Grim Hunts Us All

"Then Angus, with a quiet expression, spoke to his companions in the hunt as they wandered through the solitary wilds. 'Friends, our spears and nets are drenched with the blood of our victims, and the day has been fortunate enough."

Hello, welcome back to another riveting¹ edition of The Ravening Kriels paint articles. Today's story: Grim Angus. Our story picks up where our talented sculptor left off,  a heavily modified, reposed model made from ork bits, original work, and filled gaps. The end result however, really gives the model a well-travelled look fitting for the Hallowed Hunstman.™

Hungry Beyond Mortal Ken

"No recognised school had animated this terrible creature, yet centuries and even thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of unplaceable stone."

If ever there was truly a flagship model to this army, it would be Mulg. Our crack team of scientific experts have already proven Mulg's potent position of palpable primacy, and we persist to placate your plaintive pleas for a paintjob with plenty of panache.¹

To that end, I present this exposé on what was, in all seriousness, a solid weekend of painting and something I always love to drop on the table to strike terror into the hearts of heavy warjacks.

Old Beyond Mortal Reckoning

1. a Mulg at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless it is acted upon by an outside Food.
2. once compelled to motion, Mulg will remain in motion. 
   Deal With It.
3. when Mulg's body exerts a force on a second body, it dies.

Everybody knows that Mulg is the best.¹  He's got the most toothsome backstory, the meatiest big fists, and the writers give him all the wittiest one-liners.  He's a perpetual fan favorite, a cross-genre break-out character, and the troll softball team's MVP and Home Run Derby winner ten years running.

Labyrinth II: Still Lost

Nor did the creature keep him waiting, but struck suddenly and started in; he grabbed and mauled a man on his bench, bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood and gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body utterly lifeless, eaten up hand and foot.

As we have mentioned before, gentle readers, the troll light warbeasts in this project have been replaced with custom made minotaurs. These products of my esteemed colleague's skillful hand presented numerous opportunities to bring  several distinct looks to models that might have otherwise faded into a unified, and ultimately boring, color palette. However, creatures so adept at defying gravity and conventional physics should have similarly distinctive paint jobs.

Center of the Labyrinth

The monsters stirred, those demons, those fiends - who haunted the moors, the wild marshes, and made their home in a hell. Not Hell but hell-on-earth. Spawned in that slime of Caen, murderous creatures banished by the Creator, punished forever for the crimes of their abhorrent Sire.

An early acquisition for the project was a pair of mark II plastic Trollblood battlegroup boxes.  Getting two of them wasn't originally in the plans, but as the old saying goes, "No plan survives contact with a 30% off sale at the hobby shop".  So we ended up with two each of Madrak1 (one of whom would be eventually be the base of a Madrak2 conversion) and the Troll Axer, and a hefty four Troll Impalers... all solid little beasts, albeit rarely taken in those quantities in Hordes.

The Future Belongs to the Mad

"We must be bound to one another... bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then let it be thus so—and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of the Madrak Ironhide and Rathrok, his axe."

The first warlock model I wanted to tackle was the first warlock that I learned how to play, the straight fightin', skull splittin', kriel leadin', world endin' Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain. This was done after I had accrued a healthy amount of experience painting the infantry size models. At this point, I had painted roughly half of my Fennblade contingent (stay tuned for that post, there's a lot of Fennblades).

Mauler: Red and Green

"Oh! Are you hungry?" she asked, turning to the Troll, who was just then yawning so widely that he displayed two rows of terrible teeth and a mouth big enough to startle anyone. "Dreadfully hungry," answered the Mauler, snapping his jaws together with a fierce click. "Then why don't you eat something?" she asked. "It's no use," said the Mauler sadly. "I've tried that, but I always get hungry again."  

 

As suggested by my colleague colleague, the first warbeast I wanted to tackle was the Dire Troll Mauler. It offered me the chance to get into summa dat good exposed troll flesh and work on building up some techniques for painting large amounts of beast, muscle tissue, and different textures when compared to the infantry. Aside from that, painting a warbeast is always a genuine pleasure since they can  each quickly become a centerpiece for forces of small to medium sizes.

Points on Painting

"My father worked in profanity the way other artists might 
work in oils or clay. It was his true medium, a master."

Before I get into some of the more in-depth posts I intend to write about the painting of The Ravening Kriels, I wanted to give a Public Service Announcement regarding the equipment that I have been using as the painting half of this project along with my esteemed colleague. The work has been ongoing for a few years already, and pictured is the latest iteration of my painting equipment. However, the quality of my kit has been going up piece by piece as I learn new techniques, read more articles, and track down better loot from better dungeons.

Gotta Maul 'Em All

"Urcaen has no rage, to match the shaman's zeal.
Nor Hell a fury, like a dire troll 'fore a meal."

The Dire Troll Mauler wasn't the first warbeast conversion I did for this project, but it was easily the most extensively modified of the first batch of models.  I wanted to build one of these for Jack early on, because in addition to being a relatively simple model for a new player to get a handle on, it also ends up being a cornerstone of a lot of lists as you start playing larger games.

The Grimmest of Anguses

"Grim Angus first the bloody chase began, 

A mighty hunter, and his prey was Man."

The first two warlocks I built for Jack were a battlebox Madrak1, and Grim Angus.  Both were immediately slated to be orc-ified, of course (a fact that contributed to their being on top of the list) and the Madrak alterations were straightforward - just a head swap, slight re-posing, a run-of-the-mill leg replacement surgery, and some gap filling

The Ravening Kriels: Introduction

Welcome to The Ravening Kriels, a project log for our ongoing Trollbloods Army conversion project for the Hordes miniature game.  The goal is a heavily-customized force with a classic high-fantasy "Evil Horde" aesthetic, including all the multifarious multitudes of Goblins, Hobgoblins, Orcs, Ogres, Bugbears, Trolls, and Were-Donkeys that trope implies.  As currently mapped out, the final collection will include a mostly complete Trollbloods collection, and a handful of Minions as well, almost all converted from the base models in some degree.