32) Dragon Turd Mountain: The Desolation of Trogdor

GW was great at alienating their competition in the hobby like that. Sure, I could buy miniatures from a different company, but why would I put all the work into painting something that I wouldn't be allowed to actually play with at an event? Unofficial miniatures were banned from tournaments and conventions.

It was really unfortunate, too, because there were some great models out there that I would have loved to collect and paint. One specific example that comes to mind was the "Fantasy Warriors" boxed set from Grenadier Miniatures. My local game shop, "Adventure Games Plus", had a copy on the shelf. The box art was great and it really caught the eye. It was a complete game in a box. It had rules, counters, dice, and it included one-hundred miniatures. The two included armies were Dwarves and Orcs. The back of the box had full color photos of the armies beautifully painted up and arrayed for battle. The models were really great, and compared to GW's "Warhammer Fantasy Battles" game, this game was CHEAP.

Time and time again I pulled that box down off the wall and thought about buying it. I really liked those models. I pointed the game out to a few of my friends on different occassions and asked if anyone would be interested in buying it with me and splitting the miniatures. Nobody would. Nobody wanted a warhammer knock-off. We were all slaves to the dark gods of the Citadel. We would accept no false prophets.

Years later I learned that "Fantasy Warriors" actually pioneered the concept of a complete wargame in a box with two starter armies and rules, which GW then copied for the 4^th edition of their own game, and all future releases. "Fantasy Warriors" wasn't a knock off. It wasn't a false god. It was just a different one from the same era.

I never bought that copy of Fantasy Warriors. I was too scared to leave the walls of the Citadel. Eventually I forgot that it had ever existed.

Twenty-seven years later, I stumbled upon a copy in the original box. It was complete, but too battered and used to be valuable to a collector except maybe to harvest spare pieces from. The miniatures were never painted. I decided immediately that I would buy it and that I would paint it. This would be my hobby project for the winter. In fact, while I was at it, I was going to hunt down a copy of the game that started it all for me: "Battle Masters". That was going to be part of the project. Both games include a lot of Orcs, so I decided that I was going to make an Orc army out of old school plastic miniatures from my youth. I had fifty orcs so far. I was going to need more.

Hopping on the internet, I found an ebay auction that was for the Orc half of a Fantasy Warriors set. They had been painted to an acceptable tabletop standard with the shiny gloss model paints of the late 20^th century. These old plastic models can be difficult to salvage if they were painted with those enamel paints. Solvents and thinners melt plastic, so these models usually aren't great candidates for restoration if they have that type of paint on them. Looking closely at the auction photos, though, the paint didnt look very thick at all. In fact, the detail on the models still looked really good. Maybe I could just paint over it? I took a chance and bought them. That got me up to one hundred Orcs.

I also found an auction for twenty of the old Battlemasters Orcs. They had been painted very poorly. Possibly with a q-tip instead of a brush. Those minis were never very highly detailed to begin with, though, so I wasn't too worried about it. They were cheap. I decided not to buy a complete Battlemasters set only to break it up. All I needed was the Orcs anyway, and here they were.

At this point, I started figuring out what I had and what units I could build into an army. I threw together the basics of a list, and realized that I had almost enough Orcs to do a full 2300 point army already. I was just a few minis short of filling out the regiments. From there, I would just need some leaders, some war-drums, and a big warlord on a dragon. I had spent very little on this army so far, so I could afford to get some really nice vintage metal models for the characters and the dragon. I decided to buy the Mantic Games war drums, because they are just wonderful models. I was going to do the Mantic dragon too, but Rebecca, a local goddess of lost and dopey animals, intervened and set a series of unanticipated events into motion.

My wife stumbled across an estate sale auction. The thumbnail photo had old vintage Warhammer Orcs. The description said that there was lots of gaming stuff. Being a loving and benevolent household deity, she shared the link with me. The auction had exactly what I needed for my army. A box of fifty more of the old Grenadier Miniatures Orcs!

In addition to numerous lots of Orcs and Goblins, there was also a nicely painted Elf army from the early 1990s. It included a classic Citadel Dragon Lord. I considered bidding on it, just to pop the knight off of it and replace him with an Orc, but I held off. A couple days later I was checking on the Orcs that I had bid on, to make sure I had the high bid. I decided to check on the dragon. Instead of scrolling for him, I just typed "Dragon" into the search bar. Something fantastic happened.

There were two search results. One was the Elf Dragon Lord, but the other was an auction lot titled "Dragon Turd Mountain". It was a wargaming hill, and a classic metal Orc Warlord riding on a dragon. The dragon's leg and foot were broken and snapped off of the base. Closer inspection revealed that there was some tiny graffitti on the little wargame hill that read "Dragon Turd Mountain". This auction lot had NOT appeared in the listings before. I checked the description and the tags. There were none. The lot had not been catagorized as gaming, miniatures, warhammer, orc... Nothing. Whoever had posted this lot had given it zero descriptors, so it just didn't show up unless you specifically searched for one of the words from the title.

Dragon Turd Mountain

This Orc Dragon (Wyvern) was a vintage metal model from the late 80s or early 90s. On ebay it typically sells for between $120 to $170, even in poor condition.

Dragon Turd Mountain had zero bids. The opening bid was $3.50 and there were only two days left in the auction. Nobody else ever found it. Nobody else ever bid on it. And that's how I got this green monster for about tree-fiddy. And of course the little mountain itself.

This dragon needed serious repair. The model is poorly designed in that it has one leg up in the air, so there is only one point of contact on the base. This heavy metal multi-part model kit literally balances on one leg. That wasn't going to do. I had to drill out the foot and the leg so that I could pin those broken parts together with a piece of stiff wire clipped from a mouse trap. While I was at it, I adjusted the angle of the leg slightly so that the beasts tail could touch the ground. I also drilled and pinned the tail to the base. Now there are two points of contact.

Pedants might notice that this model technically isn't a dragon. It's a wyvern. That's why it doesn't have any arms. Nothing a little conversion therapy can't fix, though.

I will call him Trogdor the Burninator. I'm really looking forward to painting him. I'm not going to change the original artist's scheme. I just need to touch up the Orc rider and get some paint on those dragon arms. 

The four day Thanksgiving weekend was once again my hobby marathon, as it has been in recent years. I knocked out almost all of the Orc infantry in just a few days.

Instead of a zenithal prime, I primed the Orcs with moss green rustoleum spray paint. I then painted a base coat of Orc flesh and a highlight of slime green. I picked out the teeth in ivory, and the eyes in red. I painted the clothes and the boots different colors from unit to unit, and the final step was a wash of glacier blue. I didn't use contrast/speed paints for this project. Old school minis get old school paint jobs. The ebay rescue minis that had already been painted were no problem. I was able to paint right over them without losing noticable detail.

The Orc army is coming along nicely, and I have even picked up a few vintage metal orcs to be my leaders. I can't wait to get this army on the field!