I picked up a copy of the new “Essentials” set and since it’s set in the area of Phandalin where my players’ characters are already located, we’re going to do at least a few sessions from the material there. I’ll have to beef up the opposition a bit to make some of it more level-appropriate, but it will give them some more time to explore the region.

To that end, many of the minis I’ve been printing are based on expected encounters in that book’s adventures. Fortunately, many of those are plant and animal based monsters that don’t require a lot of minute detail work… so just the kind of thing I like to think I can paint at this stage without screwing up too much.

I’m still trying a lot of different base ideas. I initially liked transparent discs because they allow the landscape the creature is walking on to show through, but I’ve grown less attached to the idea over time. I’ve seen some yellowing of some of the discs, for one thing, and where little bits of glue overrun from attaching the mini can be hidden on bases with paint or terrain, they’ve obvious on the clear bases and hard to clean off without causing scrapes.

That, and I kind of enjoy doing “real” bases. There’s a mix below of clear ones, painted ones printed with textures on them, and quite a few where I used flocking and grout-and-dirt mix to create outdoor earthen bases.

Minor Essentials kit spoilers below.

We bought a zoo

There are a fair number of animals in Essentials. There are encounters with rats, both were- and giant. There’s a cult that worships a spirit boar, and whose members actually shape-shift into boars. There are wolves as well.

The large wolves in the left rear of the photo above were one of the first things I printed, from a file called “angry wolf”. On seeing the size of them I decided they were more appropriate as dire wolves, so I found some other, more realistic wolf models to print. The big ones needed long bases, which I also printed from a collection of cavalry bases.

The painting on these was done almost entirely with just washes. Army Painter Strong Tone and Dark Tone – sometimes one or the other, and sometimes layers of both – over gray primer actually created a reasonable look for forest critters. Contrast paints produced mixed results on them because many of them had relatively featureless hindquarters, though I did use them for some of the textured bases.

I added a little clump foliage or grass tufts to a few of the painted bases. The more elaborate bases were coated with grout/soil first, then flocked with grass, then in some cases also adorned with tufts or clumps.

Blight makes right

Essentials features some plant-based creatures call blights. There are twig blights, vine blights, and needle blights, and a tree that spits out more of them. So I made some.

The twig and vine varieties had lots of interesting wrinkles so the contrast paints worked well on them. I used them on the needles as well, but those didn’t have enough texture to really work as well. The browns were done with Snakebite Leather, greens in Creed Camo.

I added a little grass flock to the extremities of the twig blights, resulting in a few of them having what on first glance might appear to be leafy green afros. Again I used an assortment of bases decorated with an assortment of materials.