Dragon’s Don’t Share
Publisher: Reaper Miniatures
Cost: $74.95 ($35 to Kickstarter Backers)
Release Date: 03/16/15 (Feburary 2015 for Kickstarter backers)
Get it here: Reaper Miniatures
Reaper Bones and their related Kickstarters are by far the best in miniatures today. You get a ton of pieces for a fraction of what they would otherwise cost and although the Bones material isn’t as detailed as Metal or resin, the pieces still look fabulous painted. You don’t even need to prime them! Of course, like many gamers who participated in Reaper Bones I, I still had many figures when Reaper Bones II came out. Now, with the third Kickstarter about to hit on Tuesday June 7th, I still have many figures from both previous Kickstarters to purchase. In fact, even though I was one of the first backers of Reaper Bones II and got all of my figures back in February (Here is a link to the unboxing), Dragon’s Don’t Share is the first piece from that Kickstarter I’ve actually had a chance to paint. That’s because I was mostly doing Batman Miniature Game pieces from February through May (along with a Heldrake for 40K). June however, was devoted to nothing but Dragon’s Don’t Share This collection, which consists of four scenery pieces, five 28mm scale adventurers and one multi-part dragon kit costs nearly twice as much as it did during the Kickstarter. After painting the piece though, I have to admit, I would happily have paid the retail price because this thing is awesome. Let’s take a look at the now painted set and show you how big of a bang you get for your buck. As always a warning that I am far from a professional painter, nor am I a skilled photographer. I will not win any Golden Demon awards for my paint jobs, but it’s something that relaxes me and it’s fun to see the end result. Hopefully you will enjoy it too.
First up, let’s take a look at the completed product from multiple sides, including a top down view so you can see how all the pieces fit together.
Here is a top down view of the scenery pieces without any of the figures in it to give you a better view of the pieces and again, how things fit together.
Here are some shots of each of the scenery pieces on their own.
Now let’s take a look at each of the figures separately. First up is the dragon on his base. Unlike the other figures in the set, the dragon is unable to stand on its own. This piece of scenery is its base. The dragon is done in purple and bronze and while this is very untraditional colors for a dragon in most fantasy games, especially D&D, I actually did paint the dragon in these colours as an homage to a famous Wyrm. Do you know who it is?
For size comparison, here is a shot of the Dragon with the big Cthulhu figure from Reaper Bones 1 and a Heldrake from Warhammer 40K. This guy is big!
Now for shots of all five adventures together. There’s a male Elven Ranger, a male Human Knight, a female human mage, a male Dwarven cleric and a human or halfling female rogue. I’m not sure the race on the last one. Halfling seems appropriate as she even has a Kender topknot. As you can see, there is a LOT of detail on these – especially for Bones pieces.
The elf was the first figure I painted of the five adventurers. I used typical eleven colors for him. I love that his bow is made out of bone.
The mage was the second figure I painted and I had never done a woman with blonde hair or anyone with white as their primary outfit colour, so this was a lot of fun to do. I really like how she came out.
The rogue was the third character I painted and I kept her to mostly dark colours since she’s a thief. You can’t very well engage in espionage or hide in shadows when you’re wearing bright colours, am I right?
Next up is the dwarf. I tried to paint him in dull colors and also metallic, because you know – dwarf stereotypes. I sound like a metahuman racist.
Finally we have the last piece that I painted in this set – the human warrior. This was my least favorite piece in the set, but also one of my least favorite pieces to paint across the board. This piece shows the one problem with regular 28-35mm Bones figures. they’re all one piece instead of separate pieces like the metal versions. This means they are harder to paint because of angles and piece locations. In this case, the warrior’s shield made painting his face (and other bits) a veritable nightmare for me. Bones are a very spongey plastic so I couldn’t just bend the arm as it would always return to the starting position. Had this been a metal figure I would have glued the shield arm on after having painted the rest of the figure and it would have been so much easier to deal with. Still, this is my only real complaint about an otherwise fantastic set of figures.
So there you go. The full Dragon’s Don’t Share set. This is my favorite piece out of both Bones Kickstarters. I spent a whole month working on it and it was well worth the time and effort. I love how it turned out, especially the dragon. Remember, the next Reaper Bones Kickstarter is this Thursday, June 7th at 11am, so we’ll all have to see what pieces are up for sale this time. Can Reaper possibly top this boxed set? I don’t know, but it will be fun to see if they can.
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