Bufo the Magnificent

"I sit here dreaming, eyes agog, gazing at the stars,
A hefty piece of granite rock, perched beneath my ar.."

That's enough poetry for now.

Hello again.

Wizards and magic have so far been absent from the odd couple of games of "Burrows & Badgers" played so far, but I have at least four wizardy types in my collection and this is the second of those to meet and greet the paint brush.

Bufo is a toad and, in "B&B" terms, toads make very decent wizards. You see, wizards spend so much time reading and studying that they tend to be weaklings, earning themselves the WEAK characteristic for every spell you start them with in the game. What this means is that you subtract one from the result of any combat or shooting attacks, thereby making them weaker than they might have been.

But toads get STRONG (1) as a starting characteristic, so they effectively have a point of advantage to lose before they move into negative numbers. WEAK cancels out STRONG, and vice versa. They are also very good at concealment, so can stay hidden a lot, have TOUGH (2), which means they can reduce the strength of attack results by 2, thereby taking less damage, and are NATURAL HUNTERS, which means they are not so hot in ranged combat, but he is a wizard, right, so you don't give him a bow or sling or whatever. Finally, they have good inherent FORTITUDE and PRESENCE scores, which are used when dealing with spells, so why wouldn't you employ a toad for your fireworks?

So here is Bufo, sitting on his rock, staring up at the sky, pondering the mysteries of the universe and snatching the odd juicy insect from the air from time to time with his sticky tongue. What more would you want from life???

The only criticism I have of this figure is the size of his base. Toads are mounted on 30mm diameter bases in "B&B", so there is not a lot of room in his case for texturing or being creative. I tried to make the putty I used for the rock effect seamless with the smoothness of his base, but there was very little to work with. I wanted to give him some height and add to his presence, but it was tricky without getting putty all over the figure.

G

Bufo the Magnificent

With his neat, little man-bag full of spell ingredients, spare underwear, knife and fork...His base is simply a lollipop stick broken into relevant sized pieces, glued together to gain height and covered in a skim of modelling putty for texture.

And a final shot of Bufo's backside, on which he likes to squat...