shdw wars: Gruul Herd, of Owlbears?!

Gruul Herd, of Owlbears?!

I replaced most of my paints. That is what started this. I thought I would try out a lot of pro-paint colors but I wanted to go with a single brand. I chose Reaper. Unbeknownst to me this would send out a cascading flood of bonus miniatures.

Let's back up for a moment though. I chose reaper for one really simple reason. When I had made a previous order they had sent me an "Invisible Stalker" Miniature, which was an empty package labeled, yup, you guessed it, "Invisible Stalker". I still have it. It made me laugh.

I have tried several other companies' paints, But this was it. This was finally going to be my jump away from craft paints up to the next tier of paints. Mostly.

The other selections of paint that I may one day try are; Vallejo, Army Painter, and P3 from Privateer Press. And even now I have a smattering of those in my repertoire. But craft paints are my great vice. I have used them for so long that I have become very accustomed to their unique profile. But I am weaning off of them.

I won't go back to GW as I hate their paint pots. The containers actually make it harder to paint. I have made the command decision that I don't need that kind of negativity in my life regardless of how much I like their models or the colors that they sell look like the beautiful essence they have wrung directly from a wild rainbow.

So, back to Reaper. Reaper was running a promotion for the new Black Bones". So for every X dollars they would send you a new Black Bones Owlbear. Cool! And of course I had no idea. None.

When I found a new gift in my order because along with the paints and I picked up a few more minis (of course I did, right?!).

So imagine my surprise when I saw a dozen owlbears. At first I thought Reaper was pranking me (See Above for Invisible Stalker package).

The immediate question, okay the immediate question after doing a quick google search to find out "why" I had all these owlbears was, "What am I going to do with a dozen owlbears?"

Now for those of you who have been keeping score what I am running, as far as games are concerned, right now I am:

1) NaK: Prepping to DM a sci-fi game using Cypher System rules we have nicknamed "NaK"

2) Ravnica: Prepping 5E D&D Campaign set in Ravnica, Wizards MtG setting for D&D. Which, incidentally, we nicknamed "Ravnica". We rock original thought around here.

So I figured I could do a cool "odd" paint job for one of them and have it appear in my sci-fi game. Then I would use all of them as a "herd" that the Gruul equivalent would herd from one part of the rubblebelt.(A rubblebelt is a section of the city that has fallen, and nature has begun to reclaim it.) to another part of the rubblebelt. Like really buff cowboys.

I thought that this might be a fine sight more interesting than bandits, as far as roadside encounters are concerned.

As I took on this project, I wanted to make the most of this and tried a few different techniques, which I do not normally use just to see what happened. Some are better than others, but that is how experimentation goes, amiright?

Long story short, below are the fruits of my labor including a few group shots next to a mirror so that you can see the owlbears' backs and the back of their wings.

The paint schemes were inspired by real birds, animated birds, my imagination, and the Minka, which is a really cool fictional bird whose color scheme I took cues from to make the Minka owlbear. I ran across the image while doing my research. Man, I love that image!

So without further ado... Below are the individual pics of the various species represented in the herd: