Goblin Town

The excitement about Middle-Earth SBG has not died down yet, and after completing my dwarves I went around looking for more of the game’s models to paint. Turns out I had two of the Hobbit Goblin Town starter sets on my shelves, sitting with their contents unbuilt for many many years.

I don’t have any particular attachment to the goblin models, but I thought they would be a neat army to have ready for the tabletop, and likely easy to paint fast. After doing a stocktake of the models, I figured out I had 72 goblin warriors and 4 characters available to me.

I set out to paint them as efficiently as possible, keeping down the number of steps so I could get through the lot in as short an amount of time as possible.

To speed up the process I attached all the models to bits of cardboard so I could batch paint them as groups of five to eight models, and making it easy to get base colour and the skin wash down with an airbrush. I kept the models attached to the cardboard for all other steps apart from the basing, minimising the number of models I had to individually handle. Picking up and putting down 70+ models multiple times in a row actually adds up pretty fast!

As a rough guide, I used the airbrush to undercoat the models in a bone colour, then did a quick zenithal highlight with white to add a bit of depth to the models. I then turned the airbrush pressure right down and sprayed on GW Guilliman Flesh Contrast paint cut 50/50 with the GW Contrast Medium to not overly tint their skin colour (They’re very pasty in the movies). Then I switched to a brush and base coated the non-skin elements, which then had an GW Agrax Earthshade wash applied to them. For a final touch I applied some GW Carroburg Crimson wash to the faces and boils on the goblins, which added a bit more variation to the skin. The bases were simply done with Vallejo white texture paste, and then dipped into GW snow flock.

Overall I painted all of these models over the course of a week, which I’m very happy with from a time investment to end-result ratio. They’re not my best painted models by any stretch, but I do think they look cool as an army.

I painted the goblin king separately from the others, taking my time to get a better finish, as befits such an imposing model. He followed the same steps as the goblins, but I highlighted the skin back up afterwards, and added a few purple and red glazes to add a bit more variation in his flesh tones.