Aard Paints: Purple Wurmlings!

[Aard_Rinn]

For Black Friday, I took advantage of Otherworld Miniature's sale to pick up a lot of minis I've been eyeing for a while for half-off. Fortunately, a lot of the minis I've really been after seem to be the least popular sculpt on their mold, if I understood the sale criteria correctly... I plan to paint up most of my picks over the next week or two, starting with the really excellent Giant Leeches. This is a fantastic sculpt, made super-easy to work with by the lack of any sort of broccoli base - meaning GSing up a base was super simple, one of my favorite aspects of the Otherworld Miniatures I've seen so far.

 

However, I had a moment of hesitation: I've seen a couple of really good giant leech sculpts I'd like to do, but I don't like mixing sculpts by different artists... and I don't really need a huge number of leeches, to be honest. But at 4 for 6$, they were definately too good to pass up...

 

So I thought: Hm, that mouth looks familiar... maybe... and then they arrived, and they were perfect. And now all of my players are going to die, alone and helpless, to a swarm of Purple Wurmlings...

 

 

I kept my paint job pretty simple here, befitting the simplicity of the worms themselves! First, I basecoated the primed and based worms with a lighter purple, then drybrushed the backs with an even lighter one to get a little more of the texture. Then I washed with a coat of Citadel's Druchii Violet Shade, which really sank into the cracks, and darkened them a bit. From there, it was just a matter of filling the mouths in with Fresh Blood, then washing them with Army Painter Soft and using a fine brush to do the teeth in Leather White. Then I just did the bases up like all my other desert creatures, and called it a night! The whole group took around 3 hours start-to-finish;  and a lot of drying time where I got a little carried away with the washes...

 

There are four different sculpts for this set. I like the third one best (it has a commanding, leech-like presence.)

 

 

I decided to stat it out as a CR5 monster, although for a group this large, a CR3 would probably be closer to what I'd use. Storm King's Thunder has an entirely adequate CR2 version, but it's a little weak tbh, especially since it's large... I'm sorry, a large sized monster should be packing some serious punch.

 

That said, these minis are solidly medium - larger than a human, but they definitely couldn't be based on anything larger than a 30mm base like I used here. Their lack of limbs is a bit of a restriction in that way - ordinarily, a little bending and posing could have something this size on a 40mm base no problem, but it would leave them looking lost, especially the smaller one. That said, I like medium as a size category for larval wurms, so I'm happy with that - I feel like having them able to engulf a person fresh from the egg is a bit much. Maybe for a halfling or village child I'd pull those rules in. The super-deadly stinger and vicious bite will do for now...

 

 

As a side note, I wish Barbarians had an ability, like Evasion for rogues, that turned con-for-half rolls into half-or-con-for-none rolls. I get that they get advantage instead, I just think it would be neat.

[Inarah]

Adorable!  Mama should be proud. 

[Glitterwolf]

Good work!

I love the purple!