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.

ADD6 Paladin and Gobslob the Bugbear from Citadel Miniatures.

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.

This Paladin is such a thin miniature, he’s almost a Paper Mario character.

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.

Drool-worthy painting?

“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.

Sir Griffiths du Filigrann lost in a mine, somewhere in Phandalin.

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.

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.

“Feckin’ peg it!” squeed Ploppin the Halfling.

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.

The lovable four-eyed spongmonster at the pub.
Also pictured: a Grenadier Umber Hulk.

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.

jazz hands /dʒaz handz/ noun: …

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.

Original the Monster.  Do not steal.

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.

 Mighty Squat Hero Warmaster Gorun fighting an Umbe…Ambull, with support from the Reckoners Space Marine chapter.

The Ambull did eventually get its own model, here’s sho3box’s rendition and here’s Jason Fulford’s.

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.

  Cudgy cudgy coo cooo. Cudgy cudgy coo cooo.