Time to regenerate!

Last but not least, we get rolling on the fourth installment of our HORDES in 10 Days surge with the Trollblood box set. As we've read earlier, with our 10 day articles we're aiming for some solid gaming pieces. Nothing over the top and full of new painter loving.

I will say one nice thing about the Trollblood box set - it's one of the easier boxes to assemble and paint. All but the most anal modeler can do without any gap filling or Green Stuff working as every piece of this box flows together well. You also have a consistent sculpt to paint. Where most boxes have a large Warbeast, small based Warlock and other varied sized Warbeasts to fill them out, the Tollblood box is forgiving in nature, with all 4 sculpts being on a medium base and only the skin of your Warlock differing in color builds. This will allow new painters the chance to repeat a build once or twice, which helps them practice their skills, and gives seasoned painters a chance to push the envelope with personalizing their Warpack.

As far as getting a box set or any unit ready to roll and table ready, I'm a firm believer in doing things in an assembly line when they have the same color scheme. When you factor in dry time and practicing new color builds, it only increases your gains.

Now, a seriously dedicated painter can do a box set in less than ten days. This sort of thing will come easy once you have some paint time and technique under your belt, but as we all know, we're gearing up for a more sure and steady pace. Knowing this, here is what we are going for:

• Day 1: Filing, Pinning and Priming
• Day 2: Skin Base
• Day 3: Working the Skins
• Day 4: Leather Base
• Day 5: Working the Leathers
• Day 6: Chickens and Things
• Day 7: More Chickens and Things
• Day 8: Metalics Base
• Day 9: Working the Metalics
• Day 10: Basing

Day 1: Filing, Pinning and Priming

The first gleeful step is opening up the box set and seeing what new pewter you will be working on. Take the time to lay out the parts, double check to make sure everything is accounted for and get an idea of what work awaits.

The metal were working on...

1 Troll Axer light Warbeast: Legs, upper body, left forearm, axe with hands attached and the head.

2 Troll Impaler light Warbeast: Legs, upper body, left forearm and hand, spear with hand attached, head and spear quiver.

1 Albino Warlock Madrak Ironhide: Main body, right forearm with axe and the head.

With a few micro files in hand, start working away at the seams on all parts. Thanks to the casting process, all parts have a seam that may be virtually invisible or high enough to require some serious work. Every part has at least one line running all the way around. Either way, don't just glance at the part looking for the seam, actively search for where it occurs. It may seem like you are making more work for yourself, but you'll be thankful you did after you primer. Before I took up this habit, I can't tell you how many times I found little areas that needed filing well after priming a miniature. I also make a habit of using a single light source and shinning it from several angles when looking for these lines. With the reflective nature of raw pewter, an edge can easily be hidden due to lack of shadows. It's hard to totally explain this, but rest assured, if you are filing away and shift your light source around while looking for an edge, you'll quickly see what I mean.

Continue working methodically through your pieces until the last seam is a memory. This will take a little bit of time, but it's time well spent.

Ready the Bits

Pinning can be one of those necessary evils. While it consumes time and patience, it will serve you well in the long run.

While you are pinning, you can start assembling your miniatures. I personally like the speed and strength of Zap-a-Gap glue. Just do yourself a favor and avoid contact with your skin… this stuff will bond fast and can lock a couple fingers together when you least expect it. Personally I like to assemble up to the point where I can still get to all of the miniature with a paint brush. This is more a personal taste, so you should gauge what you're comfortable with. You will see that my methods allow you to build a few parts later on easily. Also, while not the norm, occasionally you will find a casting or two with a slight film of release agent on the pewter. Since this is supposed to create a slick surface that allows the pewter to escape its mold easily, it will make your battle to glue an uphill one. If you feel it's needed, wash your parts before gluing.

First up, we'll grab Madrak. With only 3 parts, he's pretty easy. Pinning the right arm is a must in my opinion. Why? It's a relatively smaller gluing surface for as much metal that's hanging off of it, creating a lot of stress even under normal situations. Simply line a hole down the middle on both parts and ready an appropriately sized pin. Dry fit to make sure of your alignment and glue.

The head should not need a pin as the casting has a pretty good support knob and the head's rune collar rests on the shoulders. Now whether or not you decide glue the head on prior to priming is a matter of choice. I chose to keep it separate because there is a bit of detail tucked under the rune collar and I wanted to make sure I could easily highlight. So for a temporary hand hold, I use a long pin that allows me to control the head as I’m painting.

Next up, The Axer. For the most part, this Warbeast is pretty simple, and, in fact, you can get away without pinning anything. The first and most difficult hurdle with this one is lining the axe up with the wrists of both arms. There is a little bit of play in how the left arm attaches to the main body, which is a good and bad thing. Best thing to do here is take the main body, the left arm and axe and try to line them up. Once you do this place a small touch of Green Stuff on the arm and then a small dab of glue on the area the arm will rest upon. With all three parts, squeeze down on the arm and do your best to align everything so the wrists meet correctly. Let the Green Stuff fully cure and recheck your alignment. Without proper alignment, you'll be hating yourself later on down the road when it’s time to glue your axe in place.

Next, go ahead and join the upper and lower body parts (making sure you line up the satchel straps) and then the head. With the head being a sheer flat surface, I like to rough up the gluing area of both the upper body and head with an X-acto knife by placing a cross hatching pattern of scores. This will give tooth to the surface and create a better bond for the glue.

The only piece left is the axe itself.. Because of its placement, I choose to glue it after I was finished painting. This will allow me easy access to the entire painting surface of this sculpt. So, I placed a long pin in one of the wrists as a hand hold for now,, which I will remove later, before I attach the axe to the overall piece.

Last but not least, we have our Troll Impaler twins. Just like we did with the Axer, go ahead and glue the upper and lower bodies together, along with your choice of head. One thing to keep in mind, you have a total of three heads in your box set. While the screaming head is meant for your Axer, you can just as easily swap heads around for a little variation.

Then, moving onto the arms, we need to consider some more pinning. The right arm wielding the spear is a must for pinning. With the long lever action of the spear, it can quickly place too much pressure on your wrist join. A simple pin drilled down the middle of the joining section will cover your needs; don't be afraid to have this one go in deep.

The left arm is a questionable join for pinning or not. If you feel you’re the type of modeler who might be a little rough on his or her game pieces now and then, mou may want to try pinning this one as well. The trick will be lining up the pin since the surface is oddly shaped on this joining surface. Try your best to line up the pin holes and see where they fall. If it’s a little off, try this trick out. Go ahead and glue the pin in one side, but on the other side, re-drill it to an opening much larger than the pin. Dry fit it to see if this will cure the difference in hole placement. If so, just place a small amount of green stuff down the enlarged hole, place glue on the pinned piece and merge the two pieces while paying good attention to the placement. You'll have to hold it in place for a good ten to fifteen second to make sure the glue is starting to bind, but once it sets, you should be good to go. Just keep any serious pressure off it for several hours. The last remaining piece is the quiver of spears. This is the one piece I think can get in the way of painting on this sculpt, so I choose to keep it off for painting purposes and glue it on after everything is said and done. So I simply placed a long pin in the quiver to use as a hand hold. I’ll trim the pin down to size when I’m ready to attach it to the body. On the upper body, I ground down and filled smooth the knob meant for the quiver and then drilled a hole so the pin currently on my quiver will be easily attached to the upper body after we’re finished painting.

After all the assembly is said and done, give everything a light scrub with a toothbrush and dish soap to eliminate any release agent or oil that would prevent a good adhesion with our primer coat from the sculpt. Make sure you let the parts dry thoroughly and give them a solid coverage of your favored black primer (I can hear it already ;-)) I laid down black Dupli-Color on mine for its superior opaque and smooth coverage.