A couple of years ago, when I was working out another of my Greek or Viking orders from Wargames Foundry, I noticed a banner announcing “Warmonger Miniatures” as an upcoming side project/sister company/offshoot of Foundry where the Ansells would be working alongside Kev Adams to not only rehouse their own fantasy ranges, but also provide a place for newer sculpts from Kev to go. I was instantly struck by the fucking amazing looking goblin featured on the banner so I rang them from Australia to ask about purchasing it. They explained to me that the store wasn’t yet quite ready to open, I explained that I really just wanted that one amazing goblin if there was some way I could buy it, and nice people that they are, they said that they’d sort something out for me.
So when my order arrived. The goblin was in there. I also found that the head was a seperate piece, and it was glued onto the body with the neck hewn rather roughly – they’d (probably) sent me the actual goblin cast that they’d used on the site to spruik Warmonger.
You know, I could have pried the head off, rejoined, and smoothed the neck and all of that. But then – what I had felt cooler than a “perfect” miniature. So I left it as-is. With paint on it looks fine.
…and I’ve just noticed I forgot to do the sword gems. Fuggit. I’m still counting him as done in July even if I do the gems in August!
The other thing that really stuck out to me was the size. This model, with it’s typically-characterful Kev Adams Goblin-face was BIG. Much bigger than a normal goblin. More on that in a minute, though. So I figured out a base to put him onto eventually, and then took over a year to finish him. Working in dribs and drabs, getting closer one month only to be forgotten entirely the next. This is where the Rackham Goblin I got from Carlo currently sits – in the slow queue, on the painting desk, slowly moving forward to eventual completion…
As I said. He’s abig bastard for a goblin. How big? Well, the pic shows pretty well. He’s next to a couple of generations of GW’s gretchin (space goblins, basically) as my painted fantasy gobboes are packed away right now, and a pair of GW’s Orcs – again from different generations. Next time someone complains about GW’s scale creep, let them know it’s not just GW! This is why I’m calling this fellow a Gobin Warlord. Makes more sense now, eh? 😉
As for this particular goblin… I can’t find him on the Warmonger site. There are a ton of very cool looking Orcs and Goblins there, but this fellow is nowhere to be found for some reason. I guess that makes this one even more special to me in a lot of ways. Certainly one that deserves to be a Jewel of July, and for me – a special model to even own.
Whups! This post was meant to go up tomorrow. That’s how bloody tired I am. Ah well, just 2 hours early won’t kill anyone…
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
That Goblin must be on fungus steroids ! LOL Great rendition, and fantastic painting mate
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GGH instead of HGH!
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Great stuff!
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Thanks, Mike!
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It’s a great Goblin Warlord!
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Don’t tell him that. He already thinks that he’s great, so if he hears you, he’ll just become even more unbearable!
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Cool!! I’m at Wargames Foundry tomorrow so I’ll ask a bit more about this ‘wee’ fella for you mate!
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Thanks Alex – the seperate head makes me think that there must have been a bunch more of both heads and bodies in this series(?)
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Aaaand I totally forgot to ask
Sorry!
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We’ve talked about how Brian Nelson was the one who really brought in the threat and brutality that made Greenskins credible as a force, and how Adams’s Greenskins, for all their charm, didn’t quite measure up, but he’s def caught up now. That looks like one seriously vicious bastard!
The scale creep is a bit obnoxious, but since you just have the one, he works perfectly as a Boss Gobbo who clearly got his position because he was bigger and stronger than all the rest!
Bummer for the rest of us that he didn’t seem to make it into production, but it makes the one you’ve got here even cooler.
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Yeah, Kev loves/d his slightly goofy, grinning greenskins, but every now and then he’d turn out a model that just looked savage. That’s the aspect that Nelson took and ran with in his own sculpting.
As far as the scale creep goes, I’m not sure what’s going on here, to be honest. It feels like without the editorial oversight/shackles off (whichever way you see it), Kev isn’t so concerned with the sizing of his models. Scale creep has certainly been a thing over the past decades across much of the industry, and a bunch of what Foundry used to call Ogres are now listed as Orcs.. 😀
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Nice work- great story behind that mini too.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Cheers, Pete – it was really good of Foundry to make an effort to get me this model, and worth the public mention. 🙂
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Very nice figure but I like the story behind it too, in fact it is the story that makes it all the more special. I like the extra mile that some people in the industry are willing to go to. I guess that’s another reason why I love the hobby, you deal with a lot of people who just love what they do.
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Agreed, and a lot of small businesses are “the business” in that sense. Unfortunately, some are the opposite – pig-headed and rude people who will happily steal your money and send you nothing.
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Excellent mini! To compensate for you posting a day early I read it a day late – that will hopefully balance all of the things you could have changed in our timeline!
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Thanks! You saved us from a mess like the timeline(s) of those X-Men films!
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That’s a fantastic Goblin Warlord, indeed! I am getting such HeroQuest/Advanced HeroQuest/Warhammer Quest vibes from the model, and I think it would work perfectly in those settings. Excellent painjob, too! 🙂
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I can see it – but then again it makes perfect sense being a Kev Adams sculpt. “Caves of the Great Goblin!” 🙂
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Another excellent sculpt and the painting is top-notch too. You do great with orc skin as it has pretty natural looking tones. I may have to look into this sculptor as I’ve got an itch to paint some fantasy minis and it might be fun to give something that is not LOTR a spin! 🙂
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Thanks! Kev Adams is the guy behind the classic GW Orc and goblin designs. Well, he might not have conceptualised them in their original form, but he was the one that really codified them and gave them the look that they still by and large have today (and also in things like World of Warcraft). Brian Nelson came later, and took the mean bastard aspects of Kev’s work and dialled that up, but it’s his base that Nelson worked from. Basically any Ork and Gretchin thing from 1st and 2nd edition 40k, or (most) WHFB 3rd and 4th Edition Orc and Goblin was his work. Not sure about 5th and onwards, but most of those models were still the 4th edition ones, anyway…
He even did the early Citadel Lord of the RIngs range of Orcs and Goblins (not the Uruks, though – they look like Jes Goodwin’s work:
http://www.solegends.com/citlotr/indexblist.htm
He also did a fair bit of work for Heartbreaker after he left GW, so those models can be found in various places including RPE
http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/shop/heartbreaker-miniatures-28mm-c-115/
and Impact! Miniatures.
https://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?option=heartbreaker
And of course, a ton of the stuff up above from Warmonger.
Depending on how you paint them, you might be able to use them as Uruk-Hai or something alongside the LotR models. 🙂
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Thanks for educating me on this and for all of the links! 🙂 I look forward to browsing all of these stores as I hadn’t heard of any of them. I’m glad to learn this too because I wrongly assumed that almost all of the early LOTR stuff was actually the Perry Brothers who did a nice job in my opinion as well.
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You’re not wrong with the Perrys being the primary sculptors of the initial LotR range – at least for the Peter Jackson films. The original range linked with Kev’s work was from the mid-late 1980’s!
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