Throgg the Troll King

 Throgg the Troll King is a character from the old Warhammer Chaos army. I think he got killed off in the Age of Sigmar reforms/purges, but he still appears in the Total War game. Basically, he's a huge troll with delusions of nobility. In the old rules, he enabled you to take an army based around trolls: probably not very effective, but a lot of fun. I thought I'd have a go at making my own version.

My version wouldn't be terribly exact - he'd look more like an orcs and goblins troll rather than the more warped chaos version, and he'd probably be pretty chunky. So, as the basis for Throgg, I would need a large, solid model that would give space for sufficient conversion. I went for the Age of Sigmar Khorgorath.

I think with Games Workshop these days, there are generally no really bad sculpts, but some pretty weak ideas. The Khorgorath gets close to being a weak sculpt, and is a really bad idea. It's just a mess: a great big lumpy body that looks almost too chunky to move, with a load of weird and wonky details on top. Strange snake/pincer/vertebrae things are rising from its back. There are skulls apparently pushing their way out of its kneecaps (why?). It looks like a lot of slightly half-cocked ideas put together because they seemed cool.

Huh?

So the first thing was to use thinned down DAS clay to cover most of this nonsense up. The big khorne symbol on its chest went too, as did the head and hands. The hooves (again, weird hooves) were cut off too. Eventually, what I had was a smoothed-down version of the original without, er, extremities.

The hands came from leftover giant parts that I bought on ebay. I shortened the giant's club somewhat, and stuck a brazier from a scenery piece on top. I painted the brazier as full of rocks, to function as Throgg's "sceptre".

Then I took a deep breath, and started sculpting him a new head and feet. I sculpted the feet on bits of paper.

Yes, that's his face: a ball of DAS clay with a frown drawn on it. I only did this to get the rough idea of where his features would go. Then I started sculpting a face. I'm not very good at this, but thankfully, trolls are fundamentally ugly. I did this over several days, allowing the green stuff to dry overnight. Then I stuck a little metal crown on his head. I bought it at a steampunk event about ten years ago. Goodness knows why.

I stuck the feet, the hands and the club onto his body, along with a couple of spikes on his right shoulder.

Then I added his head, sculpted some ears and painted him. I happened to have an old cloak from a chaos chariot in my bits box (thanks James) and I added that to his right shoulder to give Throgg a suitably "regal" appearance. The cloak is meant to look as if it's tied to the spikes jutting out of his body.

Here he is:

And here is Throgg with his subjects!