It's big, it's scary and it's got eight legs!

It's a unit of four trolls of course. What else could it be?

This is the first addition to the orcs and goblins army in my Spring Challenge - I am dedicating March, April and May to painting greenskins. Okay, so these are not green, but you get my gist.

I will probably field these as stone trolls, hoping that the scaly skin will give them a little more durability against their favourite targets of knights (they do like a bit of roasted horse). The magic resistance is handy too when facing magic missiles, I can screen more vulnerable troops behind them. Just hoping that they don't become too stupid too often.

I chose the LOTR models because I really dislike the official metal stone trolls. These are big and impressive models and add interest to the masses of green and black that my army is (orcs and night goblins). I also thought I would be able to use them in my chaos army, and these fit the bill more to my mind. It took me a while to find them cheap enough on ebay, trolls have become fairly popular in the past few months.

I painted them by stippling on the colours over a light undercoat. Glazes and washes have done most of the hard work, just a tiny bit of highlighting here and there. This kind of technique works well on organic subjects like these. It's nice to be able to cross off a unit from my to do list. Just have to get them through their first game as a freshly painted unit (I fully expect the curse of the newly painted to strike them down). So just in case they get completely obliterated, here's another picture.