Look at my Enourmous Chopper

Trollblood Axer finished.  Pretty poor pictures, camera phoned as usual, but less quality than I normally manage.  That said, I am off to work.  Any thoughts always welcome,

Can't see the Trolls for the Trees

Work this week has seen me finishing at 9.30pm, getting home around 10, and then with nothing else to do, hobbying until about midnight.  So, you might ask, (if you cared, which you probably don't, although if you don't, why are you here) what have I been doing.

Would anyone be surprised to know that the answer involves Trolls, and Trees?  More specifically, I have been working on my Troll Axer for my Trollbloods.  Got the skin done, got the metallic armour started.  Just some details (Face rocks, toe nail shading, the Bloody (literally, covered with blood) great axe, the copper bits of his armour, and of course, the tartan) to do.  Pleased again with how the skin is coming out, given that there are very few steps to it, it seems to give a quite nice effect, in person, even if it doesn't always come across in my (very poorly lit camera phone taken) photos.

The other thing I have been playing with has been trees and hedges.  Had the random idea to try making some of these, and so went to town.  Plasticard bases, pan scourers, clump foilage stuff.  Attach scourer to base, spray black and then drybrush brown, before covering with the clump foilage, and then basing to suit.

The trees are the typical twisted wire home made armature variety.  I am experimenting with them still.  The one that is shown here is made by covering the armature in liquid green stuff.  Too much of the "its made of twisted wire" comes across with that for me.  Other methods to be tried include "wrap it in kitchen towel soaked in PVA (A reasonable success) and the still to be attempted "smear it with green stuff to hide the wire".
The greenery is made with the same clump stuff as the hedges are covered in with one trick that I haven't seen anywhere else.  When I have attempted this before, the foilage always either fell off if I made big clumps, or looked quite bare.  To counter this second, I, before I added the foilage, gave the end of the branches some bulk using finely chopped up scourer stuck to the wire.  This was allowed to dry, and then had the (more expensive, harder to work with) clump stuck to it.  I'm still not 100% happy with the result, but its forward progress on previous attempts.

As always, comments, criticism, advise are more than welcome in the comments section.

It's A Bomber, It's A Bomber

Because, honestly, this may be my favourite Troll model so far,
 because he is just so fun....

Well, thats the Dire Troll Bomber completed to my satisfaction for now.  It was bought off of E-Bay a LONG time ago, sat on a shelf for ages, until i realised that it was missing the Pyg Rider.  That was then purchased from PP when I got the replacement part for the Storm Strider.  It was built, and has finally been painted as part of the great "Paint everything before I start a new project" drive that has started this year.  I still need to put the scatter leaves on the base, and possibly a log of some sort, but it is basically finished.

In other news, I have finally been persuaded into playing Magic the Gathering again.  To be honest, having seen the people at the local shop playing it again, I've missed it.  Small investment in cards, and I have a Red Aggro deck ready that should hopefully at least let me not embarrass myself too much in standard.  I am hopefully going to blog about my re-entry into magic in a seperate post a bit later.

Anyway, here he is.  I shall name him Boris.  Because reasons..  Any comments and criticism/suggestions are entirely welcome.

They are RIVETS.  NOT EYES.  Even if they would make really cool staring eyes.....

Tartan.  If only I could come up with a way to paint Scottish Trolls and NOT paint Tartan......

A first attempt at fire.  If I was braver, I might have tried to OSL the areas around the flames.  But I like it too much to risk ATM.

Dire Troll Bomber WIP

Not much to say.  Started work on my Dire Troll Bomber.  Any comments at this early stage welcomed.

Kriel Stone Bearers Unit

Just finished painting my unit of Krielstone Bearers.  I had finished the Stone Bearer himself as a test piece, and have posted pictures before, but the rest of the unit is new.  Basing style went with the ongoing forested/woodland theme, that hopefully will be developed with some terrain pieces in the near future.  Thinking some patches of rough ground, linear obstacles made from fallen trees, and some Troll dwellings.

All told, these weren't too bad to paint, even though there were only 2 sculpts for the guards, they just about managed to avoid my frustration at painting lots of the same model.

I've managed to keep the tartan featured on all of the models again, although I am not sure how well it comes out on these smaller areas, but the colours and pattern are at least in general consistent across these and my other trolls.  I think that the next job will be to paint another Warbeast, possibly finishing the Bouncer, or starting on the Blitzer or Bomber.

As a side note, just want to say well done again to PP customer services.  I had a mismatch of arms and bodies in my Fennblades.  Seamlessly the replacement parts service has dispatched the correct arms.  Lets hope they turn up in a timely manner, but based on past experience, I have no doubts that they will.

Playing Aleph

Well, I played my first 300pt game of N3 today, against Tom.  300pt game, against his Militant Orders.  My list

Maruts - Leuitenant
Deva with Devabot
Deva with Devabot
Naga Sniper
Sophotects
2 Yudbots
Dakini with HMG
2 Dakinis with combi rifles
2 Netrods

The idea being that the Maruts could advance supported with the deva's on its flanks and the sophotects following providing healing.  The Dakinis and Naga provide two additional threat vectors which are too dangerous to ignore, but seperating forces to deal with them will reduce the forces available to deal with the Sophotects.

In the game itself, this nearly worked.  the forces were set up with the Maruts etc on the left flank facing down his link team, and the Deva and the Dakinis on the right, opposite his TAG.  He had first turn, and moved the link team up to an advanced position.  His TAG's support bot Heavy Flamered the Naga, and was cut down by the Maruts in return fire.  In my first turn, the devabots flamed the link team (Tom, SPREAD OUT YOUR LINK TEAM).  Then died.  Then did the same again with the other one.  The Maruts then managed to sneak out enough to spray 2 of them with Heavy Multi MG fire, cutting down their numbers further, and taking a Panzerfaust to the face for its troubles.  Further sneaking round and shooting, and then repair attempts by the Yudbots (1 passed, 1 failed) left the Maruts on 1 Structure.

The rest of the game followed a similar pattern, Trading models.  The Pan O TAG spent most of the game not wanting to advance into the Dakinis, the Maruts fell, taking out all but 1 wound of the link team, and eventually dying to the now bot less Deva's.

By the end of the game I had 101 points of models left, and him 107.  End result, a marginal victory to Tom, and well deserved.

Fear of the Trolls

Right, its time to talk about fear.  And Trolls.  And fear of Trolls (or something)

I have a largish collection of Trollbloods that I have picked up from ebay about 18 months ago whenever they came up at reasonable prices.  So far, I have painted exactly 3 of them, a Dire Troll Mauler, Madruk and Janessa.  They weren't based.  I had no idea how I wanted to base them.  So they sat, unbased, surrounded by their boxed colleagues.

This weekend, I decided that I had to do something about the trolls.  I had been painting Warmachine stuff, and that had led me to want to move on.  So, I built my Trolls.  More specifically, I built a unit of Kriel Warriors, a unit of Krielstone bearers, a sorceror, a bomber, and started on a Blitzer and a bouncer.  It was here that the fear first hit me.

I HATE privateer press plastic units.  I remember with horror trying to clean up and assemble the 2 units of Stormblades and the unit of stormguard.  No instructions.  Pieces that fit badly.  Mold lines over important points.  The trenchers with bent guns.  This all combined to make me put off assembling my Fennblade unit.  Even though this is the oldest set I have for the Trollbloods, even though they would fit beautifully with my idea for a force of infantry with Tough.  No, the fear of just how bad they are going to be means that they are still in their box, not even examined.

To get over this, I moved on to the Krielstone Bearer.  And this is where we get to the fear MK II.  I have painted the skin, and I have painted the stone itself.  And now I find myself at the point where I KNOW that these look good, and are at the limits of my skill.  And I find myself reluctant to move on.   I worry that I am going to take this model that I have worked hard on and think looks good, and spoil it by messing up the rest.

So, before I wreck a model, I will show some WIP pictures of the Krielstone Bearer.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms all welcomed.