Gloranthan stuff - adventurer, 6th July

[Severian]

I've accumulated a fair number of Gloranthan bits and pieces over the years, and some of them are even painted. I thought it might be best to put them into a dedicated thread rather than add them to my portmanteau thread on this board.

I thought I'd start with some fairly recent pieces. I'll dig out some older things and post pictures of them, if they look as though they can bear it...

So here are some trolls. First, a dark troll from Rapier:




next, for contrast, another dark troll, but this time from Fenris:





And a cave troll, from Rapier:




Where there are trolls, there may also be Griselda. So here she is. She's the old Citadel model, picked up broken on ebay; the sword and sword hand are replacements (from the Oathmark plastic dwarf set, in fact):





Lastly, a group shot:



More to follow, I hope.

[Little Odo]

Oh wow. Those trolls are larger than I thought they were going to be. I like your "dry", muted painting style - it gives the trolls a stone look.

[Severian]

Thank you! Muted colours is sort of where I was aiming, though I think my lightbox drains the colours a fair bit too.

They are certainly big - a have a few of the old Citadel trolls and, differences in style aside, they are very small in comparison. I'll post some comparison pics when I have a chance.

[Bloggard]

gosh ... griselda ... that's a name from the past.

she was in the stories Oliver (can't remember second name) wrote for the 'original' white dwarf (the good old days) wasn't she?

figures and painting are great - trolls in particular. They kind of look blue-ish with the dry-brushing, which I really like.

[Severian]

Thanks! I was playing around with blue washes (and black on the cave troll) over a pre-shaded base - white gesso, then an ink wash (payne's grey) dry-brushed white - then highlighting with white glaze, then blue washing again &c. Looks a good deal grainier in the photographs than in daylight, though I think I may need a new dry-brush.

Yes, Oliver Dickinson is the Griselda author. Lots of fun if (like me) you read Damon Runyon at school. There's some stuff at http://www.griselda.org.uk/

The original stories (from White Dwarf & elsewhere) are collected in The Complete Griselda, now out of print and going for silly money on Amazon...

[Hobgoblin]

The trolls look great - and Griselda too! The bluish skin is spot on for what I remember from Trollpak.

Those trolls are huge, though aren't they? I dimly recall that an average dark troll is meant to be seven feet tall if standing straight. But I suppose you get bigger specimens too - as well as huge Mistress Race trolls deep in the darkness ...

[fred]

These are nice.

Muted colours is sort of where I was aiming, though I think my lightbox drains the colours a fair bit too.

You might want to try a different background, with a white background cameras really struggle with their settings. If you use a more mid to dark toned background the colours tend to come out much better on minis.

It is possible to get great results with a white background, but you tend to have to play with the camera settings quite a lot.

[Severian]

Thank you both.

Those trolls are huge, though aren't they? I dimly recall that an average dark troll is meant to be seven feet tall if standing straight. But I suppose you get bigger specimens too - as well as huge Mistress Race trolls deep in the darkness ...

I don't have Trollpak, sadly, and am still waiting for the pdf of it promised in the RQ KS last year...but I did look them up in tatty my old RQ2 paperback. Dark trolls have a SIZ of 3d6+6, avg 16/17, which translates to exactly six foot tall...though a very big one might make eight foot. Cave trolls and great trolls are 4d6+12, avg 26 or say nine foot or so. Mistress race are 3d6+12, so a bit smaller. The very biggest RQ2 troll, then, would be twelve foot tall, or say 56mm or so in scale - and that's a hulking cave troll or great troll, not standard dark trolls. The Fenris dark trolls stand 48mm to the eyes, Rapier only a touch shorter...

I think part of this in scale creep, but part of it may be more recent Gloranthan source material (the Guide, for instance), none of which I have, which I suspect has made trolls a good bit bigger (judging by the illustrations to the excellent Prince of Sartar web comic). This probably goes together with ubiquitous tattoos, Assyrian Lunars, and all the rest of it - much of which I think are good things, but it's rather different from how it all was thirty years ago...

You might want to try a different background, with a white background cameras really struggle with their settings. If you use a more mid to dark toned background the colours tend to come out much better on minis.

Thanks for the tip.  My cheap lightbox came with a dark background as an alternative, so I'll give it a try. These are quick snaps on my phone, though, so I'm not hoping for great things. But even a little better would be nice.

[LeadAsbestos]

I've got Trollpak and a bunch of Glorantha stuff, old and new, if you're interested. These troll minis too! They all sit sad and unloved in my storage space, so if you need anything, drop me a line!

[Severian]

I've recently picked up some Gloranthan things again (and finally ordered the new RQG rules). So here are a couple of figures that have sat mostly painted but unfinished for a couple of years.

First is an Essex gnoll, repurposed as a dark troll by the crude (but I hope reasonably effective) expedient of adding a couple of tusks in greenstuff. Not perfect, but good enough for my purposes, and I reckon a more useful size than most of the "official" trolls out there.



Next, a great troll from Rapier, from the same set as the other two earlier in this resurrected thread. He's rather a fun figure, and I think my painting is a bit better than the photograph shows. Like the other Rapier trolls, though, he's enormous.



Here's a comparison shot, with for scale a Victrix hoplite (who I had some vague Gloranthan purpose for when I painted him a few years back, though I don't really remember what).



I've got quite a few more Gloranthan things on the painting table. I hope to get some of them done fairly soon, before the mood evaporates anyway. I've also got various bits of scenery (ruined houses and so on) that I built but never got round to painting. If I can get round to that, I might even try to get a half-decent photograph of some figures with background. But one thing at a time...

[Hobgoblin]

Good stuff! I hadn't seen that great troll before; he's based on one of the illustrations in the recent Gloranthan Bestiary. Nice job on him - and that hoplite looks good too.

I really like the gnoll conversion; the tusks are all you need to nudge them into Uz territory, and he's scrubbed up really well. Do you know the Alternative Armies dogmen? They're gnolls of similar build and proportions to the Essex ones, and might give you some more conversion stock.

[Severian]

Thanks!

Ah, those AA dogmen look ripe for tusking. Good spot. I've not looked properly round their site for a while; nice to have an excuse...

I wondered whether the Rapier trolls were based on illustrations (I have the Bestiary on order too). They're good figures, just very large... Their website has been offline for a while, which is a shame; they had the beginnings of some interesting Gloranthan ranges (including bison riders in 6mm scale). Let's hope it's just a hiatus.

[trev]

Nice work Severian.  Lots of love for the Uz at the moment. 

The old RQ2-3 books had the dark trolls at 6-7 feet tall but most trolls are supposed to stoop.  Great trolls were over 8' and trollkin under 4 feet.  So that Essex figure looks pretty good.  There are some more in that range that would work too.  They're showing their age sculpting wise but possibly still of use.   What can be used probably depends somewhat on the size of the humans used with them as well.  There are lots of cavemen, tribesmen and orcs that can serve as a basis but not many have the heft they need for dark trolls.  The trollkin I assume would be more scrawny.

Do you have to have been in on the kickstarters to buy the Mad Knight figures?  I couldn't see a way to order any from their web site.

[Severian]

Thanks!

I've got a few more of the Essex gnolls in various stages of unfinishedness. I've also got a bunch of their goblins I'm painting up to stand in as trollkin until something closer becomes available. If they ever get finished I'll post some pictures...

Not sure about the Mad Knight stuff. I can't see any way to buy from the website either, aside from the KS. There used to be a larger range on their old site; all of it was unavailable for a few years until fairly recently. I meant to buy some bits & pieces but never did. It was a fairly idiosyncratic range and I was really after more basic rank-and-file figures. Some good sculpts though. I'm hoping it'll all return and be available retail at some point.

[Severian]

Some more trolls, both original and repurposed.

First, the great troll from Infinity-engine:



Here he is again with a couple of old Citadel trolls - the great troll and one of their trollkin (with a replacement spear)



Next, and with apologies to Gloranthan purists, some Essex goblins painted up to serve as trollkin. Obviously their heads are the wrong shape, and their tusks more Bela Lugosi than Uz, but they'll just have to do for now. I bought them a few years back and reckoned they might as well get painted. I can't decide if their collective likeness to Ray Reardon is endearing or faintly worrying (or just a sign of my age...).



Finally, here they all are together:



I've got a couple more pseudo-trollkin to finish, and a few more uptusked Essex guys in varying stages of being done, so ought to have a usable troll war party, including the various others posted earlier. Now I just need to round up some adventurers and finish some terrain pieces before maybe trying out the new RQG combat rules. Assuming I don't get distracted in the interim, of course.