These are Reaper minis sculpted by Tre Manor. One orc is never enough. Four orcs is never enough. But I’ll never have the patience to paint 20 or 30, so this will be all I paint for the foreseeable future. I like Tre Manor’s stuff a lot. He has his own mini company now, Red Box Games, and all the stuff there is really nice.
77056: Orc Sniper, 77059: Orc Berserker, 77051: Orc Stalker, 77045: Orc Hunter
This is Reaper’s version of the D&D Beholder. The Beholder is an iconic Dungeons and Dragons monster. The name is even kept as IP by Wizards of the Coast, which is why Reaper has to call this model “Eye Beast” instead of Beholder.
The original base is kind of crummy, so I cut it off and sculpted one with Green Stuff, complete with some green slime dripping down the walls. It’s intended to look like he’s hovering in a tunnel deep in the Underdark somewhere. I modeled the color scheme on Eric Louchard’s Nautiloid Chrysalid from AnitMatter Games.
The characters in our AD&D campaign had to fight lots of these guys. They were quite a challenge. The ability of devils to summon more devils makes things difficult. Their magical at-will abilities to cause fear, fly, and create illusions, along with their strength-sapping attacks and poisoned tail spike give the characters fits.
I gave this Reaper mini a base of skulls, and then added a bit of blood so things didn’t look quite so…dry. He came with a pair of raggedy wings that I decided to leave off.
For this beauty, I followed the painting scheme that Scott Hockley describes for his Preacher from the Kingdom Death miniature range. He has a wonderful way of doing sheer cloth, which I tried to emulate in Amiryth’s stockings.
I’m really happy with how this Reaper mini turned out. I tried a glazing method described by Eric Louchard of Antimatter Games. I was a bit more patient with this mini than I am with most, so my blending is smoother than usual. The original mini’s face is angled down, so it isn’t easy to see. I built up the front of his base to tip the mini up so that you can see his face better. I think it works.
This is the Reaper’s version of the D&D Remorhaz. The creature dwells in cold climates, hence the snow base. The back of the creature gets furnace-hot when it is agitated. I sculpted a pair of eggs out of Green Stuff that mommy is protectively coiled around.
In our Against the Giants campaign, when the characters found this creature at the bottom of the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, they purposely woke it and then ran away. The remorhaz crawled out of its lair, stretched it out across the chasm floor, tucked in its legs, and steamrolled down the length of the rift, flattening and frying about a dozen winter wolves, ogres, and giants. Good times.
This set of small rats from Reaper was painted for a D&D introduction for my niece and nephew. The “Bones” plastic that these are cast with rounds out detail, so I’m sure the originals had more detail depth in the fur that didn’t come out in the final minis. That’s typical of Reaper’s “Bones” figures. These also suffered from the Armory matte sealant, so the final colors were dulled by the final spray.
This is a friend’s mini that I offered to paint for him. I don’t know what company made it. Perhaps he’ll comment on that… We’ve been playing a Boot Hill game for the past year or so, so we need lots of cowboys, indians, and other pioneer types. It’s not exactly a high-quality sculpt or casting, but it looks very nice on the table. If you look too long you realize that the oxen are way too small compared to the size of the wagon. Regardless, it was fun to paint and looks great on the gaming table.
This disgusting pair of rats from Reaper was lots of fun to paint. Painting disgusting things is every bit as rewarding as painting beautiful things.
I love this sculpt from Reaper. This paint job went great, right up to the very end, when disaster struck. When I finished painting, I sprayed the model with matte sealant from a rattle can. Something about the heat and/or humidity made the sealant droplets bead up like dust before hitting the miniature. This caused the mini to be coated with tiny yellow-brown particles instead of a smooth coating. This “dusty” quality of the sealant seriously dulled the colors on the mini. The blacks are no long rich, the browns aren’t vibrant, the metal looks yellowed. I was so happy with how her hair, in particular, turned out. It was shimmery, but that too is now dulled. I will not use Armory rattle can sealant ever again.
