Icons of the Plague

While playing around with colors, I discovered it was possible to get some elemental looks, and that fit with something a player wants to take for his character, so I went with it.  The bottom four are Fire, Earth, Air, and Water.  

Change of pace. I had a rotten migraine for a bit over a day, and decided to make some Lego figures for a series I really enjoy, Whyborne and Griffin , by Jordan L. Hawk. Whyborne, with his spellbook and casting a fire spell: Griffin, with his trusty sidearm and swordcane (best I could manage was either a cane, or a sword; I went with the cane) Christine, with her trusty rifle: Iskander, dual wielding knives, which he is quite proficient with: Christine and Iskander (fancy dress)

And here is a Bugbear figure. Between the background and posture, it was easily distinguished from the barbarian-pretending-to-be-a-bugbear from yesterday. The profile for the one in Eyes of the Stone Thief is not in the SRD, but I picked one that was at least somewhat similar (and a bit lower in level).

This is the barbarian figure from the Legend of Drizzt game by WotC (yes, he has a name; no, I don't remember it). I was actually using it as a Bugbear Brute, as it looks impressively brutish and is easily distinguishable from the bugbear pic/figure I used. Note: this is why I toned the color so far down. I wanted to de-emphasize the human-ness of the face. Looks like the "bugbear brute" profile is not in the SRD, so I wont' be sharing it. It is in the campaign book, Eyes of the Stone Thief (available on DriveThru in both 13th Age and 5e compatible versions). Most amusing moment of the combat, to me, was when the Brute and the Gnome Barbarian kept crit-failing at one another, to the point that a PC who had an item that came with a sort of paranoia quirk started gettting twitchy.

This is the gnome barbarian I've been running as an extra in the party. He's not really needed any more, as we had another player join, but I'm having fun with him, so I've left him in (for those who dread GM-PCs: he's the last to get magic items, occasionally lets me opine my incredulity at character reasoning/ideas and offer alternatives, and mostly just likes to rush in and be surrounded by baddies in combat). This figure is more dwarf-sized than gnome size, but the microfigures that are closer to the right size aren't at all customizable (unless you print out your own wrap for them). This is from the second batch of PC tokens I made for the campaign. The first batch were too similar when players were zoomed out, so I added a very hard to miss background color to everything. Additionally, the photocrop is round, which I don't do with non-PC-tokens, so that it's obvious which figures on the screen are PCs.

This figure is the Kobold Sorcerer from Castle Ravenloft by WotC. I used it for a hobgoblin warmage. This fight was on a narrow bridge, where the concussive blast had the possibility of knocking characters off into a ravine. I'm noticing that I did not get the focus on this guy's face. I'll work harder at that the next time, as I think it would look much better with the focus there.

Another from Castle Ravenloft. I played around with the colors to make it look more otherworldly.

This Gargoyle figure is from WotC's Castle Ravenloft game. Our group tends to refer to the games in this series as "D&D-Lite", and they're great for scratching the combat-dungeon-crawl-itch, but less so for the story-itch.

I figured a floating skull that makes bad puns really ought to have a Jester hat.

So, I wasn't really sure what the "black amber" part actually meant in the name of this creature. I decided to interpret it as "so old that the bones have blackened". Best I could manage was to invert the colors in the original image, and I'm rather pleased with the result. One of my players commented that it looks a bit cyberpunk and, well, fair. It's from the 13th Age SRD (link in the sidebar), so here are its stats as well:

The body and head are from a Monkey King figure in one of Lego's randomized figure collections. I replaced the monkey hair/ears with a horned helmet, and gave him a mace. The descriptions specified "bloody melee weapon", so I attempted to make the mace look a bit bloody. In all fairness, it turned out better than I expected, but not as well as I'd hoped. If I have the stats on hand, and they're from the 13th Age System Reference Document (which is free), I'm going to start sharing them with the figure, so here goes:

And here's the other mystery pack I ordered, Brick Warriors Castle Mystery Pack . I got 4 hats/helmets, 1 armor, 1 cloak, 2 weapons, and 1 vine/tentacle-thing. I'm rather pleased about the plague-doctor hat (brown) and matching cloak, as the hat that matched the cloak I ordered was out of stock. Note on the Jester hat: 2 plumes are part of the mold, and the other 2 are attached. If ordering, you can order different colors from the base-mold (which I would have preferred, but, eh, that's grab bags for you.)

Finally, Brick Warriors has some "mystery packs" - themed grab bags with 9 or 10 parts, and I couldn't resist picking up a few. This is the Fantasy Mystery Pack . I got 2 helmets, 2 armor, 2 weapons, 2 shields, a mohawk, and a loin cloth (yes, the tiny red thing is a loin cloth for a minifigure).

So, Lego has a fairly small number of weapon molds, and they use them over and over in different colors. Brick Warriors, on the other hand, have so much variety that even this is not the full extent of their selection. I mostly picked up things that were noticeably different from stuff already in my Lego collection, and that I thought I or my players might want to use. Oh, this shot also has a set of blue "wizard sleeves", which, sad to say, require removing the minifigure's arms to get on (so if I use them, I will pick one figure and they will become a permanent fixture on it, to avoid wear and tear on the arm joints). There is also a bear-trap, which I just thought was cool. Brick Warriors Weapons

Here is the stuff not related to wings that is not obviously a weapon. The thing I called a beret they call a "bard hat" *shrugs*, and they describe the rose as a "poison rose." Do be aware that the minotaur heads do not come with horns, and there are several options to choose from on the horns. I already have several of the dragon-heads from a previous order (see the Kobold posts), but this color wasn't available the last time I ordered, so I grabbed it. The wand is similar in style to some of Lego's Harry Potter wands, but a bit larger (and I have yet to see a Lego glow-in-the-dark wand, though they may exist).

A large order (for me) from Brick Warriors came today, and I thought I'd post a few shots of the swag. Their wing system is much simpler than Lego's is. With Lego, the armor as attachment divots that you attach a connector to, then you put the wings on that. These have the connectors built in (and BW also has much more variety in wings). That's why I'm showing the back of the armor rather than the front. Here's the BW site: Brick Warriors Wings/Tails .

So one of my players has a wolf companion (no stats, has featured minimally up to this point, which I am planning to change), and I wanted to represent it online. I've got this 3-tailed canid (possibly a fox? but it works well enough for a wolf) from a Ninjago set, so I played around today. On the bottom row, from left to right, are the figure for when something Bizarre is Happening; the minimally filtered figure (just my standard suite of turn gamma down a bit, turn saturation and contrast up a bit); and the figure I plan to use most of the time.

Had a player with a Warforged Guardian with some class option related to plants, so we sort of interpreted that as a robot made of plants and came up with this figure (I started it, and the player added finishing touches).

Needed some cultists to be chanting while a fight went on. So I made this. I had a shot with the face more visible, but I liked this one better. When I showed it to one of my players, he commented that he'd always wanted to meet Palpatine. :)