Bilbo's Trolls

"Look Mr Frodo, its Mr Bilbo's trolls!"

In my never ending quest to collect all gaming material related to Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, I came across this delightful set of petrified stone trolls...

They were originally produced by Thomarillion in Germany, but I believe they ran into copyright or licencing issues so had to stop producing them... However, a few emails later, I was put in touch with someone who was prepared to sell his own '2nd-hand' set... One Paypal payment later and a short nervous wait, and sure enough they turned up, carefully wrapped, in as new condition. They are made from a white resin/plaster(?) cast material, and came as three individual models.

I painted and varnished them, and based them up an a piece of 3mm MDF, and then added scenic materials...

A rolling stone gathers no moss, as the saying goes... so I decided to add some moss effect to these definitely stationary trolls! Then I added a sprinkling of DIY fallen leaf litter... I thought about adding more bushes and stuff to the base, but I wanted miniatures to move easily around the piece, so left it clear... though its easy to add some clump foliage or lichen clumps loosely as required... For similar reasons, I decided not to add the remnants of the central campfire... I figured after 60 years it would have been all over grown and dispersed any way...

I wanted them positioned just far enough apart to allow models to be placed in between them, so this little terrain feature can be fought over...

Here, a roving band of orcs are tracked through the Trollshaws and confronted by a patrol of rangers from Rivendell...

I really enjoyed this smaller terrain interlude, compared to my more recent and ongoing larger efforts, it was a nice easy distraction, and I look forward to seeing the piece in action on the tabletop soon :)

Thanks again to my German friends who helped me source this wonderful piece.

Cheers
Scott