A Whole Load of Trolls

 Do you like trolls? I clearly do, because one way or another I've painted quite a few of them. First up, I finished a GW troll that I'd had lying around half-finished on my desk for ages. Here he is, holding up an unfortunate goblin, probably just before whacking him into the horizon with his club.

Now, onto some other trolls. I can't remember how I ended up with a load of Privateer Press Trollbloods models for their game Hordes. At the moment, it seems that both of the Privateer Press games - Hordes and Warmachine - are effectively abandoned, or at least frozen. It's a strange turn of circumstances after they were challenging Warhammer ten years ago.

Anyhow, the trollbloods are weird models. I can't work out whether they're meant to look comical or not - certainly, they have the "comedy Scotsman" stereotype nailed down (they're meant to have tartan robes and they even had a unit of caber-tossers), and their proportions are very cartoony. Like post-2nd edition Warhammer orks, they default to the same facial expression: a sort of constipated fury. 

I've painted a field gun for these guys. The gun is a weird, dinky thing (figuring out how to assemble it was not easy), and the crew are slightly slimmer and neater than the regular soldiers. It's quite a cool model, almost a diorama in itself. Cannons do give you the option to have a few guys doing interesting things with powder and ramrods.

While I was at it, I semi-repainted two other trollblood models that I had knocking around to bring them more in line with the other models. That just meant redoing their skin and uniforms and rebasing them, but leaving a lot of their clothing as I'd originally done it. I think they are called Bull and Gunbjorn. 

And here are the basic soldiers (well, "scattergunners"), along with their angry-looking leader, Madrak Ironhide.

So there we are for now. These guys don't seem to have a functional game for them to play in, and I don't know what you'd need to have in order to have an actual force. I guess you could use them for Frostgrave or perhaps Stargrave, or another skirmish game like that. 

I've noticed that I enjoy painting models in different ways. Some, like the orks and Necromunda Escher gang, are just fun to do. Others, like the Bretonnians and these guys, are more of a chore to paint but are very satisfying to see finished. Maybe it's just that models like the orks are all individuals, and give me the opportunity to do whatever wacky thing I like. Hmm.