THRUD! THE BARBARIAN!

Usually when I personally talk about gaming nostalgia it's around role-playing rather than miniature games.  The truth is over the years because casting technology and materials have improved so much and most 'popular' items have never truly gone away they just get re-done there hasn't been much in miniature gaming for me to get nostalgic about.  But every rule has its exceptions...

Back in the 80s when I was new to hobby gaming Games Workshop didn't take their IP nearly as seriously as they do today.  It was the time that produced snotlings, and Fighting Fantasy and Blood Bowl and all kinds of fantasy an sci-fi silliness and to be honest I really liked it that way.  On the note when I first started reading White Dwarf there was a comic in it called 'Thrud The Barbarian' which featured a typically meat-headed barbarian character who was cartoonishly out of proportion with the other characters in the story.  Thrud was super fun but I hadn't given him much thought over the past couple of decades.  My affection for plastic RPG miniatures got me into the Zombicide range and low and behold one of the special guest artist packs was by Carl Critchlow and featured Thrud!  I had to have it!

Being a mostly classic fantasy barbarian Thrud is somewhat reminiscent of a variety of Warhammer Quest figures and some Khorne figures I already own, but his helmet is distinctly Thrud and I just had to add him to my collection.

One of the ways in which Thrud stands out from my other barbarian figures is that even by fantasy barbarian miniature standards he is HUGE.  In the picture below he is standing next to a 28mm Chainmail model on a 25mm slotta-base.  You can see how much bigger than normal man-sized he is.  In fact I'm fairly certain that he's roughly the same size as a current Games Workshop ogre.

It was fun to do something new that still scratches that nostalgia itch.  I've got another one-off coming up that's another older GW character but nowhere near as old as Thrud.

-Jay