Dark trolls and trollkin for the Big Rubble

Here are some speed-painted stand-in trollkin for this weekend's Gloranthan skirmish game. 

I've long thought that a quest for perfect miniatures for Glorantha's peculiar inhabitants is a bit of a lost cause. Yes, there are a few excellent Uz (troll) miniatures available (though of widely differing sizes), but if you want to run some wargames or miniature-based RPGs in the Big Rubble, you need lots of trolls and trollkin. Far better, it seems to me, to paint some broadly similar creatures in a Gloranthan manner than fret about the exact length of troll snout

For me, the old Citadel Fantasy Tribe orcs are a decent match for Gloranthan dark trolls, at least as far as broad-brush description goes: about 7' tall if they stood up straight; snouts and prominent tusks; pot bellies and a hungry look.

The Grenadier orcs (as on the left above) are perhaps an even better fit, muzzle-wise, but the Citadel figures are possibly better in terms of stature and stance. And they work well enough together.

Trollkin, meanwhile, are meant to be of variable and somewhat neotenic appearance. The Oathmark goblin slaves do the trick for me - and, handily, they can be assembled with slings. I have some snoutier trollkin in the form of Grenadier goblins and Ral Partha RQ miniatures, but they'll all work fine together. 

These guys were speed-painted on Saturday; the clothing was just drybrushing stained with washes, so they were very quick. 

A dragonewt for RuneQuest

 Here's a slightly converted Lancer lizardman who's going to be acting as a dragonewt in some forthcoming Big Rubble skirmish games. I originally gave him a green-stuff beak and tail ending so that he could be a Shén in Tekumel. But he never made it to the painting table, and so he's now a beaked (second-stage) dragonewt for Glorantha. 

The photos aren't great; I think there's something wrong with my phone camera. But I'm quite pleased with how he looks in real life.

A nice thing about painting dragonewts is that no metallics need be involved; the creatures are supposed to rely on bone, stone and glass for their weapons and armour. 

The other nice thing about dragonewts is that they aren't supposed to look terribly similar to each other - so there's free rein for a wide variety of model types and colour schemes as the warband grows.

A Dark Troll for RuneQuest, etc.

 RuneQuest was the first RPG I ever got into, as quite a small child. I got the 2nd edition for my ninth or tenth birthday, I think. Recently, I ran quite a bit of it after our D&D adventurers found themselves transported to Glorantha. We switched systems and spent perhaps a year of real time playing through classic modules like Pavis and the Big Rubble and Borderlands - all of which were marvellous.

The Big Rubble is a superb concept for adventure games: a vast ruined city full of monsters and alien races (sometime indistinguishable), as well as plenty of loot. I've always thought it would make a great setting for a tabletop skirmish campaign. As I have plenty of broos miniatures, along with Citadel's Griselda and Wolfhead, a few baboons and access to plenty of historical miniatures, it seems a no-brainer. But trolls have always been a bit of a problem. Glorantha's snouted trolls aren't terribly like anything else, though I've pondered converting various gnolls and the like (possibly just 'converting by paint'). 

A while back, however, I bought the old Grenadier "Orcs of the Severed Hand" boxed set. I also picked up a couple of individual duplicates and a few each of the matching blistered trio, some of which I'd also retained since childhood. They make very good dark trolls, I think: appropriately snouted and tusked, and with quite sophisticated-looking equipment. 

This is the test piece: he's on a 25mm base, so quite large relative to humans. And if he deigned to stand up straight, he'd be a good 7' to scale with a huge head and arms, which is perfect. I'm also using some Asgard half-trolls and some of the old Citadel Gloranthan trolls. Those are based on Luise Perrin's illustrations for Borderlands, which have a much more traditional Scandinavian-folkloric appearance than the later (Trollpak on?) RuneQuest troll illustrations. But I'm happy mixing them together and uniting them by paint scheme. I also have a couple of Ral Partha RQ dark trolls to add to the mix; they work surprisingly well together.

Happily, there are matching goblins for the Grenadier orcs, which make perfect (if unusually well-equipped) trollkin. And I'm going to add in the two Ral Partha trollkin and some de-horned and de-tailed kobolds to bulk out the enlo hordes.

Edit: and here's a quick scale comparison with some WIP Gloranthan adventurers. I was trying to find some figures that would fit, size-wise, with old Citadel RuneQuest figures (represented here by Griselda and Wolfhead). The Frostgrave barbarian on the left strikes me as a perfect fit; the kitbashed Immortals/Warlord hoplite (perhaps with a Victrix head?) and Fireforge Russian work OK for me too.

Moorcockian chaos horde 2

 Here's the second chaos horde element for HOTT/DBF. They're all kitbashes to some extent, barring the skeletal dog. 

The bits come from Oathmark, GW, Mantic, RDG, Shieldwolf and Wargames Atlantic sprues.

One of the things I like about the DBA/HOTT/DBF family of games is that you can include as many banners as you want - which helps to create a mass effect from relatively few figures. I've got at least one more banner among the kitbashes awaiting painting and will look to add a few more.

It's a little tricky to photograph these elements, given the variety of focal points ...

... but I'll aim to sharpen my skills in that regard as the series continues. There are still another ten elements to go, with two more nearing completion.

Moorcockian chaos horde 1

 

This is the first of many Moorcockian chaos horde elements for Hordes of the Things and DBF. I've kitbashed a dozen of these elements; this is the first one I've finished. 

Each of them has, typically, five beastmen, which gives me about 60 to paint for just half of a HOTT army. 

Very few of the beastmen aren't kitbashed (I think there may be about five among the five dozen that are straight builds or unconverted metal figures). So there won't be many other armies that look too similar. 

Orcs speed-painted with markers

 

Here are four Blades elements for Hordes of the Things and De Bellis Fantasiae. I did these mainly with paint markers - a mix of very cheap Funnasting brush pens and slighly more expensive AK Interactive markers.

The skin was done entirely with markers, barring a glaze of Athonian Camoshade at the end. The armour was done with AK gun metal and then washed in Dark Star Murky Mire (Agrax, basically) before highlights with a silver brushpen. Then the eyes, teeth and tongues were painted with a brush. 

These Mantic figures are quite soft on detail, and the teeth and eyes are very hard to paint. With hindsight, I'd have drybrushed silver over the metal after the brown wash - but no matter: they're done!

Sabot basing for De Bellis Fantasiae (DBF)

 

I recently picked up the new De Bellis Fantasiae (DBF) from Wargames Research Group. It essentially combines Hordes of the Things (HOTT) and De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) into a large-scale mass-battle game. 

As an HOTT enthusiast, the game's right up my street. It does need a lot of elements, though, so I decided to get some sabot bases so that I could use individually based figures in DBF battles. A custom order from the excellent Oshiro Models sorted me out with a range of sabots at a very reasonable cost, so I now have a a range of 60mm square bases that can hold two, three or four figures based on 25mm squares and two mounted figures or animals on 25 x 50mm bases.

Originally, I'd planned to use these either for Beast elements (wolves, wolf riders and the like) or Great Beasts (ogres, trolls, bugbears, gnolls, etc.). That lets me keep the largeish creatures on fairly small 25mm bases for RPGs and skirmishes. But I tried out some old Citadel orcs on the four-base sabots and thought they'd work nicely as 'fast' Blade units in DBF.

It's much quicker to paint up a sabot base than an individual figure, so I now have scope for vast armies with very little effort, given the numbers of painted humanoid monsters that I have to hand. I'm also working on some fixed element bases with multiple figures too, including some lively chaos hordes. The great paradox of HOTT and DBF is that Horde elements are the most fun to paint and the most time-consuming - but also very cheap in game points. So one needs to do lots of them ...

Works in progress ...