Tankred's goblins of Moria
Translated by SkYlaX
As already mentioned in the article about my dwarves I planned the goblin army as direct counterpart to Balin's expedition corps. They got nearly the same bases and I already planned in Nottingham to present their high blood toll by decorating their bases with corpses of their evil brothers.
At this point I want to say thank you to Heike who supplied me with lots of dentist's casting material which allowed me to create around 100 stone bases.
You will see the armies' impressions in my next article when I will show the armies in interaction.
Marla influenced the painting style of my goblins importantly with her first works. After a few test goblins I was sure that I wanted to work near to the films. I decided that the small guys looked best with green skin and red clothes as I wanted to make the armor very dark, rusty and oily.
Durburz
I created this minidiorama out of the pillars by Thomarillion for which I used one of the nice GW bases. Thomarillion's pillars are really nice to look at and they seemed perfect to me to built the general's hill of Durburz.
Inspired by the film I sculpted a latecomer on one of the pillars but I couldn't spend more time on more of those ticks as I wanted to finish the project. But I'm sure this would look awesome at Thomarillion's huge pillars.
Durburz lead to hot discussions under collectors when he came out. I'm very glad that the discussion concerning the size of the miniature has ended. Durburz is a really great figure and shows perfectly how an orc kann become the chief of a tribe or a hole region because he is the strongest . Over the years Durburz became fat but he has his minions under control.
At the miniature of Durburz you can see how I painted my goblins. Yellow eyes with almondshaped pupils were very important for me since a photo of an actor dressed like this had inspired me.
All my goblins have strongly layered skin as the skin should be the main eye catcher of my army. I liked this detail at Asuryan's goblins and so I emulated our popular hobby friend.
The drums in the deep
I am a huge fan of these models. The drum never appeared in the film but if it had appeared it would surely have looked like this. I really like the crude metal corpus and the leather cover. The element with the thighbones of probably dwarven origin as drumsticks was picked up on some bases and at the trolls.
The drummers are absolutely my favorite models and so it was no problem for to paint them very carefully. My hobby, painting banners and emblems, crossed my mind when I started to paint the drum. I must admit that it is rather improbably that the goblins decorated their drum but according to the shamanistic worshipping of Sauron I can imagine that they decorated such items that way.
The captains
Stunningly the new goblin captains were released just when I needed them. Two new poses were in nick of time for me as I integrated a lot of metal goblins into the army. Certainly the willing readers will have noticed that a lot of collectors and army builders are more and more keen on metal miniatures. For goblins that behavior is all the more understandable as the metal goblins are, unlike their plastic brothers, better and have a hole lot more of details. The new sprues are a great deal better, but metal is still metal!
In order to distinguish the captains from the rest I made them climb over dead goblins and added metal skulls to their shields. I painted the captain with bow only for the sake of completeness as I would prefer goblin captains with shields.
The cave trolls
Like the new captains the new cave troll was just released when I needed it. And it has a very nice pose. Imagine you are facing a beast swinging its hammer in such a manner: Who wouldn't consider it terrifying?
I painted the plastic version only as I wanted to have the spear option. The plastic troll looks very clumsy compared to his metal brothers and the metal troll with spear looked very similar to the one with hammer which I had at home already for two years. This one had just before fallen to ground and broken into all its single pieces. So I had to do it again anyway and so I also decolorated it.
I spiced the trolls up by adding a horse skull, a souvenir from a careless adventurer and his horse, and a dwarven skull whose hair and beard I sculpted.
The shamans
There is a hot discussion among Tolkiens-fans concerning the GW shamans. E.g. Ebob is steadily on a crusade against those models that are not mentioned in Tolkien's literature. In my opinion a shamanistic worshipping of Sauron is quite cogitable. Perhaps they worshipped another divinity and Sauron answered their prayers.
What ever you might think of shamans: The goblin shaman is the most beautiful model of all orc shamans. I really love this models and so I gave them a base with a dwarven skeleton and a patient of the shaman.
The bat swarms
First I thougt those models were very clumsy and would nt fit into a goblin army. But after having tested Simmerhammer's bat swarms I had to integrate them as fast as possible into my army. With hinsight it was the right decision as the goblins could earn some victories in Cologne.
I slightly converted the swarm's at base but not the models themselves. I tried to paint the skin of the bats with pink and violet. I found the result very good and realistic!
The swordfighters and shieldbearers
Under the standard troops I wanted no goblin to look like another. Most goblin armies I knew had the problem with the same poses. The metal guys help to solve the problem, I also added corpses to the bases. This sad exemplar shows a slain dwarf from Balin's corps. Besides goblin corpses and a decollated goblin head (an element I tried to avoid up to now but because of the dwarves I couldn't resist) I added a dropped dwarven backpack and a dwarven shield.
Spearmen
The spearmen were challenging as there exist only a few positions of them. Unfortunately there is only one metal pose so that I even converted one spearmen from a swordsmen.
Under the spearmen there is the second dead dwarf. I had not the heart to present too much of them dead, so enjoy this version.
The archers
Analogue to the dwarven archers the goblin archers are spectacular models. They were painted after the first eight prototypes of the dwarves and before the rest of the dwarven army. They had their first match at the Kauzenburg Convention in 2006. As I tend to postpone the complex archers I build them at the end of the army. Probably that's why they look the most sophisticated.
Goblin prowlers
With the new add on for Moria I added 4 goblin prowlers to my army which can improve my army with their special rule as they have the same fight value as men have.
With their gowns and hoods they add color to the army.
The mission marker
Matching the dwarven version I created for my goblins a version with some stonemasonry showing the Sauron's lidless eye.
Greens
Conclusion
It's nice to have an army which looks good and can be used in almost every combination as I have painted all goblin units and the trolls. Army compositions can be varied nicely and I think of campaigns or finally playing the scenarios of Shadow and Flame. I think I will take a long pleasure in those small guys. I want to say thank you to FEANOR who made this army project possible with his donation in kind. Thanks to all who supported me with council, help und inspiration.
Goblins: *done*
Yours Tankred
