s efforts comes down to 6 D&D Heroes (2 of which are good models from GF9), 10 D&D Boardgame enemies and 2 Villains. A pair of Gricks from Nolzurs as well as a Slaad and Dire/Hell Board from Reaper’s Bones. 2 more Investigators from Cthulhu: Death May Die and 2 Mythos Creatures for them to battle. 2 more of the Zombicide 2nd Edition KS Bonus Abominations and one from Black Plague. And finally, the Basilisk/Giant Snake from Mythic Battles Panthenon. Emphasis on finally for that one.

The model-finish count then is 30 models for a month of 31 days – FAILSAUCE! Don’t worry son, I’m not angry, just disappointed.

But not very. May was looking like this from the start. Blame Dead Island 2. Getting to 30 given the number of Zombies that Marouda and I slaughtered last month was actually pretty good in my opinion. Anyway, we’ll add that 30 to the 87 I had at the end of April and we’re at 117 at the end of May, the 151st day of the year – looks like I’ve got some serious catching up to do! Will it be 15mm WWII models or tons of tiny bits of scatter terrrain that artificually pumps up my numbers? 😀

ahem.

May was also the month of the Monster MAYhem challenge, once again hosted by The Angry Piper (who seems much more pleasant than his moniker would suggest) at Dead Dick’s Tavern and Temporary Lodging. If you’re so inclined, I’d recommend that you pop over there to see some very nice models. There’s quite a few on Instagram as well, but given that bots kept trying to log into my account last time I had one, I had to nuke the whole thing from orbit, so I don’t get to see a lot of those models unfortunately. Then again, fuck Mark Zuckerberg and Meta/Facebook. 😀

I always find the two monster painting monthly challenges – Monster March and then Monster MAYhem each year to be incredibly useful for motivating me to get these larger models done – they essentiually work as a team for me mentally in a three month block to finally get models finished and new models started. There’s always tons more than I can get done, of course – games like the Zombicide Series and now Death May Die have an endless swarm of giant beasts – and I’ve got another of the giant Mythic Battles monsters in a box that I shelved last year due to lack of motivation to finish during these challenges, I’ve got the Marauder Giant still in pieces because that Patchwork tunic has been cockblocking me mentally for several decades, a trio of Forgeworld horribles that I based and primed for last year’s challenges and didn’t get beyond that, and then didn’t work on at all this year, and at least three Citadel Ogres of various kinds that I did a little on, but not enough to get through.

So yeah, getting through eight of these models in a month is something that I can definitely credit Monster MAYhem with having a big positive impact on – especially on that bloody Basilisk/Snake and Wolverine Scissorhands there – both of which have been hanging around for a LONG time (a year and years – plural).

This month (June) I’ll be trying to finish off a few of the Monsters that didn’t make the month’s end -which still gets me more of these bigger bastards finished and potentially onto the table – so the tail of the Monster March-MAYhem challenges also helps my painting for the following month.

Anyway, that’s enough blather from me for the time being. Stay tuned in a couple of days for another post filled with trashy D&D boardgame models unless I manage to finish something more interesting before then!