TROLL COUNTRY!

The last few weeks have been busy with school going back into session BUT my hobby has not been idle.  Playing at Convic this year with Nick’s Khorne Daemons really reinvigorated my hobby. Sure it was an army that had no magic, shooting or leadership (gotta love daemons) sooo it came down to pushing toy soldiers around and punching people’s lights out.  It also reminded me of one of the parts of 40K army construction that I enjoy the most.  Building fluffy and/or goofy (weirdly themed) lists.  The Khorne list lacked subtlety but was fun to play (as a one off).  It got me thinking about my hobby and applying the same philosophy of army construction to fantasy that I have been applying to 40K for years.  My favourite 40K armies in recent years have been aircav guard, wyche cult, mono-tzeentch daemons… you get the idea. Sure these list are not exactly well rounded BUT they have a specific high concept idea. 

High concept is a movie term.  The high concept is the basic theme/plot of a movie in two sentences or less.  Or:

“High concept is a term used to refer to an artistic work that can be easily described by a succinctly stated premise.”

Sure lots of armies have this already but you tend to see more of it in 40K than in fantasy battle.  Thinking about this I have started to take armies that I have not enjoyed playing and tweeking them with this philosophy in mind (I am in the process of making my skaven a more eshin feel and building more Slaanesh Daemons so I can run a mono-god Slaanesh list). 

Enter the trolls.  Now I have been building trolls for a while and I am up to 23 built trolls.  8 of them are fully furred, 6 are mostly furred (as in I have covered it in sculpted fur) and the rest have teeth, legs and lips…  Sculpting the fur is slow and boring work to be perfectly honest BUT I am really liking the finished results.  I have been putting the fur on in patches to prevent the green stuff from coming up around the edges and to keep me from putting my big clumsy fingers in what I just sculpted.

What does this have to do with my lists?  Well, I was planning to run the trolls as the majority of a monster heavy Throgg warriors list (and I still probably will) but with Warriors rumored to be a up and coming possible WFB army soon I was worried that after all this work I might only get one tourney out of the army before it becomes obsolete.   Then I had an epiphany in the shower (where I have most of my good ideas)…  I looked up trolls in the Orc & Goblin book.  Trolls are ten points less a model there.  When running 24 trolls that saves you 240 points (That can be used for core troops)!  Now those trolls are not core anymore BUT as this is not 40K and scoring is not a factor…  Well, who cares?  I can still run my three blocks of 8 trolls backed up 600 points of O&G core.  Add characters, war machines and mangler squigs.  Done!   My efforts are still usable and will be for quiet a while (unless O&G suddenly get a new list)…

This got me thinking even further afield…  What if I ran them as minotaurs in a beast army?  Or as ogres in an Ogre list?  Or as rat-ogres in a skaven list.  As they are my own creation (large furry pac man heads with legs) they fit large numbers of my armies (as long as those armies have monstrous infantry that could be furry and chompy… so not my Tomb Kings)…   It was really liberating and exciting… 

Now just to finish them!