Hi everyone.  I thought I'd show off some of my RPG miniatures.  Starting with a Grenadier Umber Hulk!

The Umber Hulk is the iconic Dungeons & Dragons monster, a powerful tunnelling beast with the power to confuse anyone who sees all four of its eyes at once.  This confusion is a form of psychic hypnosis, rather than puzzlement over the fact it has eyes in its nostrils, and what might happen when it sneezes.


Such a colourful shot!  The red and blue lights echo the garish paint choices this Umber Hulk's previous owner made.  This miniature was a snip at £3 from the Oldhammer Trading Company and I celebrated by taking it to the pub that evening.


He came missing a finger-claw, which I replaced with brass wire and putty. I also carved him new mandibles from some random Games Workshop plastic bits.


The miniature has been released by Grenadier both with and without the mandibles.  In the original catalogue, the photographer completely misinterpreted the mandibles as unicorn bits.

Grenadier held the licence for Dungeons & Dragons miniatures 1980–1982, but released all sorts of suitable figures both before and afterwards.  This is not actually an official Umber Hulk but an "Umberbulk".  It is still in production nowadays (without mandibles), via Mirliton.


The 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual states "Umber Hulks are black, shading to yellowish gray on the front.  Their head is gray on top, and the mandibles are ivory coloured."  But I did mine a burnt umber colour as I got hung up on the name "Umber Hulk".  In my defence the picture of them in the Monster Manual illustration is black and white.
Umber Hulks and Rogue Trader Ambulls

When writing Rogue Trader, Games Workshop anticipated players would want to use their existing figure collections, and so they slipped in a lot of the iconic Dungeons & Dragons monsters as thinly-disguised aliens.  Blink Dogs became "Astral Hounds", Beholders became "Enslavers", Umber Hulks became "Ambulls" and so on.


The Ambull did eventually get its own model.

Interestingly, having been ported into space, they got put ported back into their native fantasy setting in the form of White Dwarf 108's Terror in the Darkness scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, where the adventurers head into a mine only to encounter Ambulls.

That's it for today!  I'll leave you with this photo that was meant to show the detail on the top of the head, but his pose looked like it was inviting tickles.

Just logged in to say...Well done.  Nice paint job and background info.

Wish more of the folks would share their minis. I'm guessing some of the folks on this site have some very unique ones.

Really nice work, especially on Mr. Jazz Hands.

I never made the connections between Astral Hounds, Enslavers, and Ambulls with their D&D equivalents. Makes sense.

I've got a couple of the Citadel Ambull miniatures. They've made appearances in both fantasy RPG and 40k games. Fun times!

Thanks MonsterSlayer.  

Thanks darth – there's a few other bits of cheeky borrowing that Games Workshop did for Rogue Trader I need to research.   I hope to get loads of Enslavers/Beholders this year.  I have one legit Ambull, it's great that you've got a couple!

Over at the turbo-niche Night Horrors and Gothic Horror group, Ashley's running a Halloween painting competition – paint one of these magical or mythological creatures from the titular ranges by Citadel Miniatures.


Games Workshop had the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game licence in 1985–1987, and released a whole slew of pulp era characters to fit into H.P. Lovecraft's stories.  This miniature is LE3 Gumshoe Bogart – based very firmly on Humphrey Bogart's character in Casablanca.


The miniature's cigarette doubles as a metal run-out point for casting.  Even though I trimmed it down it's still a bit too long.  Suspiciously long.  Less Casablanca, more Casablunta.


The photo above has enough colour for two shots, so I've enseipaed the next one.  I normally preach that people throwing their photography into sepia is a way of crutch bad painters use to try passing off their photography as art – but since Casablanca was a black and white film I can dodge that accusation.


This is the second of Games Workshop's borrowed movie characters I've painted recently, the first being Indiana Jones from the Rogue Trader RT601 Adventurers range.  These two characters both wear fedoras and both call people "kid", which is a spooky coincidence.  Well, it is Halloween...


I look forward to collecting some more Citadel Gothic Horror miniatures.  The next holy grail is Idaho Smith – the range's Indiana Jones homage.  Or the Doctor Who figures they resculpted with new heads.

More of my miniatures at http://www.ninjabread.co.uk

I'm not a guy who uses minis myself, but these are great!

Miniatures are my main reason for playing RPGs, RPGPundit.  I recognise I'm in the minority though.

Every year the Curis Christmas list (or "Curistmas list") features swathes of miniatures suggestions. Family assume I'm no longer a teenage nerd (haha!  half true!) and that I can't possibly still want tiny toy soldiers.  However, me and a group of miniature-loving friends arranged a Secret Santa so there was a teenage nerd present under the tree on 25th December.


The Dungeons & Dragons Paladin was gifted (thank you anonymous Santa) on the condition it was painted before the day the festive surfeit of Baileys was finished.  I painted him alongside the Bugbear as that's the first of the monsters needed to run the Lost Mine of Phandelver scenario from the 5E D&D starter set.


Everything on the Paladin is a sculpted texture.  All the armour panels are festooned in splodgy texture.  The cloak is splodgy fur texture on one side and splodgy abstract tree texture on the other.   It makes his overall form difficult to read as it's a mound of details akin to a Michael Bay Transformer design.  On the plus side it does make him gloriously quick to paint, and I could spend a load of time on the only smooth surface – the plastic shield.  I painted a rampant griffon design, hinting he's a distant relation of Lord Weuere in my Norman army.


"Gobslob" is the Bugbear from Citadel Miniatures' 1983 Dungeon Monster starter set.  With a name like that he had to have a big bit of drool hanging out of his mouth.  It's made by melting blister pack into transparent stringy goo with a soldering iron, then dribbling contact adhesive down it.  Though I assumed the glue would remain clear when dry, it went a cloudy green colour.  I've decided to run with this and say Gobslob has an excessively bacterial mouth.


Congratulations to Asslessman and Rochie for getting their Secret Santa miniatures painted and blogged too.  Now on to paint more of the monsters needed to run Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Wonderful work. I love miniatures as artifacts (and miniature wargaming) but don't use them all that often in RPGs.

The drooling is a bit cheesy.