#grungs

- Dungrunglung

- Krr’ook

- Nangnang

- Sloobludop

- Ploopploopeen

- Bloppblippodd

- Glooglugogg

Parecen el grupo Parchís pero en ranas. Pero son enemigos del juego de la Mazmorra del Mago Loco de Dungeons and Dragons. Son grungs.

The players in the D&D game I run!!

Aelia is a Light Domain cleric, and a tiefling with the bloodline of Mammon! She's a bit of a treasure hunter, and won't take on any noble quests without a cash reward - payment upfront preferred. Her holy symbol might as well be a $100 bill...

Valas is a drow sorcerer, born in the caves of the Underdark. He's a bit more on the calm side for the party, but, unfortunately for him, his innate magical abilities as a sorcerer come in the form of unpredictable surges of Wild Magic!

Lugs is a grung barbarian, tasked with carrying the barrel of water on his back that he and his brother use to rehydrate their froggy skin when needed.  He's immensely strong, but often naive and impulsive. Lugs can also only speak Grung, not Common, so.. oops

Lurk is a grung rogue. Unlike his brother Lugs, he can speak Common, but doesn't often bother to fully translate things for him. He's adept at fighting but sometimes gets over-confident, and his lockpicking toolset is made up of an array twigs from their swampy hometown.

So, I spent some time yesterday looking at frog minis. Here is an overview of some highlights. 

So, Grungs are going to be a good low-level enemy in my campaign, so it’s important that I have some good minis for them. There are some prepainted WizKids Grung minis out, but the Nolzur unpainted minis will be released next month at a third of the cost, so I’m going to wait on them. If I need some Grungs before I can get hold of them, I can just print off some Grung paper minis from PrintableHeroes. (PrintableHeroes is my favorite paper mini source.) All of the above look adorable. 

Before moving on, I should mention this document, which gives unofficial rules for making the Grung a playable race. So those are a sure thing. Let’s look at some other batrachian-themed minis, though!  This is going to be long, so here is a Keep Reading break. Deep breath....

...and here we go. So, Reaper has quite a few frog- or toad-related minis.

These Frogmen are a friendly looking lot, though perhaps a little too cartoonish for my taste? I have not been able to find a size reference for them, so don’t know how tall they would be compared to your average D&D PC mini.

This second set of frog folk (under the name of “squogs”) are a bit more monstrous, what with the pointy teeth and all. They’d make pretty good Bullywugs. 

There’s also a squog shaman:

Reaper also has a Chaos Toad Sorcerer mini that I like, but it’s a little too pricey for me. 

Relatedly, Reaper has a couple Toad Demon minis for higher level play. The first does not particularly shout “toad” to me. There’s little to distinguish it from, say, a lizard demon. It’s a fun mini, though!

The second is much more frog-like, although why does it have nipple rings? Toads are amphibians, not mammals, and don’t have nipples. I suppose that demons do, so we’ll that’s where the nipples come in. Anyway, I like this one. Check out the skulls it’s sitting on!

The final Reaper mini to discuss is the Mudgullet, which is the Reaper version of the Froghemoth. It’s very monstrous-looking and probably the most serious take among the limited selection of widely available froghemoth options you’ll find. It’s a little too scaly and spiny to be a frog-based creature? As a toadhemoth, it could work. Either way, it’s both silly and frightening, which is all anyone could ask for in a froghemoth, IMHO.

Leaving Reaper, let’s pause to look at the other Froghemoth options. Apparently Wizards considers the Froghemoth a proprietary IP, so it does not allow the use of the name by other companies. There are two official Froghemoth minis currently, the prepainted version and the unpainted collector’s edition version. 

There is also a Froghemoth from Pacesetter games that I like better than either of the two official versions: 

Finally, there are some 3D-printer designs for sale, including this “Boghemoth” by Rocket Pig Games, which is really cool. I have no access to a 3d-printer, though, and have found that the final product from 3D printed minis is often unreliable. The technology is ever-improving, though. (If you do go for 3D printing, don’t forget that 3D artist Miguel Zavala has released completely free patterns for all the Monster Manual creatures.) Ultimately, I found the prepainted WizKids model on ebay for less than $10+shipping, so I went with that for the initial part of my campaign (there is a remote possibility that it will show up in the first adventure I’m planning, if things go very, very far south for the party). Maybe down the line we’ll get into the mythology of the froghemoth in a big way and I’ll need some bigger and better versions and give myself an excuse to splurge -- we shall see. 

Back to other frogs and toads. While I’m still somewhat on the subject of WizKids, they have several Bullywug prepainted minis around. The basic Bullywug:

The Bullywug guard:

The Bullywug Thug:

The Mud Lord (which I cannot find in stock anywhere yet):

The slaad are usually in the realm of the batrachian (though dipping into the reptilian at times), so here are some official minis for them:

Talon Slaad:

The Green Slaad:

Etc. 

Let’s turn to some of my favorite minis that I found yesterday, the Stonehaven Grippli collection. These are incredibly good looking, have a lot of variation, and would be especially perfect if someone wanted to make any sort of frog-folk PC. 

Splintered Light Minis also has some fine looking frog-folks and “boglings”:

Spellcrow has a set of “Ropuchons”, which are actually quite small. If you want your grungs to be a bit more monstrous and less cute, they might be a good fit.

The Pathfinder equivalent of the Bullywug is, apparently, the Boggard, and there are some minis for that, too. My favorite is the “leaping Boggard”, which is definitely on my list to pick up at some point. 

The rest of the Paizo boggards are pretty good. 

There’s also a Pathfinder Toad Demon, which makes me think of BattleToads.

Speaking of Toad Demons, though, Eastern Front studios has a great one. I think this is what Reaper was trying to go for way back at the beginning of the post.

Porting from other games, these Daemon Plague Toads of Nurgle from WH40k are absolutely wonderful -- by which I mean, disgusting and horrible. Will definitely save up to buy them used or something:

Privateer Press’ Hordes line has a set of Frog-folk called Croaks. They are a very different take from some of the other frog people we’ve seen, but I like the unique design. Maybe a little too cartoonish? Bulbous eyes are, I think, the litmus test for me in frog-folk designs -- make them stick out too much and you start to lose me. 

Eureka Minis has a bunch of frog warriors for their Pond Wars line. They’re cute, though a bit cartoony, and I’m not sure how the frog-mounted frog is supposed to work. But here they are for your consideration.

And, finally, Dark Sword Minis’ Critter Kingdoms has some whimsical fairy-tale anthropomorphic frog minis. They won’t fit in my milieu at all, but yours may be different. Here’s an example or two: