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Sunday, July 7, 2019

Blood Bowl Nurgle Team - Bloaters WIP

I converted the Rotters and then some Pestigors for my Nurgle Blood Bowl team, now it's finally time for the Warriors, or how they are now called - the Bloaters. Those big, slow and bulky roadblocks are the core of the team and my favorite positionals in the team, the stars that crush the opposition with their mutated fists.

Ones available in the current GW kit are fine models, but in no way how I envision those players. After playing Blood Bowl 2 video game, I imagine them more similar to stereotypical Chaos Warrior, with armor and spikes. The most obvious choice in this situation was to revisit the delightful kit of Putrid Blightkings. I choose 4 of them, leaving one to serve as a Head Coach later and went crazy with the conversions representing their skills, just like my other players from this team.

Wanting to justify their heavy armor, atypical for modern Bloaters, I came up with a backstory that they were displaced through time by Nurgle, many, many years forward, making them living (?) relicts of the old ways. To go extra ancient I gave them roman-themed names and crests on the heads. This brings them all together as the special players and strengthens the effect of how ancient and out-of-touch with the modern Blood Bowl fashion they are.

Here are they all together:

4 unpainted Bloaters of Nurgle miniatures for use in Blood Bowl, converted out of Putrid Blightkings using greenstuff. They are standing in a row and there's a text informing what kind of skills in the game they have.

And some closer photos.

Captain on the left was the first that I made and which gave me the least problems when deciding what to do. This is easily my favorite pose out of the Blightkings kit and came together beautifully with what I had in mind - the stone under the foot got changed into a ball, left hand was in great position to sculpt a scary pincer there (instead of some variation on Wolverine claws, I went with the classic interpretation of the 'Claw' mutation) and the outstretched hand was perfect for a 'thumbs down' gesture, bringing even more Roman themes into the whole mess.

The second one has 'Stand Firm' as his upgrade and this one took the longest to design. At first, I wanted to give him thick and bloated legs, but then it would be too similar to the captain's right leg - so I left this topic for a while. Only later I decided to turn his legs into a mass of swarming tentacles and worms - which both greatly illustrates how well is he glued to the ground but also fits Grandfather Nurgle perfectly.

2 unpainted Bloaters of Nurgle miniatures for use in Blood Bowl, converted out of Putrid Blightkings using greenstuff, visible from different angles. One on the left has a giant picer for his hand, representing the 'Claw' mutation. One on the right has tentacles for legs, representing the 'Stand Firm' skill.

Here below, the guy on the left is the one that rolled doubles when leveling - and he got 'Jump Up' which helps players get up quickly after being knocked down. To represent that, I decided to give him a lot of spider legs sticking from his back - which would prop him back easily after he falls down. His body was the most armored of all the Blightkings, so to retain some balance I decided to make him completely unarmored from the breastplate up - like rotting meat rupturing a metal can.

And the last one is the Bloater with 'Mighty Blow'. I thought about representing it quite a lot and many options were just not good - giving him a large fist could be confused with 'Big Hand' while adding a lot of spikes on it could be confused with 'Claw'. I considered giving him a heavy hand made out of stone, but in the end, I decided on giving him a thick, flexible appendage ending with a spiked ball - like a fleshy flail of sorts - with a sporty armband to keep him properly themed. Hopefully, it's heavy- and slow-looking enough not to be confused with a 'Tentacles' mutation.

2 unpainted Bloaters of Nurgle miniatures for use in Blood Bowl, converted out of Putrid Blightkings using greenstuff, visible from different angles. One on the left has lots of spider legs growing out of his back, representing the 'Jump Up' skill. One on the right has a fleshy wrecking ball instead of an arm, representing the 'Might Blow' skill.

There were many different topics here, so once again I did some photos of the actual building progress, to show some of the 'behind the scenes' stuff. They turned out rather long though, so to avoid extending this post to infinity and to get some a post buffer (which I could use for personal reasons right now), I will post them as separate posts in the upcoming weeks, I hope they'll be interesting enough.

I will update this post accordingly to have all those little sculpting tips together with the miniatures they are related to.

First one is about sculpting the Roman-style headcrests that all of them sport:


The second one is about sculpting sick, disproportionate, bloated arms that I did for the 'Stand Firm' guy. Followers of Nurgle allow for some leeway when it comes to anatomy, so it's both quite easy to do and a good place to practice greenstuffing.


The third and the last one is about the wriggling, tentacle legs of the 'Stand-Firm' guy. It explains the principles of doing a similar composition of tentacles, how to sculpt different kinds of slimy appendages, together with instruction on how to quickly make suction cups for those tentacles.


6 comments:

  1. Your skill with green stuff are amazing ! Really good work ! I can't wait to see the next post

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    1. Many, many thanks! I also can't wait to see if I can do them justice ;)

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  2. This I'm going to follow! Wolfrik / SWE

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  3. Konwersje co najmniej tak klimatyczne jak u Pestigorów. Fajny, nieoczywisty twist z tą rzymskością. Bardzo ciekaw jestem, jak to ugryziesz w malowaniu. Inaczej jak jeden z chłopaków, dałbym kciuk w górę :P

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    1. Dzięki!

      Jakkolwiek fajnie było by poeksperymentować z rzymskim złotem i czerwienią, trochę za późno się zaorientowałem z tym motywem, żeby wprowadzić go więcej, więc pójdę raczej w kierunek czarnego, białego i zgniłożółtego ;)

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