Another blast from the past today. The Talisman Troll. Remember when Games Workshop used to make boardgames? No, not “Specialist” (a title that came much later) minatures games that started in a big box, like Battlefleet Gothic or Necromunda or even Dark Future, but actual self-contained Board Games. Talisman was one of these, alongside things like DungeonQuest, Chaos Marauders (which was a card-based game about Orcs & Goblins), Block Mania (set in 2000ad’s world of Dredd), The Fury of Dracula and so forth. There really was quite a variety. GW was quite a prolific producer of both original and licenced boardgames for a bit of time back in the 1980’s before they went fully-Warhammer focused.
Citadel’s TL13 Talisman Troll.
I had a few of the old metal Talisman figures, but I never really liked any of them especially. I think the Space Marine (from Timescape) got rolled into my RT-era models, though even that was an unimpressive sculpt. I’ve probably got a few of the others still floating around somewhere, I recall a man with a top hat in his hand, a woman with a small cauldron, and the Ninja being in my collection. They probably still are. In a container of junky old lead. Somewhere.
TL13 Talisman Troll shows off his trousers.
Anyway, this troll was the one of those old figures that has gotten painted and not lost over the years. I painted him with a flesh tone rather than green as by the time I got around to painting him I had no intent to use him as a Troll or in Talisman. Instead, he was recruited to my small gang of old-school Beastmen. We’re talking old-school Beastmen, before the entire race had been retconned into the Broo-inspired Goatmen and Satyrs that dominate to this day. Not that I dislike modern Beastmen. I actually think they’re ace. I just happen to also like the variety found in the older RoC-era ones as well. So this guy fit in with the mixture of malformed miscontents quite well. Or well enough.
Rear View of the TL13 Talisman Troll.
I gave him old-school warhammery stripey trousers and dirtied him up a little. I could obviously use him as something like a half-orc or even a more D&D-styled orc for roleplaying purposes. Whichever way, he looks very much the demi-human style thug. I’ll probably roll him back into the old-school beastmen unit for KoW that will be very much Warriors of Chaos-aligned, as the more modern Beastmen will be their own thing.
Talisman Troll Character Card & Standup – Talisman 2nd Edition.
I have to agree about the Talisman miniatures being a bit poor. The SoL site tells me I owned 2 blisters worth – (Hobgoblin, Satyr, plain Toad) and (Knight, Merchant, Halfling). From memory I only painted about 4 of those to completion though. I like your thinking/painting with the troll miniature – he definitely looks the part as a pre-Gor/post-Broo Oldhammer beastman (did that even make sense?) Anyway, great work as usual!
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Thanks! Actually, I think I might have one of the toads somewhere as well. I’ll probably dig it out as a quick project once I get a hell of a lot more of the desk cleared out.
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I knew they did a couple of variants of the toad but looking on SoL I was surprised to see they did 5 versions!
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T *think* my one has some sort of hat. Might be a pirate hat? Or I could be totally misremembering. 🙂
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No, spot on, there is a toad with a pirate hat! I knew about the plain toad and a warrior hat version but hadn’t seen the pirate one until SoL. I assume the idea was they represented the different PCs in the game after they’d been turned in toads.
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I think you’re probably spot on there. I never quite had games of Talisman where all that many people were toads (especially all at once!) but I can certainly imagine it.
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Chaos Mauders has been a favourite game of mine for 25 years now – picked up in Glasgow and since followed me around the world and is now enjoyed by my kids as well. GW have definately produced a few classics over the years
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I really enjoyed Chaos Marauders back in the day. I’ll have to relearn how to play it and teach Marouda for good measure. I remember having a lot of fun with it in the day…
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Cool model! I missed out on Talisman myself but nice to see this guy is still relevant!
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If you’re interested, you can still pick up the current FFG edition quite easily, or even Relic – the 40k-themed version. There’s also a pretty cheap basic game available on Steam for the PC (and probably one on the App/Play Stores as well.) A pretty simple game that can go on forever where dice rolling is the main thing, but hey – it’s still more fun than Monopoly!
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😊 Dude… there’s a very long list of things that are more fun than monopoly!
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You’re not wrong – though Talisman is one of those games that comes up for a good amount (of deserved, a lot of the time) criticism. It can be a lot of fun, but more because of the social occasion than the gameplay.
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Those yellow stains on his pants are hopefully grease ;). I think you brought out the best in this miniature. The pose is a bit akward (does he reach for another club or a ham? I do love the pants and the skin is unusual for a Troll, but fits nicely. When did you paint him? I have this feeling you were a good painter since you bough your first brush :).
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Just intended to be general dirt and grime, rather than anything more …specific. 😉
I think he’s going for his knife in his back sheath. Certainly a mugger amongst men, though. If the skin were to be considered “trollish” then it’d definately be more from the D&D/Tolkien “realistic” fleshtones school than the Warhammer/Skittles style, but I recall putting him up next to the other trolls I had and essentially thinking “um… *nope*” before going with the more human fleshtones. I painted him sometime in the 1990’s.
It took a couple of years for me to get “good”, but I peaked relatively quickly. I’m still trying to raise the plateau, but it’s been a very slow process from that point – especially as I’m now trying to paint armies and have no real interest in the current hotness styles of NMM/OSL.
I should photograph my Award-winning Terminators from 1991 sometime sometime soon. Then afterwards I can touch them up and rebase them to 2015 levels.
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I do have to say, those are quite the pants he is sporting. 🙂
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Thanks Ann. Stripey trousers were very much a thing in those late 80’s-early 90’s Warhammer pics, so when I have models that date back to that era or are solid throwbacks I often tend to enjoy giving them that style of pants. 🙂
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Yes, I’ve noticed that about stripey pants in a lot of the old GW art.
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