Trollsday Tidy Up

 Another Troll Tidied Up

Balin the troll slayer

This Bob Olley marsh troll by Reaper has been on my redo list for some time as I have never been happy with finished result. But at the time I couldn't work out how I wanted to improve him. In the end it was a mixture of adding detail to key points such as the fish and cloth plus redoing the base in a much more overgrown way. It was also a chance to use the new vallejo water texture. I may add a few more layers later (three layers done in the pictures). 

Bob Olley is a bit of a Marmite sculptor but this is a cracking sculpt with a very nice folklore feel to this troll. Without any of the comic overtones usually found in troll models. 

Before 1

Before 2

After 1

After 2

The white bird mark was an accident but I thought added to the organic feel of the base, so I kept it. 

After 3

Trying Stuff

After reading a bit about taking care of brushes, I decided to buy some brush cleaner. Now I am not sure how much difference it will make but I certainly managed to get a good deal of crap out of even dry brushes. And the brushes seemed to hold their points better after cleaning. So, now we will see how much improvement this brush cleaner makes in keeping the brushes in service. In case you are wondering the vegan brush cleaner was the cheapest one on Amazon UK. 

And on a grumpy old git point, why tell me its a 100% vegan because if it wasn't 100% then it couldn't be vegan anyway!

Dirty, dirty brushes not anymore

Also, some vallejo water texture arrived today, so this major obviously played a part on which troll got tidied up today! As we all like to play with the new stuff. 

My precious

On the Paint Bench

As I started the next group of miniatures, I was struck by the over forty year range of miniatures currently in progress. From the 70's Ral Partha high elf to 2010's Citadel Thorin with a pleasant stop in the 90s for some classic Oldhammer figures. 

Something for all ages

Rob 

River Troll (60 pts)

Lurking by the River's Edge

Having the finished the druid, attention has turned to the Bob Olley Troll who I have now decided will be the Champion of the Chittering Horde. However, he will be upgraded to a Level 10 Hero with high Strength (2 Handed Weapon) and scaly skin (Heavy Armour).

 

Mirk (Level 10 Undead Hero – 55pts) – River Troll Scaly Skin (Heavy Armour + 3pts) & Mighty Strength (2 Headed Weapon + 2pts)

60

Fish for tea

Rob

Army Building Rules

 My Game My Rules!

So I have decided on a few ground rules for building this army

1. Stick to a limit of £30 for the first part of this army. I want to see if a can build a core for this army before starting to buy lots of random figures. I think this is especially important with this type of army as it is all too easy to wander off  and buy all kinds of figures without being able to use them in a satisfying way to fit the army theme.
2. Ideas will change as the army develops so keep in mind the theme when buying  that next shiny figure.
3. Miniatures already in the lead pile do not count towards Rule No. 1. Even better if I can actually paint up some stuff that has been sitting around for years. 

First Steps

So the first thing I did was have look around my collection for miniatures that might be useful. On first go it was not impressive. A couple of broken Grenadier Elves, some wolves/hounds and a couple of plastic spiders. 

Definitely not an Oldhammer troll!

However once I had another look around I did find a Bob Olley Marsh troll by Reaper Miniatures.  I gift from last Christmas because I liked the sculpt but he didn't really fit in with the Chaos army or anything else i have been working on. So he remained unpainted on the lead pile for the last few months. However, I think he has a suitably Fae look so now he's in. Not sure what I am going field him as yet so not all of the details have been worked out. 

I have ordered a couple of Ex-Grenadier Druids, as Mark Copplestone's Celtic inspired Wood elves look great and will give me a chance to try out my colour schemes. 

Rob