Blood Bowl Nurgle Star Players - Conversions WIP

The core team of the Putrid Punters may be finished, but my work on Blood Bowl Nurgle is far from over!

I want to make a whole range of staff miniatures, upgrades, inducements and markers for them - and I started with the Star Players - special characters known in the Blood Bowl lore, famous celebrities from that universe, that can be employed for a match for a fee. 4 of them are strictly Nurgle-based and I decided to sculpt the whole set of them. Each time I was referring to the official illustrations from GW publications - and it was actually interesting, trying to sculpt something from an image.

Now to focus on each of them separately.

First is Guffle Pusmaw - he was included in one of the first supplements for the 2016 edition of the game, so I treat him as the most famous Nurgle player. As you can see, he got blessed with a giant, toothy maw on his belly, which makes it easier for him to catch and hold on to balls - he's actually the only player in the whole game with the 'Monstrous Mouth' skill (yet). Nurgle teams are bad at passing, but I still wanted to have him.

I built him from leftover Putrid Blightkings legs and torso, with BB Bloater arms. He has only Strength 3, unlike a Strength 4 Bloater, so I wanted to make at least his legs more scrawny, but in the process, I made him overly high. Oh well, it's not like Chaos cares about proportions!

As a comparison, HERE is his picture from the Spike! magazine.

The second one is an ex-circus Player, Tolly Glocklinger. This one is special for having a 'Ball and Chain' skill (think night goblin fanatics) - which he naturally interprets, in a Nurgly fashion, more like 'Bell and Intestine'. He sports also whopping Strength 7 (normal humans have 3 and big guys like ogres and minotaurs have 5) - so to represent it all I wanted to make him really fat and thick. I based my conversion on a Bloater miniature - I didn't use them in the core team, but they are still pretty amazing models. The bell was taken from the Putrid Blightkings and mounted on a brass wire, covered later with Greenstuff.

As a comparison, HERE is his picture from the Spike! magazine.

Next, the Pestigor Star Player, Bulla Shardhorn. The concept for this one is 'almost a chaos spawn' - with 'Two Heads', 'Extra Arms', 'Disturbing Presence', 'Foul Appearance', 'Horns' and even a 'Stab' for good measure. Now, while the Pestigor from the GW box was way too unique and monopose for me to use it in the team, this was the perfect use for it. I glued both options of head here (merging them with some greenstuffed flesh), added extra arms from Plaguebearers and Ghouls, and covered him with branches from the Dryads kit - I wanted him to be a twisted, shaky and gnarled plaything of Chaos - and seeing how difficult it is to read what is even happening here, I think he works quite well.

As a comparison, HERE is his picture from the Spike! magazine.

The last one is arguably the least spectacular, but also probably the most useful, Bilerot Vomitflesh. He is basically just a Bloater with extra strength, making him kind off like a Nurgle ogre of sorts. I based him on the second Bloater model and besides changing his head, pose and adding a shirt over his chest (to get him to look like the official depiction) I made his arms and neck extra bulky, to represent his extraordinary strength.

As a comparison, HERE is his picture from the Spike! magazine.

Vekoslav the Beuatiful

I guess it's finally time to finish the project of Varsavian Bogatyrs, various hero-sized characters that I made for my Undead army - you can see their WIP versions HERE.

After Yarema, Drachitsa and Drazhan, now I present you Vekoslav the Beautiful, the proud Battle Standard Bearer for the wight army. Unlike everyone else from this group, he's not a kitbash, but an old discontinued Forge World model. My only change was to file off the vampire-themed image on the banner itself, make it smooth and mount a separate, plasticard sigil in front of it and add a ghost on top.

The reason for that was because I already painted a banner with an elaborate freehand for my Grave Guard - and no amount of additional freehands would make this one more special or prominent. To go a step further, I made a big sigil to move into 3D, beyond the two dimensions of a freehand. With the sigil itself being golden and on a black background, it even fits with the color scheme of my wights.

The ghost on top was a spare from the Nagash kit and an additional attempt to make it more special. Unfortunately, it somehow discouraged me from finishing this mini, so it got postponed to after Drazhan was posted. Still, it was a pretty good project - and a good addition to my collection as the only Vampire Counts model made by Forge World.

During his life, Vekoslav’s gift was his beauty and noticeability. Tall, handsome and imposing, he has drawn everyone’s attention to him. Maybe a wrong skill thing for a spy, but perfect for a statesman - born as a farmer, he managed to become a locally important chieftain. When he found himself in the Varsavian army, not only he led the most elite units but was also honored with the Great Banner of the Death God. Standing or marching with it on the battlefield, nobody could miss Vekoslav. He was always there with the standard, no matter the situation, visible, proud and unwavering. The bearer was so good at his position that he got buried together with the whole banner after death - all the better for Wight Kings when they raised him back to unlife. The great symbol was covered with patina, the flag was tattered and Vekoslav himself was reduced to a bony wight - but they were still inspiring awe on the battlefield, even amongst the dry-hearted wight soldiers of Varsavia.

Blood Bowl Team - The Putrid Punters - Group Shot

I don't post group shots very often - but I thought this is a good occasion for one of those - I painted all the players for my Nurgle team, The Putrid Punters. That and I actually have all of them at hand - almost everything else gets quickly moved back to Poland to save some shelf-space here in Berlin.

Another reason why they are getting such a photo (and other teams didn't) was because I put a rather crazy amount of energy into them. Every player is converted, kitbashed, modeled to accurately and clearly represent their in-game upgrades - a process which took not only time but also much thought - and it's all culminated with the scratchbuilt Big Guy, the friendly Rotspawn Sloth the Sloth. I'm also pretty happy how they turned out.

Close-ups and views from different angles of all the players can be found here: Bloaters, Pestigors, Rotters and the Rotspawn. I already played a game with them and I'll be setting up a match report here sometime in the future.

Besides their record on the pitch, the Putrid Punters are well known for their quirk of disappearing into the warp from time to time only to reappear many seasons later as if nothing happened (warp shenanigans, courtesy of Grandfather Nurgle). This affects their whole presentation - the hard-to-kill Bloaters remember the ancient times and wear appropriate armor, tough Pestigors can shame the current beastmen with their animalistic skill and fragile Rotters are almost modern! Everything's capped with the cute and timeless Sloth the Sloth. It takes them some time to collect themselves after each jump - but as soon as the players are together, they can use their natural talent and experience of the older players to get back on the pitch - and maybe get some bearable results too! Not long after their staff end equipment should follow, which will allow them to get on the track full (disgustingly slow) speed and spread the Grandfather's love.

Blood Bowl Big Guy - Sloth the Sloth, the Rotspawn

There was the WIP Post and a long Step-by-step sculpting process, now it's finally time to finish this project and post the painted version of my (mostly) scratchbuilt Blood Bowl Nurgle Rotspawn, the cute Sloth the Sloth.

I painted him in the same color scheme as his teammates, only this time flesh was the overwhelming majority of everything that was to paint. To make it more interesting, I tried varying the shades on him - with some parts redder, some greener, some darker and duller. To further that, I also freehanded some fine veins in some places, like on the boils and the bulbous part of the main tentacle. Then I applied some gloss varnish on all the swollen fleshy bubbles, tentacles and the eyes - especially the eyes - and he was basically ready. Green shirt, bony spikes and black armor were just accents here. In the end, I am pretty happy with him and I hope I can mess with some elven game plans with him now!

His name was taken from my version of Putrid Punters that I had in Blood Bowl 1 video game - the names are randomly generated there and the Beast rolled a coincidentally redundant name, so I decided to keep it because it fits and it's funny - also as a memento from those times.

All the design principles and ideas for this creature are explained in the WIP post, linked above but also HERE.

Weirdly named (Nurgle himself choose it, who are we to argue?) Sloth the Sloth is the Punters’ Rotspawn - and as his name suggests, he is always a little late after the team’s reappearance in the world. But once he shows up, the game starts for real - for the creature is known for his affectionate character, stealing the hearts of the audiences with his antics and gluing the opposing team to the pitch with his friendly licks. So determined he is in his need for pats and love, he can force his way through the blocks of less experienced players! Sadly, Sloth’s heart is really vulnerable to rejection, making him whine and sob in the middle of the field - so he almost always needs his teammates nearby to assure him that he’s a good boy.