Some Ral Partha and Citadel gnolls

Gnolls are always handy monsters to have around - whether as generic beastmen or to fulfil specific roles in games such as D&D, Frostgrave and Elf, Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde. 

They are ultimately derived from Lord Dunsany's story How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles. The first edition of D&D makes this plain, along with the suggestion that the creatures were part gnomes and part troll - surely the inspiration for the original Citadel gnolls, which were eventually renamed "great goblins".

So why did they become hyena-men in later editions of D&D? I think it's just part of a general trend by which the "giant class" creatures - essentially a hierarchy of ever-more dangerous goblins - started to be differentiated through animal attributes. So kobolds became dog-men, goblins preserved the archetype of the Tolkien orc, orcs became pig-men, hobgoblins monkey-men or ape-men, gnolls hyena-men and bugbears bear-men. 

Interestingly, gnolls have preserved their animal identity through the various iterations of basic and advanced D&D as most of the others have not. Perhaps that's because hyena-men are just a more evocative concept - conjuring the ghouls of Arabic folklore as well a whole range of unsavoury habits. Hemingway summarises these nicely (if a little unfairly); his description is a great starting point for GMing gnolls:

"The hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain."

A great big goblin

 This is a very simple conversion of a Reaper Bones orc, with the original small head replaced by a much larger GW goblin one and a bowstring added with thread. 

He's quite a sizeable fellow - that's a 30mm base - so he'll make a good leader or enforcer for the goblin band I've been working on. 

Thorin, Dain and their dwarves

 These are some Blade elements for Hordes of the Things, to represent Thorin and company and Dan and the dwarves of the Iron Hills in the Battle of the Five Armies.

In the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, Dain is described as wielding a red axe (though whether that's the haft, the blade or just its bloody state is unclear). Here (much later on at the Battle of the Five Armies), he's upgraded to a red spear. 

These ex-Grenadier EM4 dwarves are the best fit for Dain's dwarves, I think. They don't quite have mattocks, but their axes are sufficiently mattocky to count. And they're suitably grim and tough-looking.

That's the dwarves done. Next up are the Men of Laketown (Spear elements) and Thranduil's Elves (Shooters).

Beorn for the Battle of the Five Armies

 

This is Beorn for the Battle of the Five Armies forces I'm painting up for a friend. He's a Reaper Bones bear painted with the appropriate black pelt and based for Hordes of the Things.

In Hordes of the Things terms, Beorn should be a God element, I think: arriving late on the battlefield and able to move very quickly and destructively. 

A quick beholder

 Here's a quick beholder I painted. It's destined to be a baddie opposing or leading the warbands I painted for a friend's kids a while back.

These rough-and-ready Reaper Bones figures are very quick to paint: essentially just dry brushing with a few proper highlights. Mid-sized monsters like this one are where the range really shines.

Ghosts and goblins

 Here's the latest member of my growing troupe of night goblins. With these creatures, I'm aiming for a folkloric approach: eerie creatures of the Otherworld rather than mundane subterranean soldiers. 

In light with that approach, I kitbashed a leader for the goblins from a Games Workshop ghost and some night-goblin parts. In folklore, the distinction between ghosts and goblins isn't necessarily clear, so I thought a sinister fairy might benefit from appearing rather ethereal. 

I've got a few other conversions and kitbashes awaiting paint; some of these have tails or animal heads. I'm also planning a few larger bases of two or three figures for use in "large skirmish" games.