Posted August 25, 2025 by Martin
The Imperium’s most deadly formidable nepo baby
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies made an interesting artistic choice in making all the Harkonnens bald. Don’t get it backwards: I absolutely love those films. These movies are for scifi what Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings is for fantasy. Herbert and Tolkien sit side by side on my bookshelf, and for good reason.
Still, though. We all know the Harkonnens are redheads. So when the time came to create a miniature for the Na-Baron of House Harkonnen, I knew he’d obviously have a decent shock of red hair on his head. In the books, Feyd-Rautha is described as having dark hair in close ringlets, but I wanted something a bit more striking to read better on the tabletop. Something closer to the 1984 version of the Baron’s Chosen, but without going full Sting.
The heir apparent to House Harkonnen, Feyd-Rautha was raised from a young age to be the Baron Harokonnen’s successor. He exemplifies all the traits of his House: cunning, cruelty, mercilessness, an utter lack of any kind of moral compass, and an unshakable will to power. Feyd-Rautha is a gifted knife fighter who thrives in the arena, adept at wielding two blades and striking with strength, speed, and precision.
With this miniature, I wanted to convey Feyd-Rautha’s delusional belief in the inevitability of his victory. He stands relaxed, with a sneer on his face, one knife pointing at his enemy while the other one is held low. Which of these blades is the poisoned one is anyone’s guess.
Before I printed the miniature, I opened the .STL file in Blender to add a cutout in the model’s base that can hold an 8 millimeter color cube. I like to use these cubes to help keep track of which miniature represents which character at the table.
I used standard supports to print this model, and in hindsight I wish I had gone for tree-like supports instead. The left arm and knife need support, as well as the right blade. The right arm shouldn’t need a ton of support because of the gradual angle at which the elbow is raised, but adding a little bit there as well doesn’t hurt. You’ll want to add some support to the chin and hair as well.
The version in the photos on this page was printed at 0.08mm layer height on a Bambu Lab P1S.
Side-by-side view of the model in Blender on the left and the printed miniature on the right
You can download the miniature .STL file right here. I use Hero Forge to design my minis; if you want to play around with the Wild Swordmaster model (maybe try different weapons, or adjust the model’s hair to more closely match the movie depiction), you can check that out here.
Until next time!