Unboxing the Dragon from Durgin Paint Forge

With my last project finished it's time to do a few unboxings I've received over the last few months. The first of these is the Dragon from Durgin Paint Forge. “That, my lad....was a Dragon!" was a kickstarter run back in October last year with the goal of funding production of a wonderful Dragon sculpted by Carmine “THOR” Giugliano, and riders sculpted by Valerio “Yro” Terranova. Durgin himself is Matteo Donzelli, a painter who has won numerous awards and in the last few years moved into miniature production.

Going into the project with the dragon already sculpted was a big boost to the project's success and it easily exceeded its goal. The original delivery date was estimated to be April 2016 but as with most Kickstarters there were a few delays and it ended up reaching me in late July, not too bad.

The box itself was well packaged, with the miniatures box inside a generic cardboard box. Thankfully they went to this lengths as the couriers delivered a rather battered box to me! Luckily this is just external and the miniature itself was well packaged and survived unscathed.

Opening up the flip lid and we're greeted with a letter thanking backers for their support and explaining the delay. Under this is some foam padding.

Remove that and we're greeted with a tissue wrapped set of components. Let's see what we've got!

The body is one large chunk of resin, and when I say large....I mean large! There's a scale shot a bit later. Detail wise it's crisp and clear, there is a small mould line on one shoulder and a few tiny resin bubbles but easily corrected.

The wings are huge, again some minor cleanup is required but that is to be expected with any resin piece. The plugs fit well into the body (in fact even without glue it holds pretty well) Here is a little shot showing them attached...yes it's big!

The tail comes in three pieces, no plugs or anything so I'll pin each section probably. The fit is...well it's a mixed bag. Some sections fit together fine but there is quite a gap with the large tail section and the body that will require some filling. It's not a big problem but it is worth noting.

Here is the four legs, some flash between the claws but easy to remove. Again there will be some gap filling required when attaching to the torso.

Up next we have the neck and head. You have two necks, one for use with the rider and one bare neck for without. The head itself has a separate jaw and horns. Detail is really excellent.

Sadly the fit of the head to the neck is probably the worst on the model, will require some sculpting.

The model also comes with a resin base, rocky with some damaged columns.

Well that's the dragon finished, but what's this colour splattered box?

It's the riders! You get a number of options, both female and male torsos, female and male bare heads and one helmeted option. For weapons you have a sword, axe, lance and then either a shield or hand holding flame (think magical spell) for the off hand. Finally we have a saddle and the cloak, suitably windswept. It comes with legs for riding and standing if you want a separate elf lord. There are enough pieces to make two complete miniatures (one riding, one standing) but only one cloak. There are a few awkward plugs to remove (see the shield for example) but other than that the details again seem sharp.

 To wrap it up I'm going to borrow an image from the Kickstarter to show you what the final dragon looks like.