Trollololol :-)

Well, while thinking about Kings of War, reading the rulebook and fiddling with an online army generator, I remembered the goblins from the old Battle for Skull Pass box I bought in oh, 2006 or something... If I remembered correctly there would be a fair amount of gobboes in there. A quick google confirmed that yes indeed, there were over 60 goblins, ten spider riders and a troll in the box.

Lots of goodies back then. Sure, everything was monopose, but it was still a decent set of figures.

While the dwarf units are a bit uneven in size, the goblin units are the exact size of Kings of War Regiments. Even the picture on the back of the box puts all the heroes out by themselves like Kings of War instead of inside the units. It didn't take long to enter the units into the army builder and here's what I got:

• Sharpsticks (Goblin spears)
  Regiment(20) - 95 pts
  Regiment(20) - 95 pts
• Spitters (Goblin bows)
  Regiment(20) - 85 pts
• Fleabag Riders (spider riders)
  Troop(5) - 95 pts
  Troop(5) - 95 pts
• King (Goblin Big Boss) - 90 pts
• Wiz (Goblin Shaman) - 45 pts
• Troll Bruiser - 125 pts

A total of 725 points if I split the riders into two troops, which coincidentally is almost the recommended starting points in the KoW rulebook. Just add 25 points of magic items and I'm there.

So yesterday morning I rummaged around a bit and found all the goblins in a cardboard box neatly marked "Gobboes". I hadn't painted any of them, but one unit had been handprimed glossy black -- not on purpose, must have been a paint malfunction -- and a couple of models had been used for practice painting by my kids. The troll caught my eye though and I decided to paint him during the weekend.

Slugdrool the troll.

I did a quick and quite rough paint job, with three layers of paint. While I did use care for the finer details I didn't want to spend ages highlighting all that skin. It's a troll for crying out loud! Still, I'm more than happy with the result!

Not particularly big on personal hygiene...

I used Foundry Moss for the skin and Canvas for his loincloth. The bones and teeth were painted white and then washed with Vallejo Umber wash. The rocks and dirt were done with various grey and brown paints, nothing special I just grabbed whatever was closest. I put some blood stains on the front of his loincloth as it looked too clean, and then decided it needed some other stains on the back.

The dwarf shield was painted the same blue I use for my dwarfs. 

The model is obviously sculpted with the theme of the boxed set in mind. On the ground is a dwarven shield. The troll is holding a big chunk of a dwarf statue and what looks like a dwarf skull is hanging from his neck.

I used various clumps foliage and tufts to bring the base to life, taking care not to cover any of the sculpted details.

This was a very refreshing figure to paint, and it will be useful for various games. If I don't use it for Kings of War I can use it for roleplaying games or various skirmish games like Open Combat or Frostgrave. A troll is simply the archetypal fantasy monster.

Still, I have to hand it to Kings of War; I have only spent 10 pounds on the gamer's rulebook and haven't even tried the game yet, but it inspired me to paint a figure that had lain untouched for years.