Constructing Elementals (part 1)

Today is a few pics of figures I painted about 10 years ago. They represent the 4 elements or Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.

You may notice in the following pictures that some of the figures are pre-painted. Yes, I said it! I have no shame in admitting that I bolster my own painted D&D monsters and NPCs with pre-painted figures.

Back when I started our 3e D&D campaign (14 years ago), it was the first time as an adult that I had been GM. One consequence to that was that I had a very limited collection of D&D "bad guy" figures. I had plenty of orcs, goblins and other Warhammer FB creatures, but none of the other standard D&D monster fair.

So I began amassing figures. This created a ton of work-load in the painting department. To offset that, I would incorporate the new at the time D&D Collectible Miniatures Game (CMG). Not only were they already painted, but there were many races and creatures that weren't even available in metal.

Another source I used to make monsters was HeroClix. That was another CMG relatively new at that time. How do super hero figures fit into D&D you ask? Well I will point out a few examples below. There is a skeleton in each of the shots to help show scale.

Fist off, we have my assortment of Earth Elementals specific to the Ent lineage. This collection comprises of 3 GW Treemen, 4 GW Dryads, and 9 WotC Twig Blights (made specifically to coincide with the first 3e module "The Sunless Citadel").

Next we have a trio of more traditional Earth Elementals. The two on the right are Reaper figs (I think). Not sure if it counts as a conversion per se, but I sculpted and painted the bases to look like the creature was made from the ground it is standing on.

The left most figure is a HeroClix Man-Thing re-based and re-painted.

This is the assortment of Air Elementals. The back three are from Reaper. The bases have been sculpted and painted to be part of the figure.

The front row are figures from the D&D CMG line. 

Water Elementals are next. You will likely be surprised to find out where the front two figures came from. They are from a HeroClix Auquaman figure--It is the wave he stood on. I simply snapped him off and glued the "wave" to a new base.

The left and right most figures are from Reaper to my best recollection. They have also had their bases made to match the figure.

The lonely little guy in the back is a D&D CMG mini.

Lastly we have the Fire Elementals. The row of 6 figures in the back are Reaper and double as Wall of Fire or elementals if I am running short--Hey! Can't have too many Fire Elementals!! 

In the middle row we have a Reaper, HeroClix and Reaper fig. As with the other Reaper minis above, the bases have been made to look like part of the creature. The HeroClix figure is a Human Torch. 

The front row comprise two HeroClix and two D&D CMG minis.

Well, that about wraps it up. In part 2 of this article, I will finish off by showing my Golem collection ("Constructing" Elementals... get it? Yeah, really bad).

I can't put my finger on it, but what ever reason is, I am OK with using pre-painted figures for D&D encounters. However, I would never do so (without some sort of converting and re-painting) for a PC or a WHFB/WH40K army.