Cave trolls

Deep in the darkest, dankest caverns and caves, they live. Their eyes are almost useless after decades of darkness, their skin has almost calcified in the constant drip of minerals and lava sediments, their wiry bodies gangly and tough as old leather. They exist on the blind fish and crustacae that cling on to existence  in the cold, clammy pools of their subterranean homes. If a goblin or giant spider strays into their realm, it will provide them with food for a month.

And yet, the goblins do make their way into these perilous corners of their realm. The cave trolls are lumbering, almost blind and very dangerous, but this makes them ideal conscripts for the goblin armies. Prodded and goaded, they are pushed into the teeth of their enemies, blunting their defence, weakening their resolve, and possibly soiling their trousers…

It’s been a while since I posted, simply because I almost never paint minis now. However, I did recently feel the nostalgia and dug out these old stone trolls. From around 1992 when I first started Warhammer, though at the time I could not afford too many metals and my limited funds went toward my elves. Fast forward a couple of decades, I have been slowly scraping together a collection from that era. 

I have learnt more about painting, colours, ambience, etc since making the switch to canvas. And so these figures are slightly different stylistically than my other miniatures, though it’s subtle and maybe not that apparent on screen. Anyway, there’s a lot of basic dry brushing and glazing and not much else to be honest. In colour terms, the grey of stone and a pale flesh colour, with a cool red on the main facial features, to represent the effects of daylight on their light sensitive skin.

A little history lesson. The trolls were originally released as single piece models, these three in fact. Later they were released as two pieces (a separate head), presumably to allow variety for those building really big units? I prefer the single piece models, but I am happy to include a spare. 

As I said, I have been away from the world of minis for the past few years and, well, it sure has changed. So much more choice around, it’s quite mind boggling. I have been sorting through my collection, and hopefully I can get back into the hobby on a reduced scale. I have a small unit of orcs to paint next, see how that goes. It would be nice to build a force of orcs and goblins to take on my dwarfs…….

Empire Warrior Priests

It’s been a while since I updated the old blog, but I did recently complete this trio of Empire warrior priests. They were released around 2007 I think and I bought two of them, for some reason I never completed the set. They were painted purely for painting sake, I wasn’t gaming at the time and have never played Empire, even though their background is potentially the best part of the Old World. Certainly, I have always considered warrior priests to be a central part to the Empire lore. And if you consider the Empire to be central to the whole Warhammer universe, then this trio have to be at the very epicentre. 

I think I painted the two hammer priest as part of a Warhammer forum Glass Cabinet challenge (remember those, the good old days). Then the preacher with book, as I liked the model and I had vague ideas to make a small force from Ostland, which got as far as this one figure and no further! The final figure, with the great hammer, was a gift. I mentioned online somewhere that I had never bought the third of the trio and I had given up trying to find it online as prices were so expensive. Up popped a fairy godfather (aka Andrew Rae of Statuesque Miniatures), he just gave it me and I promised to paint it. It took me a couple of years to get to it, but finally the trio is complete.

Mordor reinforcements

I have to admit that I neither play nor paint that much these days. I think it was late summer or autumn of last year when the dice were last rolled. On the painting side, it’s very infrequent and sporadic. Having said that, I did manage recently to knock out this troll, which I had converted some months back. 

For the palette, I ignored any film references and went to the original source, the books. Trolls are described as black skinned with red eyes, so that was my main aim. I did consider black armour too, but thought it might look too much against the skin, so settled on a dark metallic look. 

I have also cobbled together a unit that will play as linebreakers in games of Oathmark, if we ever return to it. These are troops that are heavily armoured and typically armed with double handed weapons. The models are old metal orcs that I picked up on a forum marketplace I think. They have been lying in my cupboard for a good while, I had intended to strip them and repaint them to fit in with my style, but in the end I glazed over a few washes to remove the zingy colours of the previous owner. They fit in well enough, the front and centre figure is the orc commander that I painted years ago. The rear rank is plastic Mordor orcs, armed with great weapons they make decent enough rear rank filler fodder. They will, of course, be useful in games of Erehwon, Rampant and other skirmish system.

Here’s a head on photo of the troll, you might be able to make out the red gleam of his eyes under that helmet. Let’s hope he gets to lumber on to a battlefield at some point.

Orc champion

I painted up an old orc champion, originally released around 1992 when I started playing WHFB. The shield design was hand painted. I have found that orange is the best colour to use as a contrast on green skinned orcs. I tried a square base on this one, but really I much prefer round, two pence coins in fact are my go to base of choice.

More green skins to come maybe in the next few weeks and months, if I can find the time.

Prize Draw - Win a Painted Figure

 The fine folks over at Mierce Miniatures are helping out with the Philippines disaster relief fund. You could win a painted figure just like one of these, or choose your own from their vast, wonderful range. All you have to do is make a donation on the gofundme page, then email them to let them know of your entry. The draw will be made on Monday, 10th January. Every donation makes a huge difference on the ground, so please give it some thought. And please share the news about the draw as far and wide as you can. Thank you.

Oh yeah, and Happy New Year to you all, it’s a bit late I know, sorry about that, I have been a little pre-occupied of late.

MOM Miniatures dwarf wizard

Here’s a little something to add to your Yule festivities. A dwarf wizard, from Mom miniatures, wandering through the rocks and standing stones. Absolutely perfect for the dwarf loving, owl loving nerd in your life.

A Christmas plea for goodwill

Usually at this time of the year I will post something festive and frivolous. This year, however, it’s a bit grim and depressing. You might not know, as it has been grossly under reported in the west, typhoon Odette ripped through the Philippines last week, killing around 400 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. 

My son, Ben, has lived in the Philippines for the past few years, in a little beach town called Moalboal on the island of Cebu. With his partner, Nadine, and his daughter, Ehra, they started a little restaurant called the Three Bears, which slowly grew and became popular with backpackers and travellers. Encouraged by the success of this new business, they opened Crazy Bears, a hostel for travellers. The paint on the new hostel had barely dried when COVID struck and they had to lockdown. For 18 months they have barely survived, relying on local patronage and the occasional donation from the Bank of Mum&Dad. Finally, things looked better as restrictions ended and custom trickled back to life. But then Odette came.

Thankfully, they and their friends are safe. The hostel suffered some damage from falling trees and fences blowing around, but they are still standing. Some of their friends have lost their houses and belongings, blown away by the tempest. Power poles were blown over, uprooted or simply snapped in the ferocity of the storm. The government and local authorities say the power will be restored in 4 to 12 weeks. During that time they have no way to cool their properties, no refrigeration, relying on those lucky enough to have a generator. Gasoline and water are limited, prices have inflated and queues for water of 5 hours have been reported.

We want to help Ben and his friends and neighbours. Ben’s brother Tom has set up a gofundme page. The aim is to provide income as they have no government aid whatsoever. Ben and Nadine want to help their friends and neighbours to survive the coming weeks with no power, no income and no aid. And longer term to rebuild their homes and get back on their feet. Please take a look. Any donation will be a big help, for example ten dollars will buy around 70 bottles of water. 

GoFundMe page

I realise that this is not a particularly cheering or festive post. If you read this far, thank you for your time. I hope you can find some seasonal goodwill to your fellow human. If you can make a donation, please do. 

Just as importantly, please share far and wide, this is currently an unreported story. The more exposure gained, the more help received. Thanks again for your time and attention, now back to those mice pies!

Dwarf Comparison

Somebody asked if I would post a photo of the Crooked Dice dwarf alongside others from my collection. Thinking that others might find this useful, and to spread a little beardy love, here is the result. As you can see, I have lined him up with old GW dwarfs from the 90s, since these are the ones that fit best in my collection. In height, they are all similar, the GW figures are bulkier in the body and facial features. A finer band of stout adventurers I cannot imagine.

Mom Miniatures Dwarfs review

Mom Miniatures are a Spanish company with a fair sized range of resin fantasy miniatures. I was particularly drawn to the dwarfs, so made a small order to get an idea of their quality and suitability. The photo above I grabbed from their website, showing the unit I ordered fully assembled and ranked up on 20mm squares. On placing the order I received a confirmation email telling me I would receive another email when they had been shipped. Eight days later, the postman delivered them. That’s quite impressive given the current circumstances. I am UK based, there was no hassle with VAT, import duties or such like, I am still unsure what is supposed to happen in the brexit set up?

Here’s how they look out of the blister pack.There are ten unique head sculpts on one body pose, five axes, five hammers and ten shields. The shield arms have a slot to receive the back of the shields, which you can see at the bottom of the picture. You could, of course, use your own shield here.I have not assembled them as yet, so here’s another photo from their website to show how they would look.

The quality of the casting is good. There are no holes or bubbles that I could see. There is a mould line but it was easily removed with a craft knife. I would be tempted, maybe, to paint them without the shield fixed, to allow access to face and beards.

How do they compare with other minis? I have lined up a selection of my own minis and put them into height descending order. The metal GW slayer is probably tallest due to his big hair! The next figure along is a modern GW plastic hammerer/iron breaker. Then we have the Mom figure, and the next one along, the mystery ivory coloured specimen, is a resin Iron Crow dwarf by Durgin Paint Forge. Finally, a couple more metal GW dwarfs from the 90s.

In size and bulk, the Mom Miniatures dwarf is probably nearer to 35mm than any other scale. Stylistically, it’s a good match for the Iron Crow dwarf, with bigger flatter nose, similar styled beards and a slightly less serious aesthetic. I will certainly be happy to mix them into my collection, I base on rounds and tend to play skirmish games so scale issues are less of a concern to me. There are bigger difference between my older and newer GW figures who happily fight alongside each other. Stylistically, it’s a personal opinion of course. I absolutely love them! So much so that I am hoping to build a new warband using the Mom and Durgin figures together. Just a small band of course, a few clan warriors, some handgunners maybe, the berserkers of course are a must, maybe some miners to dig up the salt, and a handful of characters. And maybe a war machine for good luck. Yeah, that’s definitely a small warband.

Hammer time

It’s been such a long time since I played or painted any Lord of the Rings, but having recently got a copy of Oathmark, I have been dusting off my Mordor collection. We have played just one game so far, using basic blocks of troops to get a handle on the rules. The next step is to introduce characters and more specialised units, which for Mordor means trolls. 

I only have one painted troll, so it was the perfect time to dig out that plastic troll languishing in a cave somewhere at the back of the drawer. I made it straight from the sprue to begin with, but decided it looked a bit similar to my old metal figure. So I changed the helmet a little by chopping off the horns and putting one back in the centre, rhino style. Then I replaced the plastic hammer head with a metal bit, from an ogre butcher I think. Two small changes which make a nice, unique model.

I must have painted the first troll about 15 years ago. At the time I made some changes to the pose, to calm it down a little, rather than wildly swinging the hammer. I entered this figure in Golden Daemon, and though it made the final cut, it was easily vanquished. It’s not hard to see why. It’s a brown blob with very little contrast. I always said I would remedy this at some time, it’s only taken 15 years or so to get round to it.

At the time I was influenced by the film palette, but this time around I want to go back to the original source. In the books, trolls are usually described as black or dark skinned, so that’s a potential palette. I will probably go for a grey skin with blackened  armour, but am still pondering. It’s good to be back in Middle Earth again, with the fire of Morgoth in my belly!

A few random vikings

 I was ratching* about in my boxes the other day, when I came across this set of vikings, which were mostly painted but had never been finished. Always happy to get a result with little effort, I applied the last few touches and the shield transfers, adding another half dozen vikings to my collection. I have recently thinned my collection, offloading quite a few old painted figures to eBay, so I am happy to say that I now have got back to six points of painted figures for Saga.

The two central figures are by V&V miniatures, still my favourite manufacturer by a long chalk. The others are by Victrix Miniatures, which offer a decent, more affordable alternative. The shield transfers are by Little Big Men.

Here’s the single point of hearthguard, with the temporary leader (Thor is a busy guy and he can’t play this role forever). At some point he will be replaced by a suitable, more historical figure. I chose to restrict the shields to red, black and white to tie the unit together a little. I have another unit of hearthguard with great weapons that are not yet painted. 

*ratch is a Cumbrian/Scottish/northern dialect word, meaning search or looking for. I was hoping it was Norse in origin, but it seems to be medieval of unknown origin.

Hobgrot Slitta Conversions

It’s summer time, so there’s a new Warhammer box set in town. I thought that the new hobgrot slittas looked promising as conversion fodder, so I grabbed a set of ten from eBay. I wasn’t sure on the size, from the pictures online they looked bigger, but they are a perfect match for my Lord of the Rings collection. 

Here’s a picture of a converted hobgrot alongside a Mordor orc and a Morannon orc. As you can see they are a perfect match to the Morannon figure, or could easily be played as a Mordor orc. Or you could paint them in dark armour and use them as black orcs. I would think you could easily fit them into a Uruk hai tribe too. Good news if you are looking for some variety to your collection.

The conversions were relatively easy. I used plastic bits from the oathmark goblins set, with a few random historical plastic shields too, probably viking  in origin. You could swap with Lord of the Rings bits too I would guess. On the hobgrots, I trimmed away a lot of the extra bits, especially the ropes dangling from their armour, and I removed as many of the “grenades” as was easy to do, though I did keep one as a club. 

There were a fair few options available on the hobgrot figures. They are obviously a new incarnation of the old hobgoblin figures, and there are options to give them all helmets or keep them bare headed. The latter, in conjunction with the two dagger options, would give you a reasonable version of the old hobgoblin sneaky gits.

I originally bought the figures thinking they would make a good addition to my Warhammer goblins force, and I might still do this. But seeing them next to the LotR figures has given me a dilemma. One to ponder for a couple of months, as the annual summer hobby hibernation begins.

Realm of Chaos Spawn

This is a figure I have had in my collection for a long time. I cannot remember the date it was bought, early to mid 2000s I would hazard a guess. Back in those days, I was an old fogey in the glass cabinet section of the Warhammer forum. I bought the pack and split it with [fiend], a fellow painter on the forum, the idea being we would paint half each. I never got round to it for whatever reason, until all these years later. It’s kinda sad that it took so long.

I did make a start back in the day, it was glued to a square base and I had a notion to paint it as a Nurgle spawn, so it was already based in light green and bone colours. But my painting style has moved on. I wanted to give it more interest and more contrast, so I started adding hues and they developed at random. The left head I thought looked a bit alienesque and was shooting for a silver grey look, like a shark, but overdid it with the blue, decided I liked it and stuck with it. The right hand head stayed green and yellow. The middle head I was trying for a flesh colour but it turned out angry pinks, but again I quite like it so stuck with it.

Finally, here’s the chaos sorceror of my warband, to give a sense of scale. I am hoping to play games of Warhammer using the old fourth or fifth edition chaos book, in which there is a possibility that a character will be turned to a spawn for the amusement of the chaos gods (and my opponent, no doubt). At the moment the warband contains just one character, this sorceror, so he had better make sure he impresses those fickle deities!

Realm of Chaos Beastmen

Another unit painted for the Realm of Chaos warband. These twelve figures are a mix of metals from the early 90s and plastics, from the later 1990s I think. I reckon the plastic Beastmen to be one of the best kits ever released by Games Workshop, and with a few extra bits they really look the business. More info on the build in this post.

Painting was problematic at first. I tried a yellowish skin tone but it did not work. Then I tried a ruddy flesh tone, again I was not happy with the result. So I decided to make them similar to the ungors, but with a darker skin tone, it was meant to be a mid grey, but it has ended up more blue than I would have liked, but I just went with the flow (otherwise I would have given up completely). Finished but flawed is better than unpainted and abandoned.

The banner was another thing that did not go to plan. I knew that I did not want an elaborate design, that doesn’t fit the background for me, a crudely scrawled symbol was my choice. I added some runic script, copied from the chaos warriors shields, but it looked a bit amateurish, so I obscured most of it with some dark washes. It looks okay now, like the banner has been continuously draped in the blood of slaughtered enemies. 

Those problems aside, I am happy with the unit now it is finished. I have always liked the beastmen plastics and it feels good to have them as part of my collection. The warband feels more like a warband now. A leader, some scouts, some average troops and some elite fighters, just about enough to go raiding. I would like to expand on the scouting element by adding some hounds, still pondering over the choice of figures. I have a couple of quick and easy cheat units I can add in the meantime. 

Realm of Chaos Sorceror

This is a scenario many of you will no doubt recognise. I started painting this mini in a flurry of excitement and inspiration. I blasted through the cape and added the decorative border in a couple of sessions and was really pleased with the progress. I had an idea on the skin and put down a base coat and then put it to one side, meaning to pick it up again later in the week. But when the allotted time came round I didn’t fancy doing it too much so I left it, get back to it next week. And then the next week came and I was busy with something else. And so on. Eventually, it was four weeks later before I finally picked it up and finished it off. So it took one month to paint one figure!*

This is a metal figure, a limited edition chaos sorceror released around 2002 (according to Stuff of Legends, who seem to know their, er, stuff). It’s almost 20 years old, by the gods I have been doing this for so long now. It originally had a tail protruding from the front of the cloak but I chopped that off, partly on a whim, partly because I don’t like having too much of the model hanging over the the edge of the base. Nobody likes massive dangly bits.

The palette was mostly determined by previously completed chaos warriors, but I flipped the dominant colour to a deep red. The pale skin was suggested by the face looking a bit vampiric, a bit like the Emperor of the stars wars movies. Most evil guys have a very sickly, pale pallor, they obviously spend far too much time secreted away in dark towers and deep dungeons. The green flames were a natural contrast to the red robes, and green flames just look magical.

Slowly, very slowly in this case, the chaos warband is coming together. With ten warriors at his side and ten little goatee men scouts, there is a possibility to play skirmish games at this stage. Ideally, there would be at least one more unit before gaming could start in a meaningful way. I have already built the next unit (see my previous post) and hopefully I can get them painted quicker than one model each month!

This last photo shows the sorceror alongside two of the chaos warriors. If we ever play games of Erehwon, these would be the bodyguard/acolytes. While the warriors were painted almost exclusively using contrast paints with no highlights, on the sorceror I did employ some traditional techniques, layering and highlighting. Is there a great difference in the quality of the finish?

* these days, I spend most of my spare time painting canvas rather than toy soldiers

Attack of the Mutant Goatmen

Over the weekend I built the next unit for the Realm of Chaos warband; a unit of beastmen gors, led by a shaman. There’s a nice mix of figures in this unit, including metals from the 90s, through to the latest plastics from the start collecting box set. There’s also a few bits from the latest chaos marauders set, for some variety in the weaponry. The unit leader, holding the severed head, I am not sure where he came from, maybe Mordheim, he was in my bits box. I am pretty happy with the way they turned out, the plastic bodies are all pretty much identical but variety can be found with a little ingenuity. I think my favourite pose is the gor in the front rank on the right, he has real menace.

Realm of Chaos Warriors

The first unit of warriors for the Realm of Chaos project are completed. Black armour, red cloaks and white fur makes a striking scheme I have used before and wanted to try again, though this time using mainly contrast paints. There is very little highlighting involved on these figures, it’s mostly glazing with diluted contrast paints. I explained the process in more detail in my previous post. I am happy with the way these turned out, black armour can be flat and dull, so getting the texture and variation there was probably the hardest part. I could also make improvements on the red cloaks, but for now they are done.

With the recently painted ungors, that’s two completed units for this project. I feel I have earned the right to paint a character, so that’s my next job. An old sorcerer model will do very nicely. A chance to stretch my wings a little and add some more detail rather than production line units. That’s what I need now, to keep the interest level high. I find as I get older that I have less patience with painting units, one reason I am keen to exploit the contrast paints in any way I can. 

Contrast Chaos Warriors

I am making some progress with the chaos warriors. Over the weekend I finished half the unit, the remaining half are quite well progressed too. I had the camera set up for commission work so decided to grab a quick shot and waffle a bit about the painting process.

As with most of my work I started with a light undercoat. In the past I have sprayed white, then added a wash and worked from that point. For these figures I primed black all over, then from above with a grey, then dry brushed with white. This gave me a much better range of tonal values, albeit monochromatic to start with, a good base to glaze over with contrast paints. 

I painted the cloaks first as I thought these (front bits) would be hardest to reach with the brush. I used flesh tearer red contrast paint, diluted with a little flow aid and matte medium. This gave a surprisingly good finish, I could easily have left it at this, but I did add a little more shading in the deeper creases using contrast cygor brown, which is a red brown.

The fur trim was washed with skeleton horde contrast, as usual thinned with flow aid and matte medium. I suspect this is how contrast paints are made, with pigment added of course. I then dry brushed with white for an easy, effective, light fur effect. I splashed in other glazes to the fur as I painted the armour, greys, browns, yellow at random, to make it look a bit less uniform, a bit more natural.

The black armour was a bit more fiddly. I used black Templar contrast paint, which has a green/blue tendency over white. Ideally suited to sci fi figures but not my taste. So I glazed with browns and yellows to warm the tone. I then added random patches of grey and highlights with light colours from my palette, and also used white contrast paint to really try to achieve some variation in tone. Black alone is so flat and uninteresting. There was quite a bit of lightening and darkening going on with white, grey, brown and black, some glazing, some stippling, until I was happy with the result. It’s not as simple a process as the fur but then it’s a more complex thing to paint.

Hopefully it will not be too long before I finish the rest of them and I can put up a unit shot. The project is ticking along at a nice pace so far, hopefully I can keep at it, not get distracted by other projects. I spend more time painting canvas than miniatures these days, this Realm of Chaos project could be my swan song.