Tag Archives: Castle Ravenloft

D&D Monster Manual 11: Castle Ravenloft Wolves, Rats and Giant Spiders

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I haven’t had much to show recently. A combination of work ramping up as we come to the middle of the year, new duties at work on top of my usual turning out to be a far heavier workload than expected and of course, the onset of winter – shorter days and bloody cold! All of these factors have combined to drastically reduce  my output and energy. This weekend I managed to finish some goblins, but it’s basically so cold right now that I’m concerned that spray varnish could wreck the figures, so they’ll remain 95% done and unphotographed until we get a day that’s both warm enough and one where I’m able to be home to spray.

So in lieu of something newly-painted, I have some more Dungeons and Dragons Boardgame models today. These three aren’t the most exciting or inspiring figures from the Ravenloft Boxed set, but hey – they’re done and they work on the table.

D&D Castle Ravenloft Giant Spiders

The Spiders. Well, they’re not amazing sculpts and didn’t exactly inspire me, so I decided to look to one of the “local heroes” of spiders – The Australian Redback spider. Of course, the sculpts look nothing like an actual Redback, but what can you do? These were simply painted to what I’d consider a basic boardgame standard.

D&D Castle Ravenloft Wolves

Next up we have the Wolves. These are also somewhat average sculpts – though better than the spiders. I tried to make them look a little bit realistic, though their awkward pose, soft detail and super-heroic-scale proportions don’t help. While I’ve given a little bit of extra effort to them in trying to give them somewhat realistic colouration and some facial markings. While it would have been easier to simply paint them black or brown, that would bore me to tears. Of course, when blown up this large, they look awful. Such is the price of zoom photography.

D&D Castle Ravenloft Wolves

D&D Castle Ravenloft Wolf Faces

Again, I’ve gotten to a point where I felt they were “good enough” – because again – boardgame models, not centrepiece wargaming or display models.

D&D Castle Ravenloft Rat Swarms

Finally, the bases of Rats. Or Rat Swarms. Whatever. They’re actually fine for what they are. But let’s face it – how much can you bring yourself to care about something like this? Once again – boardgame models that are “good enough“. I’m hardly going to detail the faces on these little ones, after all.

D&D Monster Manual 10: Castle Ravenloft Wraiths and Blazing Skeletons

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More Dungeons and Dragons Boardgame models today. The Wraiths and Blazing Skeletons. Both of these sculpts come in transparent blue plastic, so painting them is a little different.

Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft – “Flaming Skeletons”

You really don’t want to be undercoating these if you want to retain the semi-transparent look. I gave both of them a bit of a wash with dark blue ink in order to deepen the shadows, which has worked in one way and not been so great in another, as they have lost a certain amount of their transparency by doing so. The Blazing Skeletons are pretty nice models, actually – the only really “difficult” part being how the fireball is indistinct from the rest of the flames happening on the model.

Dungeons and Dragons: Castle Ravenloft – “Wraith”

The Wraiths aren’t bad models either. A little ham-handed perhaps, but that’s hardly a new thing to miniatures. Simple enough, but overall quite effective.

Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft - "Flaming Skeletons" "Wraith"

Size Comparison with The Usual Suspect

Obviously, the place for these figures to get more use would be in the Undead Army. What to use them for on the other hand is a little trickier. The wraiths would obviously see most approrriate use as Wraiths, but that role is more than competently taken care of both by the reams of Army of the Dead models from LotR as well as the old Citadel Spirit Host (Ghost Swarm) models that I repainted last year. Smaller numbers have any number of very nice models in LotR Barrow-Wights, Otherworld Miniatures’ Wights and the like. Perhaps if the AotD get split off into a separate Army of the Necromancer or something. I dunno. Suggestions on near-term use for those models would always be welcome.

The Blazing Skeletons have a similar problem – what to use them for? If I were really lazy or creative, I could try suggesting that they’re stand-ins for War Machines. What with the huge blue fireballs they’re about to Ha-dou-ken at their enemies. Thing is of course, that I already have some Undead Warmachines (and two more Skull Chuckers to sort out, and a TK Screaming Skull on the radar.)

So, I dunno. Smush them in with Undead Archers since they’re all ranged? Seems a bit ill-fitting somehow. Use them as Undead Characters/casters? While that could work ont he surface, these models don’t look like interesting characters, and Undead Characters seems to be one of the most heavily-populated subgenres of miniatures available – both from older metal collections like my Citadel stuff as well as endless newer models from Reaper, Bones, etc.