The axemen cometh

My little band of winter warriors is growing slowly. I've just completed these next five troops, all of whom came from the Chaos Chosen set. The only thing I did to them, prior to throwing on the pigment, was adjust their helmets a little – either with head swaps, or by cutting down the amount of extra stuff mounted on their existing lids.

This is in keeping with the rest of my warband, where I'm trying to keep the level of ornamentation to a minimum (at least on most models), preferring instead to play up the simple textures like iron, wood, bone, fur, skin, leather and maybe a bit of brass.

My feeling is that this will give my followers of Gshtaad a more earthy and rugged appearance, suitable for warriors who are in it for the fight, living off the land, preferring deeds over ostentation to mark them out. And besides, I think all those natural textures and colours look really nice set against the snow on their bases.

I've also finally got around to finishing my original, metal Lord of the Rings Cave Troll. At the time of his release, before the ubiquity of multi-part plastic sets, this guy was a hulking brute of a miniature, striding across the Mines of Moria, swinging a mighty hammer*. He was one of my favourite miniatures from The Fellowship of the Ring range, released by Citadel shortly after Peter Jackson's movie. I switched the hammer for a scratch built cleaver, and added a bunch of scaly spikes growing out of his back to signify the corrupting influence of the dark gods. Of course these days he looks tiny next to some of the creatures out there, but I still prefer his look to that of the standard Warhammer trolls.

And finally, next to him are two really old tiger models that I tried to adapt many years ago. They came from an old Orc chariot kit, that was produced by one of the other companies operating back in the 1980s. I forget who it was. I never really liked the model (no idea why it ended up in my possession), so I did everything I could to attempt to salvage it. I was going to ignore the tigers completely this time around, but eventually figured what the heck, it might not take too long to rebase them as part of this batch. The only image I've been able to find of their original appearance was this one, of a heavy version of the original chariot, that currently appears to be part of Magister Militum's range of miniatures.

So six of the above miniatures are freshly completed, meaning I have a new Addiction Challenge score to share, which in turn means I'm at last approaching that final straight. Can I cross the finishing line before the end of the year**?

ADDICTION CHALLENGE

REMAINING: 14

*As far as I can tell, Games Workshop's official Cave Troll miniature has now been replaced by this one.
**Let's face it, if you've ever read this blog before, you're probably as aware as I am, that this is pretty unlikely. As the saying goes, my chances are between Slim and None... and Slim's outta town.