Age of Sigmar: Reposing Dankhold Trogoths To Spice Things Up
What self-respecting Gitz player wants to run a herd of identical Dankholds? Not me! It’s time to flex hobby muscles with these Trogoths.
Spamming identical copies of the same model is something that’s never sat well with me. If you’ve been following BoLS for like… a really long time you might even remember some of my bygone repose article. I’ve rearranged hogs, reassembled gators, and reshuffled swamp horrors. Now with a solid Troggherd in the works it was time to hack up some Dankholds. I fear this sort of thing is beginning to become a bit of a lost art as more people buy or print 3d conversion parts or even a whole alternate 3rd party sculpt. In fact I was even asked by someone if that’s where these alternate poses came from. The truth is while time consuming and somewhat challenging, kit bashes are a lot of fun and when you’re finally finished you get something you can be really proud of.
This is the first of the Dankholds I worked on. Instead of trying out the standard pose I just jumped right into a brand new pose. I started with the Troggboss body portion instead of the standard Dankhold since I wanted the right arm to be upraised. I did have to carve a little out of the shoulder to let the arm hang down a little lower. I took the whole elbow out to give it a sharper bend then resculpted it, along with the wrist to get it at a perpendicular angle to the hammer haft. Which as you can see had to be extended with some sculpting after being cut free from the hands. Cutting the hammer free left a big gap in the left hand which also had to be filled with green stuff. The other change was to give him a large hunk of rock crystal as a necklace instead of the corroded cannon. Even seemingly little things like that give the models an individuality that I don’t want to see replicated across all the troggs. The crystal is one of the weapons from the Rockgut sprue with it’s handle cut off of course.
And here he is all painted up.
Next I did the “standard” dankhold. I mean it’s not like I have any objections to the pose itself, just having three of them in the army. And while there aren’t any reposes I still changed a few tiny details just to keep them from being identical to our previous trogg. He has a different loincloth repurposed from a fairly old (previousl sculpt – bought around 2007) chaos warrior standard. I also moved the mushrooms on his back around some and added a few that were provided on the Dankhold sprue. He also has some severed heads on his belt from – I think – the old zombie sprue.
Next I moved on to a much more complicated repose than the first. I wanted this trogg to look like it was squaring off against an equal sized opponent and looking a little more lively and ferocious. Every limb had to be broken up to some degree and rearranged. The elbows were angled up so the creature could be actively wielding it’s weapon. The right leg was broken into several smaller pieces to bend it up onto a rock, placing the creature’s weight on the opposite side of those of its companions. Finally a lot of the plastic below the left knee was cut away so it could be bent somewhat in the opposite direction. I glued paperclips into all the joints so I could bend each joint until it was where I liked it.
After everyhing was posed how I liked it I filled in all those gaps.
Getting the hands glued on at the correct angles was more difficult than I would have anticipated. They needed to line up along the length of the shaft and also be attached at an angle that looked natural for a huge trogg brandishing a comically oversized stone hammer at a hypothetical taller opponent. I shaved off some of the plastic on the side of the head to pin the ears back at a more aggressive angle. I also stuffed a little green stuff under it’s chin so it would be looking slightly upwards rather than down. This, even though I’d already used the neck from the trogboss since it is looking right and angled slightly upwards.
Then all those gaps had to be filled in with green stuff. Fortunately the dankhold’s bizarre lumpy appearance is quite forgiving for these kinds of conversions. Nothing needs to be sculpted perfectly. Also the folds in the lumpy skin are fairly easy to sculpt. Certainly more so than the kind of accurate musculature you might need to worry about if this was a gargant or something. Additionally with all the extra parts that come in these kits you can find some extra puffshrooms to carefully ( so very very carefully) shave loose and glue on to any expansive areas of green stuff. This will match the fungal infection on the rest of the creature while covering any sculpting imperfections.
Speaking of gargants, the loincloth on this guy came from the mancrusher mob kit. Herein you can find a stylish array of loincloths for the big and tall monstrosity be it gargant or Troggoth. This dankhold also has the oldest bit on it of all these conversions. Did anyone spot the mushrooms from the circa 1999 night goblin kit? I didn’t buy it that year but I have had that fungus since the year 2000. Other back fungus was also rearranged, once again with the goal of eliminating anything too identical between troggs. For his neck trinket ( you can’t see it in this pic) I took a bit from the other Gargant kit. A sigmarite bell meant to hang from the belt of a Gatebreaker Mega-Gargant. That puts the combined cost of this conversion at nearly $450 – not counting the mushrooms – but… I have every intention of assembling and painting those kits to use with my gitz. Until then I have no problem scrounging bits from them. I’m sure if you attempt a similar conversion you can find some useful alternatives in your bits collection without having to shell out so much.
Man you almost don’t notice how ridiculously oversized those mitts are until you bring them to the forefront.
Next up its a trogboss. I wanted a second for when I play Trugg’s Troggherd. And also possibly for a Troggherd Heavies Battalion to unlock an extra enhancement. Again I’m going for a more active and aggressive pose. I thought a brutal overhanded stab with it’s stalactite club would look particularly vicious. As with our previous repose I’ve started by breaking everything apart and putting paperclip pins at all the joints. I’ve also cleared away all the stuff on its back to redo later on.
The loincloth here is a cape from the chaos marauders sprue which I guess is technically still current. That is also the area where I chose to glue the spider from his club. Because I am a mature and sophisticated adult. The skull helmet is another piece from the Mancrusher mob kit. It’s the head of a mace. There was a lot of scraping necessary from both the interior of the skull, and the top of the boss’s head, to get it to work as a helmet. the ears had to be glued on at a weird angle but I was able to cover the resulting gap with the straps I used to attach the lower jaws. I added a portion of the large stalactite hammer to his back to go with other stalactites from the kit. His necklace trinket is a mask from the new Orruk Weirdbrute Wrekkaz.
But there’s one more part that I really wanted to add. I loved the giant centipede that goes with the Trogboss but why does he have to be crushing it? I figured he should have one as a loyal pal. With the centipedes from four Dankhold kits at my disposal I was able to recreate a “live” one. I needed extra body segments as well as legs and even an antenna.
But now he has a cool pal.
Here’s how he looks next to the standard Troggboss.
~Hope you enjoyed the article! You can follow me on Instagram if you like pics like these. I go by @t00mini. Thanks for looking!
