Trolling the depths

I bought a regiment of Zombie Trolls as part of my Mantic bender and I love them.  But then I had horrible visions of the buggers being obliterated in a first turn hail of arrows.  So I decided that I absolutely must buy another 3 and take a horde of 6 Trolls.  Nerve 18, twice the attacks, only 60pts extra. Good deal.

Except that I urgently needed to stem the arterial spray of money haemorrhaging from my credit card account before my wife discovered that I was investing in an entire, brand new Fantasy army in one big spending spree.  Never mind that our son needed a new laptop for school or the rates bill was due.  (I have since volunteered for a extra overtime support at work to assuage my guilt).

Anyway, my sanity reasserted itself before I could make yet another little lunch hour purchase from Mighty Ape, but the problem remained.  I needed 6 Zombie Trolls and I only had 3.  I was not going to buy any more but all was not lost.  Trolling the depths of my bits box revealed a broken Lord of the Rings Cave Troll and the carcasses of 2 Warhammer Fantasy Ogres with no heads and only 3 arms, still on the sprue.  I had replenished my stocks of Green/Grey Stuff so it was time to start kitbashing.  This is what I came up with:

The missing heads were replaced using some sort of 40k Ork model holding a Squig.  Was it a Warboss?  I'm not sure, but his head fit nicely on one Ogre body and I think the Squig looks quite cool as the other (with the addition of some horns). I used another bit of ork for the missing arm and if you look closely, you can see that his hand is too small.  But I did some bulking out with green stuff and added a gladiator style shoulder pad to hide the size difference.

The gaping holes in the Ogre bellies seemed to be a bit of a problem at first but then I remembered that these are 'zombie' trolls and my tentacle maker is good at making looping intestines as well as cables and tentacles.  You've just got to flatten the ridges out a little (wear rubber gloves to avoid finger prints)

I was particularly pleased with the flag, which is made out of melted plasticard (there are a multitude of failed attempts at this lying on the garage floor like ticker tape, but I think I've got the knack of it now).  I like melting stuff, but one thing I discovered is that mineral turpentine melts the plastic base of a model as well as the paint (LotR Troll above).  I must make a mental note not to do that again.

The Mantic Trolls come with heads and arms detached and this is deliberate, allowing you some versatility.  they aren't ball and socket joints however and some green stuffing was needed to fill in gaps.  Or maybe it isn't deliberate and I just put the arms on the wrong bodies.  They definitely aren't the same as the picture on the box.  Either way, I'm pleased with the poses, especially the middle one with the popped eye and flayed arm using a tree trunk as a walking stick to support his battered body.  He's definitely been in the wars, that one.

I've used the same colours as my zombies but introduced a yellowish flesh on a couple of the Trolls.  It was originally intended as the bone colour for my skellies but just sort of happened this way. I'm going to use these colours on other units and the heraldry for my army is revealed.  Mustard and burgundy.  Or red and yellow in man-speak.  I'll put it on shields, flags and tunics and hopefully it will tie the whole force together.

I was also playing with some static grass which turned out better than I'd hoped.  I still can't get it to stand up properly and its incredibly messy.  If anyone knows a good tutorial on using static grass then please let me know.  I also wanted some taller grass for variation but didn't have any official modelling supplies so I cut bits off an old large dry brush and stuck them on with PVA.  Again, turned out ok and I'll probably use more on up an coming models.

Only six models painted in just over a week.   I can see that I'm in for the long haul...