Native American Shamans & Their Spirit Animals for Devilry Afoot

    First enemies for my players in my Devilry Afoot games -- Native American shamans ("witches")

Once I decided that I was indeed going to run my first game of Devilry Afoot for the guys on Sunday, I sat down and began to make out the player aids. Upon creating them, I realized that I had more figures to paint than I thought I did -- uh-oh! I knew I had to get at least two more shamans painted up. They would be stand-ins for witches in my frontier America Franklinton setting for my campaign. No problem -- they were already in the pipeline! What wasn't in the pipeline were all the woodland animals that I would need to paint up. 

    Two 28mm bears - one from Ral Partha on left and the other from Reaper Miniatures on right

Long ago, I used to have a lot of woodland animals painted up as part of my 15mm Fantasy armies. I used Ral Partha/Iron Wind 25mm figures for them, so all I would have to do would be pop them off their multi-bases, right? Um, except...well, I sold all my 15mm Hordes of the Things armies! No problem, I have plenty of 25mm/28mm animals in my unpainted collection. When I am at conventions and I see some that strike my fancy, I pick them up (even though I may not currently have a use for them). Ahem, I am looking at your Badger Games with the Bad Squiddo line you carry! So, I'll just paint some of them up...except there is less than a week before the game. "Houston, er Franklinton, we have a problem...!"

    Three 28mm Beavers from Bad Squiddo games -- these woodland animals painted up very quickly!

The day I realized that I pulled out all of my 28mm animals and set aside ones that will be useful in Devilry Afoot. In the rules, witches -- shamans, that is -- switch back and forth between an animal form and human form. That works perfect for the Native American theme with spirit animals and all that. Witches can also summon "Imps" in the rules. I decided to switch that out to woodland animals who answer the shamans call for help. Each shaman can have up to two woodland animals on the table at one time. Suddenly, I need three spirit form animals and six woodland animals. I went downstairs into my fantasy figures box and found a depressingly small amount already painted up. One bear, a handful of deer, some snakes, a few pumas, and a boar. Yikes! I need to get painting!!

    I used the photo on the blister pack of 'Freyja's Wildcats' from Bad Squiddo as inspiration for these

In the end, I pulled out quite a few figures to paint up. The larger ones were two more bears (one Reaper and one Iron Wind), three 28mm wolves (not sure of the manufacturer, three Bad Squiddo beavers, and two Bad Squiddo wildcats. The smaller creatures were two badgers (Iron Wind), two raccoons (Primaevel Designs line from Acheson Creations), and two foxes (Iron Wind). I based them up first, epoxying them onto likely size bases of MDF or plastic. Once dry, I quickly brush primed them with Liquitex White Gesso. And the next morning, I went downstairs and saw 16 white animals looking at me. No kindly brownies had painted them up overnight -- drat! So, I had to figure out how I was going to do this. I decided to split them into two batches.

    My favorite of the three 28mm Native American shamans that I painted up for my first scenario

First, though, I would do the base coat on all 16 of them (15 actually, one fox sat on the sidelines because I counted wrong and didn't pull out a base for him). Yes, that's how much of a hurry I was in! Once they were all base coated, I decided to finish each animal species before moving on to the next. The bears were first. I had done a dark brown base coat, so next I did a Camo Brown dry brush. A little bit of black around their eyes, a little khaki highlight here and there, and they were mostly done. I did the detail work on their mouths and claws and was able to set them aside as complete. These aren't Splintered Light Miniatures animals, so they're not wearing any equipment -- no swords or shields, here!

  Very interesting kneeling and masked pose for this shaman - I tried to decorate each article of clothing

The beavers were next. Dark brown base coat, Camo brown dry brush, and then some orange-brown highlights here and there. I had Google Image pages of each species pulled up and referred to them as I was painting. They also received some khaki highlighting. Eyes and hands were black, and the tail got a dark gray dry brush over the dark brown base. Woo-hoo! Two species down!! This could work. On to the wildcats! 

  Last of the 3 shamans that I painted up - I wasn't ecstatic about the decorations, but they were okay

One nice thing about buying animal miniatures from Bad Squiddo is there is typically a color image of what the miniatures should like fully painted on the front of the blister pack. This was the Freyja's Wildcats pack, and I have to admit that is not how I have seen wildcats depicted before. Nevertheless, they did look really cool. Maybe they are Freyja's really large house cats? I did my best to follow the photograph and did a fair job of it, I think. I did change the eye color to yellow. There are some cats that have blue eyes, but I felt that would be a little jarring for most people. I mixed dry brushing with painting individual streaks of darker or lighter colored fur. I'm really happy with how they came out, though doubtless my friend Keith will look at me, deadpan, and say, "No, those aren't wildcats."

I'm saving the last for the figures that were painted up first, I guess. These three Native American shamans were bought a long time ago from Conquest Miniatures, now carried by Warlord Games. I couldn't find these particular figures on their website, though, but I'm pretty sure that's where I got them from. I painted one from the pack up long ago, and the three remaining sat untouched in my unpainted lead drawer for close to a decade. The first scenario of Devilry Afoot calls for three witches, er shamans, and I had only one. Heck with it! I decided to paint up all three. They came out fairly good, and it gave me a chance to relive my days of painting Indian tribesmen with lots of bead work and patterns.

    The rules we will be using for my 'Franklinton 1797' frontier America horror campaign

I hurried these figures through the basing process so that they actually caught up with the latest batch of finished orcs. I tossed in a few flower tufts on the animal and shaman bases just to make them pop a bit, but otherwise I used my standard flocking system for these figures. The more astute of you are asking, "But what about the wolves, badgers, raccoons, and fox?" They were still sitting base coated on my desk, patiently waiting their turn. I really don't need ALL of them done in time for the game. There is one more figure in that second batch that DOES need to get completed. So, stay tuned for another post hopefully soon!

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Miniatures acquired in 2025: 290
  
• Miniatures painted in 2025: 254

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Terrain acquired in 2025: 53
  
• Terrain painted in 2025: 61

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Scatter acquired in 2025: 136
  
• Scatter painted in 2025: 201