Diesel DM

Dire Troll Mauler – original metal sculpt

The amount of personality exuded by this sculpt is amazing, while still remaining dynamic.  I believe I purchased this before the new Dire Troll plastic kit became available which is fine by me as the new sculpt isn’t nearly as impressive. This was the last of the battlegroup I painted and I tried to learn a bit from the EBDT and bring the shades darker and highlights a higher to give more overall contrast.  I think I did an okay job, but more contrast is still to be had. (more…)

Earthborn Dire Troll

This is a great looking model with a remarkably dynamic pose.  Assembling this was my first experience filling massive gaps.  It’s amazing how poorly the pieces fit together.  Coming from Cygnar I’ve never had such gaps.  I think part of that comes from warjacks having natural locations for pieces to come apart as robots are expected to have linear separations for joints, armor plates, etc.  Living warbeasts on the other hand are expected to be one continuous surface (skin!), so there will be no ideal place for the model to come apart.  Still, pieces that fit together would have been great. (more…)

Hoarluk Doomshaper, Rage of Dhunia (aka eDoomie)

My first Trollblood warlock: eDoomshaper. To start I want to run a big beast brick and that is eDoomshaper’s specialty.  This model had a surprising amount of detail, but not a very wide color palette.  Lots of browns.  I did my best to differentiate the browns of his hood and clothes versus his leather embossed armor. For the armor I used the studio scheme and tried to keep the rest of the browns a bit lighter. (more…)

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.