Here be Dragons, part 1.

"My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!" -Smaug

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.

 

Hello. 

 

Straying from the 40k domination of this blog for a bit is a very special project I've been itching to work on, but only recently been able to get built.

This is the Classic Red Dragon from Dungeons and Dragons, made by GaleForce9 for Wizkids:

Now this thing is a major chunk of resin, and very weighty. It's also an extremely nice model. I can't say miniature when talking about this beast. Whilst not the largest of dragon models out there, This is one of the nicest I've come across.

It took me a while to get assembled because I needed help from a friend who has much expirience working with resin, he seems to have shares in Forgeworld given how much of their stuff he buys per year!

Anyway, the wings on this dragon come in two seperate pieces and completely flat when you remove them from the box. So with some pinning and a hairdryer, he was able to assemble them for me, whilst I worked on other projects at the same time.

And just look at that wingspan:

My phone cut off the outside edges of the wings, but it measures about sixteen inches wingtip to wingtip...the base alone is around ten inches in diameter which given that most fantasy models are on a twenty to fourty MILLIMETER base diameter gives you an indication of the size.

Now being an official Dungeons ad Dragons miniature, it obviously hasto have the classic stylings of dragons from that game, with the horns and fin down the back of the neck. as well as the smug, intimidating look on its face:

 

 

And as for that huge base, well it's covered in texture and modelled elements itself. The official boxart for this is one of some gold and then rocks and grass tufts fue to the walls, but it's got a couple of treasure chests on there, a cauldron with spilled jewels thhat I can see:

But I'm not a fan of the boxart for it, so instead I've decided to go down the "Full Smaug" route and paint the entire base as gold coins, with the walls sticking out above them.

Just like in the movie, even though this dragon is not Smaug, it's just such a trope of dragons within this type of fantasy that I would be remiss if I didn't acknoledge it. More over, a huge red dragon standing over a pile of gold is going to make an awesome display piece anyway.

Finally just to give a sence of the scale of the dragon, here it is facing down my Stormcast Lord Castellant. Keep in mind that the Castellant is mounted on a fourty millimete base and is a larger then normal human model:

I'm glad to have this started and am aiming to take my time with the dragon as it's such a nice piece.I'm aiming to have it complete for the end of this year, but we'll see as I don't want to rush it and ruin parts of it just to get it done like.

Until next time...

 

 - Lewis