“The Iron Guard are the foremost of the Goblins. In ranks they march and in formations they fight. Yes, in good order. Not like any Goblins you have ever heard of. These plate armoured Goblins have turned back the Dwarfs of the green stone mountains and given the Elves of the sun vale a bloody nose. Respect them.”
I would like to thank Benamon Tame and also Zac Martin in this article for their pictures of their own collections and the efforts they have both put into pushing classic miniatures into an expanded future. Benamon provides with permission his Goblin Knights, Goblin Knight Command and Goblin Knight with Great Sword from his collection in a fetching copper and white paint scheme. Zac Martin has been busy sculpting new poses for the original packs including a Chariot Crew and Bolt Thrower Crew. This gives me a chance to round up some great pictures and links to blogs to read plus tell you about what is going to happen for the Armoured Goblins 28mm scale next. Let us begin!
It begins many years ago at the tale end of the 1980's with the Temple of Death for Benamon Tame and his collection of the 'Temple Guard' when they were first released (long before my tenure at Alternative Armies when they were with another company but more on that soon). His pride and joy they were misplaced when time passed and boxes packed and misplaced as such things go. Discovering the now 'Armoured Goblin Knights' on our website HERE he rejoiced and re-created his collection. I hope you enjoy the pictures and if you wish to read the whole original blog post you can find it on The Copper Oracle HERE.
The brand new FL2-06 Armoured Goblin with Great Sword was released this year compared to decades earlier for the other poses and this was down to Zac Martin. I was approached by Zac and he told me of the history of these miniatures and his love of them. He called them 'Doom Garde' and though I knew they had originated with Rieder Design in the 1980's and were now with Alternative Armies I had changed their purpose. Too short now to be 28mm Humans they were now 28mm Armoured Goblins, giving them new life, and had been re-molded along with the rest of our OH series and DH series high fantasy codes and put on our website across 2015 to 2018. We had added Dodo riding knights sculpted by Elton Waters before this and these got an update too. Well over a hundred poses now all with pictures and in packs and singles sorted by racial type. We discussed expanding the range and spoke on some ideas. On his blog called Lead Mountain Window there are several posts about these Goblins and you can see them all linked up HERE.
You would be hard pushed to notice that there is an age between the original poses and the new ones and while this was not intentional it is worth noting as the unified design of the Armoured Knights gives little clue to their era. Such fantasy gaming is as popular now as it was then. Sword and Sorcery and mighty monsters to defeat!
Thus far we have the following codes:
As we approach the end of 2018 there is a bright future ahead for the Armoured Goblins as they march into more campaigns, more battles against more foes. Working with Zac we have more codes to come. There is muted talk of an entire army in development but I do not want to get ahead of myself. I can say that much like we twinned new crew with our existing Bolt Thrower and Chariot we will do the same with a Bombard! We will be giving the Armoured Goblins more weapon options too with open hand poses able to carry sword, axe, pike, spear or anything else. Also we plan ranged weapon versions of the infantry as sometimes you need to bring down distant quarry. At least four new packs. This will all be in 2019.
I am greatly enjoying this classic fantasy expansion and rejuvenation of the Armoured Goblins which are great for virtually any game system (they could even be chaotically minded Dwarves as have been pointed out) but I would like to hear your input too. Are you liking what we have done and do you have any suggestions for further poses of these troops? If you do then please comment or email me on sales@alternative-armies.com and I will respond to you.
Next year will be a great year for Alternative Armies in many ways and after getting all the packs and characters of the Fantasy Warlord range back into world we are going to be doing more in the realms of High Fantasy when 2019 arrives.
Thanks for Reading,
GBS
I prefer the old school single pose look to the current one of multiple variants.It gives a more unified visual appearance!
ReplyDeleteThanks Robert. You are of course free to choose one pose and make up ranks of them in that one pose as originally released, every pose can be had as a single. GBS
DeleteGreat seeing these get more exposure and looking forwards to seeing the range expand! thanks for showcasing mine as well!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure and well deserved. I loved your take on these miniatures. GBS
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