The Barak Varr Buccaneers
After painting the dark elf team, I felt like working on a "good" team. I had a few options—human, elf, or dwarf—and I decided to settle on some 2nd edition dwarves. The main reason for my choice was the arrival of a batch of metal miniatures from eBay. I was quite lucky to find a good number of reasonably priced figures. There are times when I’m more than a little surprised by the prices people are asking for Old Hammer figures. I was never really into dwarves in the 1980s. I only owned Barik Farblast and the plastic dwarves from the Dungeon Bowl set, which is a bit old, though I often played a dwarf in WFRP or 2nd ed AD&D.
It was quite nice to paint a brighter team. The orange and white paint scheme was inspired by the 1980s Tampa Bay Buccaneers' uniform. It’s not exactly the same, but it definitely gave me some good ideas to start with. I began by testing my painting ideas on a couple of 2nd edition plastic figures. The test pieces allowed me to see if I liked the look and to figure out how long the scheme would take to paint. I’m not a competition-quality painter; I paint for my table. If a paint scheme takes too long, I usually abandon it in favor of something quicker. I liked the colors overall, but I decided that a metallic face cage was the better choice.
One of the things that is important to me is making my teams as edition-flexible as possible. I want to be able to use them for both 2nd edition and 2nd season (soon to be 3rd season) Blood Bowl. This has taken a bit of creative thinking, but it has allowed me to include miniatures that aren’t necessarily Blood Bowl miniatures. For example, in the Barak Varr Buccaneers team, I have used a miniature inspired by the Runner career from 1st edition WFRP—or perhaps the miniature inspired the career; I’m not sure. The figure looks a little slow off the mark, but he will serve the team as a blitzer in 2nd edition and as a troll slayer in 2nd season.
The Barak Varr Buccaneers are complete for now. I’d like to add a death roller, but the prices on eBay are a little higher than I’m willing to pay. Still, these Alan Perry sculpts are great.
