Hill Troll

 

It's been a while since I painted any trolls. I had wanted to collect a set of the later Citadel C20 trolls, but never got very far. I recently managed to get the hill troll, though, and painted it up right away. Halfway there!

Father Trollsmas

 

I've been waiting all year to paint this for the yule holiday. Last of my unpainted Satyr Art Studio trolls. Unless he sculpts more. Or I can get my hands on the two from Apocalypse Miniatures.

Father Trollsmas, give us the fungi
We'll beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father Trollsmas, give us the fungi
Don't mess around with those silly toys

I tried some new snow material on the base. Looks like I need to brush some of it off the figure itself.

Giant Forest Troll

Done! I was intimidated before painting this, but had a lot of fun with it. From the Sandtorm Miniatures Kickstarter & Satyr Art Studio.

Trollwives & Giant Forest Troll

Drewtember continues.... Trollwives from Satyr Art Studio are done.

Now I'm making solid progress on the giant forest troll from Sandstorm Miniatures. Not sure it will be 100% done by the end of the month, but I'd rather run late than rush it.

Trollkids

Trollkids done. I made some painting errors, and then trying to fix it seemed to work at first, but then resulted in somewhat Muppet-y colors. I guess I can be OK with that. More Drewtember figures from Satyr Art Studio. I just put down the first base coats of color on the trollwives.

As I was painting them, I kept hearing Ron Weasley saying, "eeew, troll bogies" in my head. 😆
 

Drewtember

In recent years I've jumped onto a lot of painting challenges. I just finished my second Old World Army Challenge. Most of the rest are monthly challenges like Orctober, Deadcember, etc.

After a painting slump in August, I'm working up some motivation for September. I just received the Satyr Art Studio tribute to Tom Meier's old cloud giant figure. I've also received Lempo the giant forest troll from Sandstorm Miniatures, and the trollwives & trollkids, also from Satyr, a few months ago. All sculpted by Drew Williams. Thus...

Drewtember!

I know... Even more contrived than most of the others. Whetever. I have a bunch of his recent sculpts, I'm going to challenge myself to paint them this month. Good enough for me. ;)

Trollwives & Trollkids

Cloud Giant next to his inspiration from Ral Partha.

Lempo from Sandstorm Miniatures. As much as I hate to do it, one arm will need to be painted separately.

Maybe a bit hard to see, but the tiny baby birds in the nest in Lempo's antlers have their beaks open ready to feed while (presumably) mamma bird looks on. Little details like this are one of several reasons why I'm a a huge fan of Drew's sculping.

Oldschool trolls & giants on my desk? I'd better replenish my stock of 'shrooms.

miscellany

I'm trying to get through the last month of the Old World Army Challenge, but struggling. I've already met the minimum requirements, so I'm technically in the clear. But I had some remaining figures I wanted to include, and would like to finish them for the sake of "completing" the challenge army. (I know full well no project is ever "finished." But I'd like to complete what I have on hand.)

Along those lines, I painted a tiny "bonus figure" to go with the OWAC wood elves. Because I'm easily distracted. I believe it's from a pack of familiars from Reaper.

While digging through bins of old figures, I came across most of an old Nurgle chaos warband, painted long ago....

STUFF! IN THE MAIL!

I finally received this giant forest troll, Lempo, from the Sandstorm Miniatures KS. Another Drew Williams sculpted troll to add to my growing collection. The little details are amazing. For scale reference, the grid on the cutting mat is 1" x 1".

I also made a couple of impulsive Clearance Sale purchases online. One was a couple of sample packs of Scotia Grendel (former Harlequin sculpts, I think) orcs that I've been eyeing as possibilities for more half-orcs/hob-orcs. Here's a scale comparison pic. The Stygian orc (left) is at the smaller end of the scale, the Greater orc (Uruk) is at the larger end, especially if he was standing up straight. Accompanying them are painted orcs/half-orcs/hobgoblins from Grenadier/Mirliton, Black Tree, Midlam, and Reaper

The other thing I bought was a bargain purchase of a resin inn from Blue Moon Manufacturing. Looks great, but trying to do a dry fit today I couldn't get the parts to align like they do in the second pic (stolen from the online shop.)

Ambushed by trolls! (Preface)

IC 2437

The small trade convoy had made it's second trip to the highlands, and was on its way back to the Little Country. Two wagons were loaded with some sort of exciting new crops, or so everyone had been told. Nob was certainly excited, and the odd half-orc he had met with at the caves was certainly excited as well. Or maybe the latter was just exceptionally odd.

The details weren't much concern to the escort. They were a mix of hired, uniformed guards and mercenary scouts. The former were beneficiaries of Nob's first mission to the highlands. His trade in exotic crops between the hills, the Little Country, and Marienburg were quite a mercantile success story. One worthy of the City of Gold, but unusual for the hinterland. After those first journeys, many of the young hobbits who had accompanied the ambitions entrepreneur were signed on as Company Regulars, provided with high quality equipment and gaudy purple uniforms.

A successful second mission, they were told, would bring increased reward. Naive as they were, they didn't expect increased danger. The first mission had passed without incident -- a few simple hikes through the Broken & Waste Lands. Those first missions had been relatively quiet. But now, on the first leg of their second mission, they found themselves ambushed by a band of trolls. The beasts descended on them from the hills just as the convoy had made camp beside the sparse dirt road for the evening after leaving the half-orc village.

Even Nob didn't expect trouble. Fried and his half-orcs held great influence over this part of the highlands. But trolls were notoriously unpredictable. Were they double-crossed? Were the trolls a rogue element in the plan? It didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was fighting off the brutes and making it back home...

The battle was fought on my tiny little auxiliary table, 3' x 3'.  It was fought using the Dragon Rampant rules, my first attempt at adapting a miniatures game to solo play. Dragon Rampant works pretty well for that, due to the random activation rolls. Additionally, the scenario was fairly straight forward. The trolls were after the loot in the wagons. The hobbits were defending. Trolls would head directly toward the wagons unless they had been wounded by hobbits the previous turn (in which case they would attack in a 50/50 roll off) or hobbits were directly in the way. The hobbits would react based on their roles. Archers would avoid combat and shoot, militia and guards would protect the stuff..

Initial set up...

There were a LOT of failed activation rolls on both sides. That made for an unpredictable game. As soon as I thought one side was screwed, the other side would roll just as poorly. Here some hobbit archers had miraculously chased off some trolls from combat, only to blow their roll to shoot them in the back! Meanwhile, another group of trolls charges unstoppabley at one of the wagons!

Things get messy. No hobbit wants to melee with a bunch of trolls. But they manage to fend them off for a moment! Even one group who has already looted the wagons has dropped their precious reward and run of to further trouble!

In the end, the hobbits defend their camp and cargo. The trolls are beaten and chased off. For the moment....

This was my first time trying the Dragon Rampant rules. Although I've played some other solo games (mostly board games), this was my first attempt at crossing over. The solo rules were simple. The trolls were after the 'shrooms in the wagons. They would head there as their primary task. If there was a hobbit unit blocking their way, they would fight through. If they were wounded by a hobbit unit within charge range, they would have a 50/50 chance of pushing through to the chests on the wagons, or attacking whoever had hurt them.

There were some distractions, but for the most part the trolls carried on to their objectives. There were poor dice rolls on both sides. I'd say the rolls for BOTH sides were far, far worse than average. Every time I thought one side had really blundered in tragic fashion, the other side would follow suit!

That brings me to my next point... the game really seems to be a matter of random luck & dice rolls. Due to the simple mechanics, maneuvering and table-top game-play seems to have minimum impact. I played the whole thing out over the course of several 10-minute sessions.

Nothing mattered much except that there are two units in combat -- probably with similar stats. The game is all about the dice rolls. A little disappointing, even for a  solo or "beer & pretzels" game. It took longer to select forces and set up than actually play the game. There were tense moments -- will a certain unit survive before being overrun, etc. But, as mentioned, that was more a matter of dice rolling than anything like position, abilities, etc.

EDIT: Although I'd like a little more from the rules. I still had fun & don't want my criticisms to make it sound like I didn't. I'm going to give the game a few more tries. If nothing else, it was easy to put the game together, quick to play, and I didn't have to get bogged down with a bunch of complex or unfamiliar rules.

Troll!

Continuing to wrap up half finished figures from last year when I should be focusing on painting the wood elves I'm doing for the Old World Army Challenge this year! (I am making progress on the elves...)

Troll shaman by Artizan Designs, from North Star. As you can see in the photo that I previously posted, he's a little shorter than the Marauder & Satyr trolls, but given that he's squatting down I think I'm OK with that. I like the idea that trolls (much like humans) are heterogeneous in size and shape, and this seems within a reasonable range.

What will I finish next? Well... hopefully some wood elves! But at the rate I'm going, probably some more of the other neglected, half-painted figures still on my desk!

Marsh Troll

I posted this guy lurking behind elves in my OWAC posts, but never posted a proper pic of him on his own... til now.

Citadel c20 marsh troll.

(FWIW: I'm interested in acquiring most of the other c20 trolls, if anyone can assist....)

OWAC June Entry

My final entry in the Old World Army Challenge, more sea elf spear, and the old Elven Attack Chariot.

More words and photos at the OWAC page:   https://oldworldarmychallenge.blogspot.com/2019/07/zerotwentythrees-june-sea-elves-316-pts.html

Big April '19

Mucklegeet the Giant, from Heresy Miniatures.

Troll by Artizan Designs from Northstar Military Figures.

Comparison w/ Satyr Art Studio & Marauder trolls.

Trolls 3

The three most recent Satyr Art Studio (Drew Williams) trolls have been painted. 

Here they are with the previous sets.

That makes nine. Two of the most recent came with alternate heads. I'm contemplating a few different options to bring the immediate numbers up to ten.

New Trolls, Old Trolls

Reunited at last! I owned and painted a set of these six Marauder Miniatures MM40 trolls (sculpted by Trish Carden) when the first came out. A little while later, I traded off two of them to a friend, but kept the other four because I had written Mike, Vyv, Neal, and (P)Rick and did some (very) minor conversions appropriate to the names thereon.

A little while ago, inspired by the more recently released Satyr Art Studio trolls (sculpted by Drew Williams) I decided to strip the four trolls and remove the converted bits (which fell apart in the stripper anyway) with the idea of giving them a better paint job than I had back in my early years. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it until I got the other two again and had a full set.

So, once I finally tracked down the missing two a month or so ago, I finally got to painting. They're some of my favorite trolls ever made!

Here are the TrishTrolls alongside the DrewTrolls.

Stuff! In the Mail!

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I treated myself to a few minis -- namely the pack of Alternative Armies hobgoblins. There were two "treats" and the second one just arrived today...

Two trolls from Artizan/Mike Owen (via Northstar.) I thought they looked like they would go well with the Satyr Art Studio/Drew Williams trolls. While I'm happy that the sculpting and casting are just as good, I'm a little disappointed that the're a bit smaller. But I'm hoping that after they're painted and based, they'll fit in a bit better.

I'm expecting the third set of 3 Satyr/Drew trolls to arrive any time now. So I'll have a nice small batch of trolls to paint up soon. I should try to find one more to fit in with these, and make it 6 to paint.


In the mean time, I took a break from the half-orcs and jumped ahead to some minis I had prepped for the next theme-month: Deadcember.

I was too excited to see how they would look, and it was a super quick painting project. I like the idea of light skeletal artillery better than individual skeleton archers. This is an old Grenadier set. More undead fun coming in a couple weeks...

KoW in a Week

Photo of most of what I plan on fielding for KoW next weekend. Not quite enough Fomorians/Fimir, so I'm using the trolls I just painted, going heavy on the big guys, and (not pictured) a regiment of half orc allies. (Using the KoW ogre list, with human allies for the half-orcs.)


Click photo to enlarge, as usual.

Six Trolls and Some Bird Boats

Finished the sixth troll. These were so much fun to paint.

Now that I've got these done, I can use them next week in some 2500 pt. Kings of War games. I'm going to (prematurely) field my Fimir Fomorians One-Eyed Swamp Ogres. Using the ogre list, these will act as ogre hunters. I think it works... All my Fimm & Fianna ogres will be straight up ogre Warriors. These bog trolls Hunters will be more lightly armored, and will have the pathfinder and ensnare rules. So they're not "equivalents" to the actual ogre fluff, but the rules sort of make sense. To me, at least.

In addition to the warriors & hunters, I will field some Moor Hounds as red goblin scouts (basic light, fast cavalry), the Bog Demon as a mammoth, and a couple of giants as.... giants! I'll have a couple of characters, and to make up the last bit of points, I will field a regiment of half-orcs using them as humans from the Kingdoms of Men list.

Not an ideal list, but it's what I can field of an army vaguely inspired, once removed, by Irish myth on St. Patrick's Day.

Also wrapped up some high elves for a friend (other than needing to add some snow to the bases)...

Marsh '18 Trolls pt. 2

More progress. 5 of 6 trolls done.

Marsh 2018

Working on bog trolls instead of Fomorians/Fimir for the Month of Marsh 2018. Progress so far...

There is a KoW tournament on St. Patrick's Day. Although it's premature, I am tempted to scrape together a force of everyone's favorite one eyed swamp bastards (plus guests) as a sort of themed army.