To expand my Trollbloods force, I recently picked up a Mountain King (although I must admit I wish I’d waited for the Sea King, as I think the model is cooler!), and thought I’d offer a few thoughts on the model and build process.
The model surprised me with it’s size, straight out of the box this was something significantly larger than anything else I’d built for Hordes, on par with something like a Gorkanaught for 40k. The “instructions” in the box were a simplistic one page as pictured, and for the main build were fine, as the model is relatively intuitive to put together (helped by the rather large main pieces). However, when trying to work out how all the whelps and chains went on, I struggled quite a bit, and am not convinced I got them all correct. Additionally, it looks like I’ve got some empty ‘slots’ which should have chains in them, however it’s not clear if this is intentional or I’ve misassembled.
The model was relatively clean when I got it, and only had a minimum of mold lines to remove. The clean-up was quick and I fast set about building it. As mentioned above, the main body came together quickly and easily, I decided not to pin the larger pieces, as the connecting surfaces were quite large, so I simply used superglue on everything. The chains and whelps I mostly pinned to add additional sturdiness, given there are numerous small parts which I’m expecting will come off quite easily. This was the fiddliest and most time consuming part of assembly.
Once assembled, there are significant gaps around some of the join points (especially the back piece and right arm) which need to be filled in. This was not unexpected given my experience on some other Troll models, but still adds another layer of work to the build. I’ll go around the fill these with greenstuff before priming, as well as building out the base.
For the base, I laid out some spare plastic card I had available to create some undulation over the base, and even out the discrepancy between the fist and feet height. I then put a coat of filler (just generic gap filler from the hardware store) over this to make relatively smooth transitions, noting I wasn’t oo particular as I knew I’d be overlaying stones and ballast on top this. The ballast and stones were then added, giving me a similar base to the rest of my Trollblood models.
I did the gap filling last, which turned out to be somewhat of a mistake. It was challenging not knocking off or bending chains out of shape over the model, so definitely suggest gluing these on after filling. The filling process itself ended up taking me over an hour also, given the aforementioned large gaps on joins, so it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. I’m also not sure I’ve done the best job on some of the green stuff work, but that’s a problem for when I start painting.
The final model looks quite imposing, and was not overly difficult to put together. The instructions are a little lacking, and the gaps at joints on the model a little disappointing but are not unexpected and relatively easily fixed by someone with a little model building experience (although very time consuming). I’m happy with the model and looking forward to painting it, which will be my next challenge especially having never tackled something with such large organic areas to it before. I’ll do a subsequent post about the painting process, and you’ll have seen a few WIP shots over on Instagram as it progresses.
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