Diesel DM

Trollblood Battlegroup – Earthborn Dire Troll, Hoarluk Doomshaper, Rage of Dhunia and Dire Troll Mauler (left to right)

The site has been quiet for a while and now you know why. I’ve been working away on a new faction: Trollbloods! More than just a new faction, it’s also an entry into the Hordes system, which means figuring out the Fury mechanic, animi, transfers and all the other differences between Warmachine and Hordes. Rather than reveal each painted model as it was done I waited until I had the whole battlegroup completed, forming a sort of “battlebox” for eDoomshaper. So here are the completed models, eDoomshaper, Earthborn Dire Troll (EBDT) and a Dire Troll Mauler. They will form the core of many troll brick lists coming soon.

So why Trollbloods?  I’ve been interested in the Trolls for quite some time.  I’ve always liked the looks of the models and the where they are in the fluff.  Fluffwise they occupy a similar “good guy” role as Cygnar does in Warmachine. But on the table they are very different from Cygnar. Instead of lots of accurate guns and lightning. they bring massive beasts to fight. I’ve actually had a small troll collection for a while, but it has remained unassembled as I worked on getting more Cygnar done. But I hit a bit of painting slump and decided it was time to shake things up a bit. The final straw in my original purchase of trolls was a Mulg article in No Quarter 10-Year special edition issue.

And now the Mountain King is out, which is undoubtedly the best looking gargantuan.  Lastly the Hunter’s Grim is out, which I saw being sculpted back at Lock & Load last year, and what a great looking set of sculpts that is.

Over the next few posts I’ll cover each model above on it’s own, rather than having one enormous post, so stay tuned.

In preparation for an upcoming Journeyman League, I wanted to add the Tempest Blazers to my list as an excuse to buy, paint and play them. For those unfamiliar, the Tempest Blazers are a unit of Gun Mages mounted on horseback.  Each horse it made of three pieces: a left half, a right half and a head.  There are two styles of horses and two styles of heads.  The heads and bodies are interchangeable giving you 4 different horses, out of the max unit of 5.

Cygnar’s Tempest Blazer unit

The horse halves fit together okay, though I took some plastic sanding needles to them to help smooth out the top joint.  The heads however, have a very large gap all around as shown in the picture below on the top horse.  I’m not great at assembly and my sculpting is limited to the pouches I made in the last post.  But the joint was so bad I knew I couldn’t possibly make it worse.

Tempest Blazer Horses – Raw neck joint (top), grey staff gap filling (bottom)

I mixed up some grey stuff and rolled a portion out into a long thin cylinder.  I then wrapped it around the joint, cutting off the excess and pressing it into the gap.  From there I got out a sculpting tool and proceeded to smooth the grey stuff out, forward and backward, to cover the gap and try to seamlessly smooth out that gap.  As you can see in the bottom horse, it came out really well.  The proof will be once it’s primed and painted, but it’s certainly far better than the initial gap.

The top joint for the horse half came out well on all of them, so that wasn’t and issue, but I did use the same technique to patch up the seams at the back and bottom of the horse halves.

Sculpting the very, very small

Way back at Lock & Load 2012, I attended a session where Sean Bullough, a Privateer Press studio sculptor, covered how to sculpt leather pouches.  I’m like to immerse myself in all aspects of Warmachine, the game, the fluff and the hobby.  A big part of the hobby side is sculpting, and I’ve never tried that.  And I really wanted to.  So it was with great enthusiasm that I took notes on how to sculpt a pouch.  Sadly nearly a year has passed without me getting a chance to actually try this out, so my memories are pretty faded and my notes are cryptic in a few spots.  I’m sure they made total sense when I wrote them.

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Rangers – Scouting in the wild

While I have been working steadily on painting models for lists I have been trying to play, I took a detour to paint the Rangers, who had been primed and on their slate bases for many months. I don’t currently have a list I use them in, but now that they are painted I think I’ll find some spots to try them out.

The Ranger were a good change of pace as they are mostly green cape with some brown armor and clothing. There is a bit of Cygnar blue on the knees and edges of their coats. Just enough to make them Cygnar and hopefully not ruin their camouflage.  The bases are standard P3 bases with Kromlech Slate Basing Kit pieces applied.  I wanted the Rangers to feel adventurous and not just in the middle of the battlefield, so I the slate rocks helped elevate four of them and add some larger scenery to the other two.  I went heavy on the Jungle Tufts from Army Painter to really sell the deep woods feel.

Camo Cloaks

The cloaks are based with Ordic Olive, highlighted with Iosan Green and shaded with Battlefield Brown.  These jumps of color helped give a camouflage feel, but instead of the pattern, it’s as if the cloaks change from green to brown based on the viewing angle.  Probably could go one highlight more, but I think it is pretty good.