Our next game of Frostgrave is coming up and I needed to solidify my warband again and finalize everything for upcoming campaign. I was a bit jealous that everyone had wizard-looking wizards in their upcoming band and even though I really liked my Ranger-wizard, I thought I could do better and get someone looking more the part.

I decided to pull another Descent: Journey in the Dark 2e mini, this time the wild mage, Ashrian. I was particularly inspired by a fantastic Darkstar minis paint scheme so I set out to try and duplicate. I find that while I like the dynamic poses Descent minis offer, the quality of the cast is not great for painting and I had a terrible time cleaning the model up with mold lines running through some critical areas with no easy way to fix.

Since I was rebasing the mini on a Micro Art Studio base (winter shale), I needed to cut Ashrian off her tiny Descent one. I found that cutting the base apart all around the feet leaves the model intact without any concern of cutting fingers or ruining the feet.

After the original base was off, I cut the excess under the feet off to form a peg.

I tested where the mini would fit best on the base model and drilled holes in for the new pegs I made.

Green stuff and super glue in the holes fill out the pegs and completely seal the model to the base. The resin shale base has some little issues so I filled their gaps as well. A quick prime later and the model was ready to paint.

Oh but before that, I added a little “orb” on the end of her druid-like staff. Hopefully that will make her look more like she’s got some arcanic might and not just wielding a pretty stick.

Then it was just time to paint her up. I usually never do eyes because they are so painful and can easily destroy the mini but decided to give it a go this time.

And with the mini complete, I have my full warband ready for the campaign. Now I feel like I have a wizard to lead my group and won’t get Tog, my apprentice confused as to who actually wields the power in the group. I still have Thurgen, my ranger and we’ll see him show up maybe in Rangers of Shadow Deep, as I’m gathering material to run that solo/co-op at some point as well.