D&D ̶M̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ Hero Manual 89: GF9 D&D Collectors Series – Drizzt Do’Urden, Drow Ranger & Regis, Halfling Rogue

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Gale Force Nine GF9 D&D Collectors Series - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger & Regis, Halfling Rogue

Today’s post features a pair of “upgrade” player character models for use in The Legend of Drizzt Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Boardgame. This time it’s Drizzt (again) and Regis (also, again) but this time the sculpts come from a Gale Force Nine box of on-sprue HIPS models of the characters, the box being called “Drizzt & the Companions of the Hall”.

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Gale Force Nine GF9 D&D Collectors Series - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger & Regis, Halfling Rogue

Once again, I went with the dark sea green armour for Drizzt, since the brown look does nothing for me. I did obviously paint in some of the larger flaps of armour in a reddish brown, though.

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Gale Force Nine GF9 D&D Collectors Series - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger & Regis, Halfling Rogue

Similarly, I painted Regis in much the same was as the PVC model from the board game. The official base has Regis standing on top of a (treasure) chest, which I get is thematic for a Rogue/Thief, especially for a display model, but it’s a bit too far down the “mobile tactical rock” road for a gameplay model for me.

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Gale Force Nine GF9 D&D Collectors Series - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger & Regis, Halfling Rogue

With that in mind, the big(!) change for Regis was basing him on a sculpted base from the Archon villagers box from their kickstarter instead of the base that he came with. I was lucky enough to find a base with a little sculpted trapdoor, some lockpicks and an open padlock. Perfect!

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Gale Force Nine GF9 D&D Collectors Series - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger

And here’s the GF9 Drizzt alongside his WotC counterpart. Obviously the new HIPS figure is a lot nicer, the WotC figure is at least one of the better ones from the set, so the contrast isn’t as large as it will be with some others – for example, once I get to Cattie-Brie(!)

Dungeons & Dragons Heroes Gale Force Nine GF9 D&D Collectors Series - Regis, Halfling Rogue

Finally, Regis. Looks like he grew a little and fixed his hair. Again, not the worst of the Wizards’ sculpts, but the GF9 is clearly superior. It’ll be a little while before I get any of the others from this set painted, but I will eventually get the more egregiously bad models replaced with these nicer versions of the characters.

D&D ̶M̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ Hero Manual 82: The Legend of Drizzt – Drizzt Do’Urden, Drow Ranger & Guenhwyvar the Panther

D&D Heroes: The Legend of Drizzt - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger & Guenhwyvar the Panther Miniature

The last, final model from The Legend of Drizzt Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Boardgame is complete! The title character, Drizzt himself. I also revisited his animal compantion/familiar, Guenhwyvar the Panther as well. Despite having previously finished Guenhwyvar in the past, I went back and rebased the model as well as added some new layers of highlighting to the black fur – this way Guenhwyvar’s model fits in properly alongside Drizzt and the other Companions of the Hall’s models.

How to paint Drizzt, though? In a lot of art depictions of the character, his (presumably leather) armour is brown, but it looked – in a word – poopy to me. So other options, then. In the artwork for the game box, it looks pretty dark and not especially brown.

I looked around and found an action figure by Hasbro of Drizzt where he’s depicted wearing a kind of dark sea green/turquoise armour. With that, we had a winnar! While Drizzt’s skin is listed as jet black in some descriptions and dark blue in others, I’m not super happy with how the dark blue skin on Yvonnel Baenre came out in my recent model, especially compared to the desaturated lighter blues of my other Drow, so Drizzt got the lighter skin tone instead. It happened to be pretty close to the Hasbro figure as well, so maybe Drizzt’s skin has been retconned in the official media as well? Dunno. Also, don’t really care as I’m not invested hugely in these characters beyond this series of board games…

D&D Heroes: The Legend of Drizzt - Drizzt Do'Urden, Drow Ranger & Guenhwyvar the Panther

I kept the green cloak because ranger, though went with a deep red-brown inside of the cloak, both for visual interest as well as a rationale that it could be reversable depending on the seasonal environment.

Dungeons and Dragons D&D Adventure Boardgame: The Legend of Drizzt

A miniatures board game fully painted before we even completed playing the thing! We even got to play through a couple of scenarios earlier today. As you can see, we’re still using a proxy for Cattie-Brie because the actual model is so awful, and Artemis could probably do with a decent replacement as well…