Greetings, and welcome to another Army of the Month segment, the article series where Dash28 highlights and interviews one community member and their army. This month we are featuring recent US Clash of Kings Champion, Lord of Ice Cream Sandwiches, and all around quality guy, Tim Smith, and his goblins. A big thanks to Tim for taking the time to be featured.
Before we go further with the interview, as always, if you know someone you think should be featured in this segment, comment telling us about them, and we will see if they will fit with the segment!
Initially what got Tim interested in goblins was a box of prize support from Forge Gt. Tim won 3 regiments of trolls and a troll bruiser. After looking more at the models he fell in love with the goofy and cartoony aesthetic. He loved their huge arms and torsos, with tiny heads and legs.
Tim then began to formalize a plan for an army. The year he began creating it, Jeff O’Neal was dominating the South East scene with his goblins, and so Tim wanted to create a not-goblin-goblin army, using his trolls to partially “troll” the South East meta! He was also intrigued by a more grindy playstyle, which would be drastically different from his alpha strike Herd.
The project initially started as 1,000 points for Blues City Brawl, a doubles tournament run by the Blues City Brawlers club in Memphis Tennessee. After that, Tim slowly added a few pieces for small events here and there, before finally doing a big push to get the army for the most recent US Clash of Kings, which he finished as the top placing 90% Mantic army, winning a free flight to the UK Clash of Kings!
One thing that works really well for Tim’s army is its striking color scheme. Tim wanted to bring something different to the table, rather than the green that so many goblin armies used. He always liked the bright yellow armor Games Workshop’s orcs frequently featured, and so he decided to give it a try, to provide a neutral frame for the bright yellow, he would use a lot of grey for the skin.
Tim knew many gamers were hesitant to paint yellow prominently in their army, as it is not an easy color to get right. If you want crisp, bright, clean yellows it can take forever, however, for Tim, these were goblins, their armor would be dinged up, gritty, and dirty, so he painted on the yellow, but then applied some washes, to give a bright, but slightly dirty appearance. This rarer color helps Tim’s army be more eye catching, and stand out from the competition.
While Tim is a fan of the Mantic troll models, he warned any prospective buyers that their poses are lacking in variety, with them only armed with 3 different weapons. Anyone who wanted to heavily feature the trolls in their army should be prepared to convert and use green stuff some to bring a bit more variety into the army.
Tim and I spent a great deal of time talking about what inspires him, keeps his projects moving, and brings that extra something to help them pop on the tabletop. During our conversation, Tim regularly came back to the need to create a story and internal logic to an army. He said this helps keep the project exciting for the hobbyist, but also bring much needed dynamism and small touches to the army.
Tim’s army is led by Forst (First), the head of a small clan of goblin brothers, each of which bring their own talents to their army. Forst, jealous of the charioteers in his force, created a “chariot” of his own to ride. This subtle conversion helps inject some flavor and character into the army.
Forst’s second-in-command is his younger brother Sekund (Second), a goblin Flaggit who has survived a charge from the renown ogre hero Grokgamok!
Character, built on top of internal logic from the army background, was something Tim emphasized in his creation project. Tim’s army is based in a swamp, that is in the middle of Winter. He said it would be easy to smear snow all over the bases, but that doesn’t quite make sense, since the army is also in a swamp. Instead, he mentally pictured where the sun would be coming from, and placed the snow in places where it would have been partially hidden from the sun at the time he pictured the army moving forth.
This subtle touch would be almost impossible for a passing gamer to notice, however, Tim emphasized that subtle touches like this combine together to give the army a unique character and flavor. It makes the army interesting, and more immersive.
One unit this attention to character is apparent in is his regiment of Sniffs. Part of the unit is on a raised section of earth, and so part of them are leaping down, while others are running forward. This creates an effect that makes a more dynamic and interesting end product, without creating much extra work.
These small touches are also apparent in Tim’s troll hordes. While each of them are very similar looking, each has small details, like weapon swaps, small amount of reposing, or different terrain, that gives each troll horde a different feel. Tim strongly suggested paying attention to these details, such as positioning on bases, as it is an easy way to add movement and character to your army.
Tim also discussed the way people look at an army, and how that should influence how you plan your project. He said you usually need one centerpiece model, which pulls people from across the room, from there you need 2-3 additional highlight pieces to get the people to stay and continue to explore your army, and then notice smaller details and touches sprinkled throughout; encouraging a continued exploration of the army.
Understanding what your centerpiece(s) are, and to spend a bit extra time of them, Tim argued is essential for your army to get attention. Tim viewed his centerpiece as either his Mincer Mob (more on this in a little bit), or his Giants. From these eye catching pieces, he sees his Wiz, and his troll with a shotgun, and from there gamers will hopefully explore the rest of his army.
One challenge Tim took on with his army was to convert a Mantic model. He hadn’t seen any major conversions of Mantic models, and so he was particularly interested to try this out. His army is filled with small subtle conversions, such as this troll with a shotgun as his war trombone (which also happens to be one of his favorite pieces in the army), but he wanted to try something bigger for the Clash of Kings.
Before the Clash of Kings tournament, the Clash of Kings update had recently added the mincer mob to the goblin army. Many goblin generals were excited by this unit, but they were all talking and showing off other company’s miniatures as their mincer mobs. Tim wanted to use Mantic’s mincer model as the basis for his mincer mob.
For his model, he took multiple mincer kits, and with a process of cutting, hacking, glue, and green stuff, he cobbled these kits together into one massive and scary looking unit.
Tim was partially inspired by the orc fight wagon models, liking the look and idea of them being pushed, rather then pulled by boars. His mincer mob is pushed along by boars, much like fight wagons, with the logic being that all the steam power of the mincers was put into the drills, and so its left up to the lowly boars to push the unit forward.
This is yet another example of internal logic and background helping to fuel Tim as a hobbyist, and bring extra character and layers to his army. The addition of cotton to the smoke stacks also helps add the movement that Tim was so interested in establishing throughout his army.
While Tim and I continued to discuss hobby and his goblin army for some time beyond what is covered here, this is already a long article, so those details will have to remain unsaid… for now. However, I will leave you all with one last suggestion from Tim. Get a hobby notebook.
He bought his at Michaels, and uses it to jot notes for his army color formulas, basing, and other details within it, so that months later he can come back and reference how he did something and match it.
For example, he may label a page “Trolls” and put dabs of paint color on the pages, label them, and note how it was applied, to make later additions to the army as painless as possible. As someone who also keeps a notebook, with all my paint formulas, this is a tip I strongly suggest as well!
A big thanks to Tim for spending time to make this article possible, and for sharing such great advice and information!
