Friday 6 April 2012

Figure Box #1 Giant Cave/Rock Troll

I have a love/hate relationship with miniatures.  I love playing games with them, and I enjoy painting them, but the time I have available to paint them is very limited.

To combat this I've adopted a two pronged strategy.  Firstly, I look for clever ways to acheive reasonable painting results with minimal effort (using products like Army Painter's Quickshade for instance).  Secondly, if possible, I buy pre-painted miniatures on eBay.  However, whilst looking for figures on eBay, I often stumble across more than just piles of Warhammer regiments and WOTC D&D minis.  For a start, there's plenty of Old School lead miniatures from the 1980s.  Some of them are rare and expensive (Citadel AD&D, Grenadier Giants, etc.), but many are very reasonable.  With a bit more searching, you can also find miniatures that are not strictly intended for gaming but can still be used to great effect.

A good example is the Lord of the Rings Cave Troll from the Eaglemoss Collector's Range (in the UK they sold these in newsagents for £5.99, for a pre-painted, 60-70mm tall lead figure and magazine).  I think the Cave Troll must have been a special issue as he's 80mm tall.  Anyway, these things often pop up on eBay and many of them only reach a pound or two:

Completed eBay Auction 1
Completed eBay Auction 2

After reading Carter's Rock Troll in The Lands of Ara Compendium , I immediately thought of this figure.  Mine is shown below up against a small (soon to be even smaller) party of adventurers.  The second picture shows the troll in close-up with an Asgard Dwarf to demonstrate scale.


2 comments:

  1. I agree that the LOTR cave troll from Fellowship is a pretty good rendering of what I think a troll should be. Similar to what I had in mind with the rock troll.

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  2. I think they look more like my idea of an ogre. I kinda like the old troll from the original MM, looks like a big Alice Cooper.

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