Friday 19 September 2014

Asgard Fantasy Monsters FM53 Balrog


Next to be extracted from the Lead Mountain was this beastie from Asgard. It’s their take on the Balrog from LOTR. It originally came in two parts – the body, and the wings, both cast in metal.

Attaching the wings to the body gave me no end of grief. The moulding to attach the wings was crude to say the least, and the wings are incredibly thick and heavy – they weigh about the same as the body! It took several goes, a lot of superglue and a LOT of cursing to get them to stay on. Once I had them fixed, the joints were filled with Milliput. Not an easy job! The next problem was the figure once the wings were attached – it wouldn’t stand up unassisted, due to the small base size. This was addressed by gluing it to a GW base – the original Asgard base had stones moulded into it, so I extended that by adding additional stones carved from Milliput.


So on to the paint job. This was actually the simplest part – base red, GW wash for depth, and then lots and lots of dry brushing. I wanted it to look like a creature of fire, and I think that the colour scheme worked pretty well. The flaming sword was problematical – not really much detail to work with – but I tried my best by picking it out with yellows and whites to suggest heat. The whip of fire was just a matter of highlighting the tail ends of the whip. As for the base… the easiest thing would have been to paint it gray, but I wanted to give the effect of heat and fire, so I painted them orange to suggest reflected flames. There are a few grains of sand on the base as well, picked out in red, to suggest embers.

Whilst I like the figure, I can’t see it getting too much table top time. I rarely run campaigns that make use of Balrogs or Fire Demons, although if I do need one I can bring this chappie out. And it has wings, which are one of my pet peeves with miniatures. And it is a seriously large bit of metal – look at the Grenadier early 80’s archer next to it! I understand Viking Forge still produce it using the old Asgard moulds, and I think it still holds up pretty considering it is nearly 40 years old!

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