Thursday, April 20, 2023

For who the bell Trolls

         Oh boy, I need to work on my timing with these blog posts! These models have been finished close to the beginning of March. Once the bases were printed off, the trolls painted up quickly. They were picked up for about $30 for four soft plastic miniatures from Red Alliance, instead of $50-60 Canadian. This company specializes alterative Lord of the Rings models, perfect for MESBG if I am not going into anything official. 

Mordor Trolls - able to protect head with helmets


Cave Troll - Club smash!


School reunion outside Minas Tirith

    You might be asking yourself, hey wait that der troll are on different bases. But more accurately you are literate and talk normal in your noggin. But either way you say it, you are correct, the all powerful GW deemed Cave trolls lesser, providing them with a meager 40mm base for their impressive visage, while the Mordor trolls are on 60mm bases. The armoured trolls seemed to fit better on the bigger base too. Why worry about official bases on unofficial models? I'll tell you when I figure that out.

    They turned out pretty good for how quick they were, the cheap plastic didn't like the washes I used as much as something from better companies so there are some spots I had to repaint. 

    Reading through a new blog called Bedroom Battlefields, I found his list of companies that sell models similar to GW old hammer models. It's great to be able to see a curated list of the top UK wargaming sites as I am not as familiar with the hundreds that are commonplace across the pond. King Games, specifically Dunkeldorf miniatures, was one of the sites linked. I picked up a couple blister packs, Claudia "Schwartz" HinkelAgnes "Fleischer", and Esther the Zealot. Though they don't really invoke hand sculpted GW models, I thought they would fit into Rangers of Shadowdeep as survivors or rangers. I also picked up a swarm of rats that I quickly knocked them out to play RoS solo. I have been looking for a Canadian store that carries osprey and fireforge games without them being sold out, so I picked up the very well regarded female wizard box and a peasant rabble, the latter I hope to use some (there are 18 minis in the box!) for a non-combat TTG called applepicking28. One of many non combat games being worked on by the @4ydra community.

Shipped with some nice artwork...

.....and free goodies!

    So this is a first for me, finishing up models as soon as I buy them, what a quaint idea! The reaper bone rats were easy to base and paint. 

Rats swarming Minas Tirith


Get'em boys, he smells of cheese

    I played the first mission of Rangers of Shadowdeep which was split into two scenarios, first one finds the Rangers in a village that has been turned into zombies, and the second is rescuing the remaining villagers from spiders. 

    Playing it solo was fun, I used random painted miniatures, the stego Ranger leading humans and dwarves into battle against evil.


Next on the Hobby Desk

    Should have some terrain painted up soon, and May is just around the corner. You know what that means? Monster Mayhem is upon us!

4 comments:

  1. Great find on the trolls and they look fantastic, have you tried sealing the cheaper style plastic with matt varnish before painting, as I hear that helps ? Some other great finds as well, and look forward to seeing what you do for Monster May(hem)

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    1. Thanks for the tip Dave, I'll have to try that on the amazons I bought from them.

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  2. I like the brick work on the rats!

    How was Rangers of Shadowdeep? I picked up the PDF some time ago, but then never really got around to trying it out...

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  3. I enjoy it, read through the rules of frostgrave but didn't play it. From what I remember it plays fairly similar. The "problem" I run into is each scenario needs different terrain or list of enemies. Both could be proxied, but instead I bought some gnoll, clearly a hole in my miniature collection I was missing.

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