Project 6: Skaven

I have always had a turbulent relationship with the rat ogre, so for the NAF Championship I thought I would take a star player instead.  My kit bash star play is made up of a skaven blitzer, black orc feet and weapon blades for claws.

I created a stat card too from a Photoshop template from thedeathjungle.blogspot.co.uk I don't have Photoshop so I used a free tool called gimp and added the Photoshop file plugin.

 

 

Project 6: Skaven Warpfire Throwers

This team is made up of the new 2016 blood bowl skaven team. To get the 4 gutter runners I needed to buy a second box. But I managed to recover a lot of the cost by selling the remaining models on eBay.

 

To get variety in models I have done some minor modding with felt tip pens for pipes, and added slime with clear adhesive UHU. I cut out clear plastic to a small point then used the adhesive to dribble/cover it.

 

 

The Skaven are spit into a few skin colours to further separate the models.

 

    

Project 5: Wood Elf Custom Blood Bowl Team

The newest team is a joint one with my daughter who loves doing crafts of all types so we are doing this project together. Well she is doing most of it, I am just helping with tips and the odd idea.

We are both relative beginners at green stuff so we are using a combination of card board with PVC and simple green stuff shapes.

To keep costs down the team is built from Mirkwood Rangers as they have a range of dynamic poses.

The weapons are clipped off and quivers removed. The simple green stuff tails are used to cover up marks.

The box comes with 10 elves, so we have bought a single tree man from old sprues of Sylvaneth Dryads from ebay. You can often get them from places like www.letthedicedecide.co.uk.

Here is the full team of 11 for around £30, depending on how the painting goes we may fill out the ranks with custom war dancers. We have added the odd shoulder pad with card board and sculpted a ball for a thrower and added a severed orcs head to scare the opposition.

Project 4: Dwarf Custom Blood Bowl Team

Thought I would post some pictures of my next project. A dwarf team built from the Avatars of War, Dwarf Berserkers set. This is a first for me as I am trying to create helmets and shoulder pads to make them look more Blood Bowl like.

I don't have very much experience with green stuff so I have bought head bits from letthedicedecide to make helmet moulds, chopped up parts of the dwarf horn from the Avatar of War set. Also chopped up a Black Orc's head and knee plates to make shoulder pads. I then created some casts using Instant Mold so I can create multiple copies.

The Blitzer below had parts of the horn for shoulder pads, and initial a cast of a dragon for wings on the helmet which I replaced with home made fans.

The Runner below has parts of a Black Orc's head for shoulder pads.

Another thing I am going to try with the this team is zenithal highlighting. Below is a picture of a long beard, with a sculpted helmet and black orc helmet for shoulder pads.

If Blood Bowl was mine.

There has been the usual rumours about the release of a new Blood Bowl box this year with a few minor differences. The removal of specialist games support and the discontinuation of block dice with the NAF. To an optimist (which I am) this could be markers for them to relaunch the site and taking their IP back to make their own block dice.

If Blood Bowl was mine, but I still had the constraints of GW vision of focusing on the core games and producing miniatures for large armies I would do the following...

Release a core game of orcs versus humans and if it sold well produce a second themed set. Maybe a nature theme with wood elves versus amazon's or lizards or a chaos or undead themed game. Within this core box set, I would include two versions of the game. The current competition rules and Blood Bowl 7's with a card overlay to cover each side of the pitch to make the smaller pitch. Each side overlay would be team themed.

The next tactic would be to change the game to operate as a support role for sales to their core games. I'd Look at current lines of the core armies and synchronise the 24 Blood Bowl teams to them. Producing articles on how to convert core lines to Blood Bowl teams. There are already examples of the standard armies successfully converted. Check out bensworkbench.blogspot.co.uk for the following skaven conversion or my own dark elf and orc conversions. For future releases of core units for 40k and fantasy I would keep this in mind and design core units with more options to be weapon-less or assembled in different dynamic poses to meet the needs of multiple hobbies.

Another possibility to modify teams could be to produce small plastic expansion packs of shoulder pads heads with helmets and hands. This could be taken a step further to have rookie, veteran and star expansion packs. The rookie teams could be simple pads and helmets with the vet and star packs becoming my more elaborate. Maybe even packs for player progression to make models to look like they have a specific skill. All the above still encourages purchases of their core models.

To further make the game more collectable, I would follow the path of the electronic codex's, producing them over time for each team.

Team themed codecs would include:

• Team stat's and stars.
• Fluff/backgrounds for the team.
• Play-books for league and tournament team tactics and development.
• Printable themed dugouts, turn and re-roll markers. Maybe 7,s pitch overlays.

Primarily distribution would be electronic to cut down on costs, but also have a premium print on demand service to get gloss versions with card dugout and markers.

Lastly I would let their customers play Blood Bowl in the GW stores.

Project 2: The Reiksfang Penitentiary Racketeers

The Necromantic Racketeers are finished and are now my league team for the Victory Doughnut Cup 2013. I also took them to the NAF Championship 2013 in Nottingham, I had a great time but did awful.

Most of the miniatures from this team are from Willy Miniatures. The werewolves and golems painted themselves but the wights and zombie were difficult to get right.

On another note does anyone have any strategy tips for facing Norse when using bash light teams like Necromantic and Dark Elves especially in tournaments. Both teams do something similar with regards to frenzy and using the side lines to surf the opposing team. But the Norse come with a lot of extra block and frenzy with a sprinkling of might blow. The best I can seem to muster is a sprinkling of wrestle to try and negate the block.

Project 1: Naggaroth Side Skates

I finally got round to finishing my dark elf team the Naggaroth Side Skates. I am quite please with how they turned out and took them to the Waterbowl 2013 tournament in February.

The running game coupled with screening fitted my play style and I did quite well.

Project 2:Size

As size does matter, here is a comparison picture for Simon.

Shout Out! Unite All Action

At the birth of this blog one of my aims was to create a blood bowl set for around £30. It has fallen by the wast side of late, but I came across this post on uniteallaction.blogspot.com which detailed putting together a team for my favourite team the Skaven at a bargain price!

Project 2: Flesh Golem

The second miniature is done, a flesh golem from Franarcilla. I did not want the skin to be the same colour and thought two of the heads had a Frankenstein look so tried to blend in a green skin.

Project 2: Werewolf

This is the first painted miniature for the jail break themed Necromantic team. It is the werewolf from Willy Miniatures. This is a great model and was a pleasure to paint. Hope I can make the prison stripe work through the rest of the models.

Project 1: Dark Elf Runner

Dark Elf Runner, a photo by pressie74 on Flickr.

This is a little update on Project 1, the Dark Elf team. The picture is the miniture for the runner position. It is the Mandrake Games Workshop miniature. I will use 2 for runners and 2 for assassins, if I ever include an assassin in the team.
I have trimmed the weapon and replaced it with a green stuff football. So he fits in with the rest of the team he has arm plates. I am not the best at green stuff sculpting, so they are made with card board from a cereal box. I cut the piece's out then dampened with a little water so the card board bends without creasing. Then glued and added a light wash of PVA to hopefully seal the card board and make it easier to paint.

Back view

Three Projects Part 3: Human

Human Copper, a set on Flickr.

This team just has GW miniatures and no converting. Just an idea to create a human team called the Copper Catches with a theme of copper, brown's and orange colours.

Dark Elf Blitzer

Dark Elf Blitzer, a photo by pressie74 on Flickr.

The first Dark Elf Blitzer is almost done. She just needs basing, numbering and varnishing. This team will be my first attempt at skin tones so I will follow this guide closely.

Three Projects Part 2: Necromantic

The second team I am putting together is a Necromantic team. I do not have all the miniatures yet, as I still need to decide on what zombies to get. I have the Werewolf’s and Wrights from Willy Miniatures. The Wights come in one piece but the Werewolf’s need to be assembled. They come with arm’s jaw and tail separately and most parts need to be pinned. The flesh golems are from Franarcilla, I loved that a head on each miniature had a football helmet and I am looking forward to painting these.

Both companies don’t have order forms or have check out functionality. But I just sent an email with my order and delivery address and asked for a total cost then sent the paypal payment. Both orders came in around a week and I was impressed with the response and speed of mail from each company. More pictures can be found here.

Three Projects Part 1: Dark Elves

I am putting 3 blood bowl teams together. This is the first. A dark elf team made up from 40k miniatures. The main-stay are Dark Eldar Wyches and my two witch huntes are Lelith Hesperax miniatures. So she wouldn't look too out of place, one is mounted on a willy miniature blood bowl ball, and the other on the head of a black orc. To get the ball and head to stand up enough so Lelith wasn't leaning I have pinned them to the base. I am not very good with green stuff, so the black orc's neck is made of some orc arm so you get to see the muscle.

I have not come up with a name yet but I think the main colour for the team will be a dark navy blue. I'll post more when I am further along painting them.

Human Team War time theme

Here are a few pictures from a human team a friend of mine wanted painting, there are no shoulder pads or helmets. But the positional's are all clearly distinguishable.

Willy miniatures Troll

While at the NAF Championship I bought some miniatures from the guy's from Willy miniature's. I needed the troll for my orc team as the previous troll I was using was to go with my goblin team 'Catchagoogoo'. I thought the previous troll was a little small to go with the orc's. I also bought a werewolf and just ordered some more from them to bulid a necro team (post to come).

NAF Championship

This entry is a little late, as I went to the the NAF Championship Blood Bowl tournament a few weeks ago. I have plenty of pictures (see link).I took my new lizard-men team the Lava Island Zipper's and even wore a straw hat to go with the volcano island theme. I bought the Games Workshop miniatures team. You only get 4 Saurus and after reading some threads on www.talkfantasyfootball.org the general builds use 6. I ordered two more but didn't get time to finish them before the event.

Only having 4 Saurus and no practice before the tournament meant I did't do very well. The Skinks didn't have enough cover and I was constantly getting out bashed. You can see how well I did here at the NAF website.

All my opponents over the two day's were great and I didn't have a bad match. My two highlights was a game against Andy who brought Orcs. I was 1 touch down up and 4 squares away from my opponents end zone. I had Skinks surrounding the ball and all I had to do was pick the ball up and run for the touch down. Obviously the Skink fumbled the pick-up, it bounced to two other Skinks who failed each catch then bounced out of bounds. The throw-in went back down the field just passed a line of orcs.

The second was a great game against a goblin coach Glowworm. The score ended in a 2 -2 draw. I'll remember it for the death of my Crox by a goblin no less and the charismatic coach.

The tournament of 190+ players was excellently organised. The setting GW world was great and even the food each day was good. I met loads of great people and even got to pick up some miniatures from the guys at willy-miniatures.blogspot.com

On the second day I met up with Simon of starblayde.blogspot.com who has a great write up of the event. He was organizing a chat with Jonny P of zlurpcast.com.

I could not recommend these tournaments enough, they are a lot of fun and you get to meet great people who love Blood Bowl.

Preparation for the NAF Championship

So we have just over a month to wait for the NAF Championship in May. But I am still undecided what Blood Bowl team to take. With two teams still unpainted I need to pick one and crack on with finishing them. Do I take a human or lizard men team?

I started to paint my lizard man team in the style of Everblight (see below). But the end colour's were a bit bland for my taste and my skill with the brush has not yet got to that level. I still like the brown blending to black scheme. Which I thought looked a bit rock like and maybe even volcanic. With the lizard theme being tribal, this seemed to fit in with those tiny volcano islands. With that in mind I have gone for yellow to red blending. The miniature's below are not finished but you get to see the the gist of what I am going for.