My Fifth Blood Bowl Team-The Seaburgh Gulls

 The Seaburgh Gulls

Inspiration can come from many different places. When I was thinking about which team I should paint next and what colour scheme to use, I found myself in a bit of limbo. I was waiting for some figures to arrive so I would have enough models for an Undead team and a Chaos team, so I decided to look in my cupboard. There, I came across a box of modern Blood Bowl figures: Imperial Nobility. I realised that if I added a few models from my lead pile, I could make another full team.

That sorted out what I should paint, but I wasn’t going to paint them as the Bogenhafen Barons. I struggled for a while, flicking through my old issues of White Dwarf looking for inspiration, but it wasn’t until I was walking towards the Peace Park that I found my muse.

I have always had a soft spot for gulls, so when I saw this solitary gull perched on a lamppost, I thought I would try to work out a colour scheme based on a gull’s plumage. A seagull gave me three colours to work with: yellow, white, and grey. White would be the primary colour for the uniform, with grey as the secondary colour, and yellow as the tertiary colour. One change I made to my initial idea was to add metallic silver to the chest armour, to make the uniform a little—well—less uniform. The solitary seagull also gave me the name for the team: the Gulls. Overall, I am pretty happy with the way the figures turned out, even though they took quite a long time; I started them in November. That is my own fault for choosing colours that take a lot of work to achieve a decent finish.

My Fourth Blood Bowl Team

 The Framsburg Firelocks

One of the best things about digging through my box of Blood Bowl figures is the memories it brings back. When I first started playing Blood Bowl, my team of choice was always a human team. The main reason for this was the Blood Bowl star player "Big" Gunn Schonn. I was really taken by his paint scheme, and back in the '80s, I tried to replicate it using enamel paints.

Looking back now, I realise that, while my efforts were impressive for a fifteen-year-old, they don't quite measure up to my current standards. I spent some time debating whether I should try to replicate the paint scheme again, but ultimately decided against it. A design with multiple colours and intricate details would take too much time, and I was determined to have a full team painted within a month.

Having decided on a new paint scheme, I began to look around for some ideas. Inspiration can come from many places, and in this case, it came from White Dwarf 98 and the Mentor Legion. I have always liked the Mentor Legion as they appeared in those days, so the choice was made for me. Green and white became the colours of choice for the uniform.

I just managed to complete the Framsburg Firelocks within October — the basing was finished on the 31st. Part of the delay was my own doing: I wanted to give the team plenty of options, which added some extra time, and stripping the enamel paint from the metal miniatures took longer than I expected. Still, I managed to meet my deadline, and these Mark Copplestone sculpts came out really well.

My Third Blood Bowl team

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.

My Second Blood Bowl team

 The Morien Storm Warriors

After combing through my lead mountain I thought that my second Blood Bowl team should be a Dark Elf team.  I am not sure why I was taken my these figures, but there is something about these Michael Perry sculpts that grabbed me.  Most of the figures I had picked up on Ebay over the years, except for the Jes Goodwin star player who has been painted multiple times, first with enamels and then with acrylics.  He is now finally part of a team.  

Stripping the various paint jobs on the figures felt a little wrong as other people had stamped their identity on them and I wasn`t sure if I should that was the right thing to do.  The figures had various paint schemes, so I would have had to choose one scheme and strip the others.  This also didn`t feel like the best option.  After a bit of soul searching I decided to strip them all and go with a completely different paint scheme.

Here is the completed team the Morien Storm Warriors. I have named the team after the third book in the Orfeo trilogy by Brian Craig novel.  Not my favourite Orfeo novel, that would be Plague Daemon, but still a good read.

  

 A bit of a distraction

July has been a month where I have once again been distracted by another project.   How did this state of affairs come about?  I thought I would give you a brief outline of how I went from playing Hordes of the Things to painting Blood Bowl figures.

Recently, I played a couple games of Fantasy Flight`s excellent cardgame Blood Bowl Team manager.  If you like a good cardgame it has a lot going for it and if you are a Blood Bowl fan then you really should play it.  The only real issue with the game is getting your hands on a copy of the game and the expansions.  The expansion add a lot more teams to the base game, which helps to keep things fresh.

The cardgame reawakened in me an urge to reread the Blood Bowl novels by Matt Forbeck. Are they high literature? Of course not, but they are a good fun distraction from the troubles of the world. I am the proud owner of the hardback, slipcase edition,a wonderful gift from my wife a few birthdays back.

Reading the books led me to go through my lead mountain and pull out my old 2nd edition Blood Bowl miniatures. I spent a joyous few hours taking stock of the figures that I have and I realised that I could make 7 different complete teams. The choice of where to start was fairly easily. A lot of my Blood Bowl figures were painted with enamel paints, when they were all the rage, and they would need to be stripped of the paint, but my Skaven figures had sat unpainted since I bought them in Canterbury in the late 80s. So, I decided that I would finally give these Jes Goodwin sculpts a lick of paint.

I started painting the Skaven in the first week of July and gave myself the month to get them all finished. If I can keep up that pace I should have all of my figures painted by next February! I doubt that I will be able to stay focused for that long, especially as I don`t have a copy of Blood Bowl, but we shall see.

The figures themselves were really good fun to paint. They needed very little clean up and they have a lot of details that were easy to pick out.

So, here is the complete team, The Kingsbury Critters. I have given them a, Bob Olley, minotaur as a big guy, in the modern game he will be used as a rat ogre but in 2nd ed the Kingsbury Critters will be supported by Jim `Bully` Bowen the minotaur blitzer.