D&D Monster Manual 90: Dungeon of the Mad Mage – Zalthar Shadowdusk & Dezmyr Shadowdusk

Dungeons and Dragons D&D Dungeon of the Mad Mage – Zalthar Shadowdusk &; Dezmyr Shadowdusk Painted Miniatures

We’re back to the trashy D&D models today, this time both models are completely awful sculpts – to the level where if I wasn’t tracking everything that I paint with the blog I wouldn’t post them at all, and even then I’d not be posting them if I had some other monster models from the same set to bundle them in with. But with the days of May at their end, I’m just treating the blogging process for these two models the same way I had to treat the painting process – like ripping off a Band-Aid! Now apparently the Shadowdusk clan feature somewhat in the fiction of D&D, though I’m entirely ignorant of how important or how featured they are across the media, particularly this pair of siblings. Apparently they’re Death Knights and most likely undead by the point in the timeline that we’ll be encountering them in the aforementioned Dungeon.

Dungeons and Dragons D&D Dungeon of the Mad Mage – Zalthar Shadowdusk &; Dezmyr Shadowdusk Painted Miniatures

It’s hard to understand how a company with any level of art editing would let these two sculpts through for anything beyond shitty grunts – let alone a pair of named characters of any importance. Even Gary Morley’s original Nagash sculpt was an imposing model! With that in mind, along with these sculpts being absolutely shit-awful, I decided to ignore the worn, rusted metal that they’re depicted as having and go straight to colourful plate. A little inspired by World of Warcraft in some ways, but equally since they’re supposed to be bosses of some description in the game, and plain armour with shitty underwhelming sculpts would just make them look like a pair of unimportant grunts. So to make them stand out, they both got metallic armour in different shades of purple, so they can both stand out from the grunts in the game while also being able to tell them apart.

Aaaand that’s pretty much it for these two…

D&D Monster Manual 54: Dungeon of the Mad Mage – Grung Assassins & Elite Warrior

D&D Miniatures, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Grung Assassins, Grung Elite Warrior

A little more D&D today, both figuratively as well as quite literally. These four figures are “Grung“, apparently, and no doubt predate and serves as inspiration for EverQuest’s Frogloks and in turn, Warcraft’s Murlocs. I checked out the D&D Wiki’s page foir the first time while writing this text, and so have just found out that the Elite Warrior “should” apparently be coloured either orange or golden. I had instead painted him/her/it with a series of black and yellow Rorscharch-like spot-markings to distinguish it as the elite. Ah well, keeping ’em green was good enough for Guk and it’s certainly good enough for me. 😀

D&D Miniatures, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Grung Assassins, Grung Elite Warrior, Murial the Misshapen, Heskan Dragonborn Wizard, Warhammer Warrior Priest

Painting of these models was done pretty simply – a mix of VGC Escorpena Green (similar to GW Moot Green) mixed with a lot of yellow to achieve something like old-GW Bilious Green. This was then covered with medium-thinned Contrast Warp Lightning and left to baste for about three months. By which I mean they sat on the paint desk for about that long untouched. Then this week after finishing Murial, I did their bases, gear and eyeballs. Job done! I’ve included the “action shot” here alongside Murial, an official D&D humanoid and a Warhammer model to provide scale for both the man-scorpion and the not-murlocs. As with their boxmate, Murial, I’ve had them for long enough to qualify for Ann’s “Neglected But Not Forgotten” painting challenge – so 4 more done for that!