Shambling Mound

The Shambling Mound is a mass of animated vegetable matter that originated from the comic book characters Man-Thing and Swamp Thing. Both Marvel and DC comics released their characters at roughly the same time, and there was much controversy over which creature was the original.


With regard to size, both Man-Thing and Swamp Thing are listed at 7' tall, but they often looked a lot taller (9-10 feet tall) in the comics. Shambling Mounds start out at 6' tall (as described in the AD&D Monster Manual), but lightning can cause the creatures to grow 1' and 1 HD each time they are zapped, so their size can be considered to be variable. If we go by this criteria, pretty much any Shambling Mound miniature can be used with 1/72 figures.


All of the metal Shambling Mounds I have come from Grenadier. The first is the Shambling Mound from the Denizens of the Swamp boxed set (AD&D 2010), followed by the Vegetation Beast from the Horrors of the Marsh boxed set (Dragon Lords 2010), and last is the Quagmar from the Monster Manuscript Vol.VIII boxed set (MM69).


The Grenadier Shambling Mound is very close to the Sutherland illustration from the Monster Manual, which is vaguely reminiscent of Man-Thing. The Quagmar on the other hand, is a bit closer to Swamp Thing.

The final miniature I have is from the DDM game. It is a Stormrage Shambler (Unhallowed #24), which I present as an example of what happens to a Shambling Mound after it gets hit with 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.