Blood Bowl Markers - Pleasant Buzzbugs

Once again I'm here with a small project that's actually painted - re-roll markers for my Nurgle team.

While absolutely anything can be used for this purpose, my Putrid Punters are now a very long-term idea when I want to have anything for them that fits the theme, so all the staff, star players, scenery, up to the whole stadium at some point. That's why I wanted those little bugs to serve as markers and they will deplete as I use them up - I don't expect to have more that 4 re-rolls for them anyway.

Eyestinger Swarms from Kill Team: Rogue Trader box were perfect for this role - small, characterful and fitting (despite coming from WH40K). I converted them just a little bit - some details on the bases to replace those overly science-fiction ones. I am actually surprised how well those orange wings turned out with the yellowish-greenish tones I used for their skin, I have to consider using one of the bigger winged models for something! Maybe a cameraman...

Every time a Nurgle team trains, they sweat a lot. And I mean, a lot! The peculiar fragrance this creates attracts certain insects, that the Punters came to call them “pleasant buzzbugs”. They swarm up around the stadium during those preparatory sessions and often stick around for the match itself too. The buzzing noise they create is very pleasant (hence the name!) to the followers of Nurgle, filling them with confidence about themselves and their good god. This means that the more bugs, the better they are prepared to play! Still, should they run out of favor of Grandfather Nurgle during the play, the bugs will lose their interest and fly away - giving the opposing team a signal that maybe the rotting ones are finally running out of steam!

Lord of Contagion - WIP

The unexpected happened - I got myself some first 40k minis to paint, an actual collection!

Blood Bowl got me into Nurgle good and I just couldn't stop marveling over modern Death Guard miniatures - all of them full of little, unneccesary detail, holes and gribbles, with so many variants and options... Death Guard players are just spoiled with how rich the range is - so I decided to give them a go. I am quite fascinated with morbid combinations of flesh and machine and this project will be good for exploring that - once I get their style and theme right.

The big leader guy from the previous starter set, Lord of Contagion, seemed like a very good start. The current idea for their theme is white/wintery armor with an industrial and soviet feel to them - with some flesh&technological horror included. To get some of that that, I cut off the special effects from his back (I hate painting those) and replaced them with some smokestacks. He is standing on a T-35 tank turret I painted in middle school - to make him stand out a little bit more and get that some soviet points too. The original tank model was wrecked by a cat long time ago, so this is its new purpose.

Some more HQ will be coming up while I'll be exploring the color scheme and trying out some snow effects for the bases.

Underworlds - Mollog's Mob - WIP

Seeing the approaching 4th season of Underworlds, I decided to buy the last of the expected-to-be-discontinued 2nd season warbands that I liked - the Mollog's Mob. When they first appeared, I disliked them, they were a bit too comical for me, at least for Underworlds. Then I got into Instagram and followed a bunch of AoS28 folks and the idea on how to convert them slowly appeared in my head.

As far as I saw, one of the easiest way to make a monster creepier is to make it more human, have human attributes when one would expect monstrous ones, make the weird thing that much closer to us. To achieve that, I gave every single creature in the band, a human-like face - the troll, the squigs, the frog, everything. Because of the scale difference, every face turned out pretty distinct and characterful, an unexpected, yet good feature.

With the main man here below, I wanted to go a small step beyond - which was inspired by the great menagerie of grimdark Giants which can be seen HERE and the manga/anime Shingeki no Kyojin - where the giants are not just big humans, but humanlike creatures that were scaled up to their size, unperfectly, like in an broken mirror, or by an unskilled creator. Those creatures carry certain human features, but they are all set up wrong - so my 'Mollog' has a very wide mouth and instead of a club, his whole left hand has way too many joints and is just generally too long. The original troll's uneven proportions were perfect for this. Someone may say that this is too small for a giant, but I like my giants on a spectrum - which starts from about this size, when it can overpower an average human with size alone and devour later, if not whole, then bite by bite.

And here are the squigs, little minions of 'Mollog' - those were nice and easy conversions.

Sir Vannier, Knight of the Realm Gallant

Because of some delays, I am filling this week with another Bretonnian oldie dug up from the cupboard - a mounted hero model, painted in 2008.

He is one of the first, if not THE first, Bretonnian model I ever painted. I still haven't decided how I want this force to look like, so he has some weird elements to him, like 'cool' non-heraldric dragons on the barding or gold, metallic trim between two colors there. I had just bought my first greenstuff back then, so I was eager to use it - so he has those two useless ribbons on his back. Fun times.

He was supposed to be a character in my army, but then I designed to convert my own character out of a common knight, so this nice, metallic model was relegated to being just a champion of the same unit of the Knights of the Realm. Maybe I'll finish them someday - continuing a 12-13-year-old plan for a game that long since stopped existing - nothing I haven't done already, so it's not out yet.

To ensure a smooth organization of Bretonnian lances on the field of battle, a lord needs his officers, his Gallants - who are most often chosen for their loyalty or skill in combat. Sir Vannier is not of those - he would be discharged many years ago, but because of an ancient treaty between his family and his sire's, Vannier, as well as his ancestors and descendants, has an ensured high position in Earl Sagremor's army. He may be carrying a lance tipped with a dragon's tooth and look very regal, but it's just equipment he got from his braver fathers - current Vannier is a cruel, petty, and bigoted man. Using his position and privilege, he often raids his own villages to pillage and harass the peasants, sics bandits on foreign traders, and tortures his captives, human or otherwise. While some share his ideas, many find that brutish man distasteful at best - but Bretonnia's rigid code of honor and laws don't leave much room for opinions and preferences.

Blood Bowl Chaos Pact - Blitzer Marauders

After the most recognizable part of the team - the Renegades, it was time for the cornerstone, the linemen and linewomen - the Marauders.

Seeing as they are supposed to be a rag-tag bunch of mismatched misfits, I decided to play around with the skintones - so everyone's skin is different, both realistic ones and some weird ones. That was both the fun part and the challenge about them, but that's how it is usually. I got a whole 10 of them in the box, so I decided to break them into two groups - both to organize them by their role on the pitch and to fit them reasonably well here. After some tweaking, I chose 5 of them to be the fighty ones and those go in first.

Intent on creating the greatest Chaos team, the goblin headhunter Dugtig gathered the mismatched Renegades and was now faced with finding the marauders somehow. He looked through many of his books and finally found some notes about Kreegans - a travelling band of aggressive Blood Bowl fans. Taking people from all around the world, the Kreegans were united by their love of the noble sport, fondness of riots and pitch invasions, as well as their only vague understanding of the rules. Nobody ever considered recruiting them, but Dugtig was nothing if not unorthodox - while unskilled, their potential was limitless, he thought. The unassuming goblin appeared in one of their camps one day and announced his recruitment - naturally, the response was more than enthusiastic. It was easy to find good violent blitzers - but digging through the applications in search of various specialists would take some extra time.

Here are the girls - and those two were probably the most challenging when it went to their skintone. The one on the left is meant to have a very dark, almost black skin, but with very bright patches caused by vitilgo Vitiligo. I always thought that's a very interesting look and wanted to try it out - and this was the perfect opportunity. The one on the right sports also very dark skin, but warmer in tone - I never painted skin even close to this, so it was also an interesting task.

And here are the guys - your usual brooding agressive types that are well known on the tabletop - with skintones much closer to my usual work - with some tints added. I gave them some simple tattoos to make them stand out just a tiny bit more.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 4

Finally, the last Champion of Chaos is complete - the most flashy and overdesigned of them all, the Snake.

Here the stats came first - this one got blessed with extra agility, giving us something like a nimble elf that can still punch and take hits like a Chaos Warrior. When designing them, I realized that some mutation skills give an equivalent to extra agility for some actions - Two Heads for dodging and Extra Arms for handling the ball - so I decided to merge them all into one and finally be free from the restrictions about the amount of extremities.

This gave us this snake-like monstrosity - inspired by the Naga Queens from HoMM3 and some old Slaaneshi Champions. The central part, the torso-head is a variant of the disturbing babyfaces used on may Inq28 pieces - I used a female vampire head from a bust I won some time ago (I never really expected to paint it). This thing got then decorated with all kinds of details and pieces to make it all complicated and at least a bit bizarre.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 3

Third Blocker is done - and it's actually two Champions of Chaos - the Twins.

I had one of the tough guys planned as the mobile one - then I had to think how to represent him. I went through some iterations, until I finally decided to make a weird 'cavalry' piece. Two conjoined siblings would count as a single player as far as the rules are concerned - allowing me to sculpt something wildly different from the norm. Of course, I had to design them so that I will avoid certain rules - so they only have two functional arms to share between them and only one set of eyes (probably one mouth too). The bottom one is stomping forward and punching, with the one on top concerned only about the occasional ball handling situations. As you can see HERE, I sculpted the big mouth and even every tooth separately, because I was unsure if I wanted them open or closed. I decided on clenched teeth because it was less obvious - most monsters with large mouths tend to keep them open as they run, just ask any squig.

It was a nice project, all the greenstuffed flesh reminded me of the Sloth the Sloth.

Blood Bowl Chaos Pact - Renegades

Finally, something painted and finally, the Chaos Pact team project is starting to emerge! It's been almost 1,5 years after I got them and the WIP was posted in January. I tried working on them bit by bit, but life keeps happening, even now.  

These here are the first members of my Chaos Pact / Chaos Renegades team, part of the Alastoran Malice Team from Greebo Games. The idea behind the team is a mismatched collection of chaos marauders and other races brought together to play the noble sport, a much less elite variant of the Chaos Chosen team. One of their features is access to 3 Big Guys - those are still being painted - and another one is a single orc, skaven, goblin, and a dark elf available in their rosters, each one bringing some nice flavor from their main teams and I decided to start on them.    

There are some small conversions involved - the goblin has a second head behind the first one, the elf has a decoration on his helmet to bind him together with the GW team, orc has some disgusting pustules all over him (to signify Foul Appearance mutation) and the skaven sports some edgy, oversized horns. As for the painting, while I liked painting all the different colors, the models themselves are very fine and sometimes I struggled to recognize what is what - but that's a good thing too, weirdly enough. Their bases are made according to my own tutorial, but perhaps not that well visible from this angle.      

  The first batch of human marauders coming up soon! Click the image for better resolution.

The goblin headhunter Dugtig is well known in the Blood Bowl world for his skill in finding really good players. Still, many talents he discovered were rejected by the coaches because of ‘chaotic influence’, ‘unworkable personality’ or other similar details. Now, after recent difficult recruitment drives for the Dreadspear Dragons, Badlands Badbuttz and Backbiters, to mention a few, he thought that with all the money he earned through the years he could start his own team, taking all those talented, but misunderstood players. Collecting this small group of mismatched rejects, he created a core for a new Chaos Renegades team. Now the real recruitment begins.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 2

Today I want to show you the second blocker - and probably the weirdest of the bunch - the Fishman.

I'm not really sure how this idea came to me and what inspired it, it just happened during one sleepless night earlier during the year. A Champion of Chaos that may look comical, but is actually dangerous and cruel - spindly human legs diappearing inside a metal fish costume with bulging eyes, with a strange head and elongated arms, nobody sure where does the armor creature ends and the armor begins.

Contrary to how simple he may look, he was really tasking for me to sculpt... Different layers of sketches, empty mouth, different parts made separately, only to be glued on later, arms made out of Milliput sticks joined at the joints with wire to set the pose properly, the textured, hammered metal - it was a lot of work and it was probably all my fault. He may have turned out too fat and too big, but I accepted it and I'm happy with him, all things considered.

Blood Bowl Chaos Blockers - WIP 1

With the beastmen done, it's time for the Blockers. They are the four Champions of Chaos that brought their own retinues to form a Blood Bowl team, so they are getting a lot of attention. I am probably overdoing them, they take a lot of time to be done, so I'll be posting them one at a time. Still, I think they deserve it and I'm quite happy with my progress so far.

The first one is probably the simplest - the Marble One. He is a reinvention of an idea back from high school, when I wanted have a Tzeentch champion, whose Chaos Armor manifested as marble skin - soft and nimble when moving, hard and cold when struck. To show off something like that, I wanted a lot of exposed skin with sculpture-like muscles, so I bought myself a Kairic Acolyte body. Sadly, it was way too small for an imposing Champion of Chaos - so I cut the body into pieces, lenghtened it and then basically sculpted the whole body over the original plastic. Trying to sculpt a realistic musculature was a first time for me and I learned a little bit, which is always nice. The head was supposed to be simply helmeted at first, but then I got inspired by the eerie and beautiful marble mines found IRL - so he sports some interlocking blocks of stone for a head, with two little, strange eyeholes.

Painting him will surely be an interesting challenge!

Blood Bowl Nurgle Extras - The Pimplettes

I guess it's time to post something else than the neverending posts about weird beastmen, something painted would be good - so here are the Cavorting Nurglings, an unique small inducement available to the Nurgle Teams in Blood Bowl. I have a pile of primed minis ready to be painted and I chose those guys here as a nice start of going through it.

Unexpectedly, they weren't as nice as I wanted - quite a lot of detail and a lot of different skinshades. Still, they were a nice change of pace and a pleasant return to the Putrid Punters project.

The WIP post is HERE - I took a normal Nurgling base from GW and Bloodbowlified them a bit - added a ball-eating one, some helmets, a hotdog, etc. Their pose was perfect to write the team name on their backs.

Sloth the Sloth is legendarily shy and his handlers have tried out many different ways of encouraging him to actually move onto the pitch and play. One of those was getting a small bunch of Nurglings to throw him as snacks - which seemed to work for a few matches. Until that is, they bought a particularly feisty batch of them. When they saw the beast approaching them, they quickly cut their ropes and ran in all directions, causing all kinds of chaos and mischief. Sloth the Sloth followed them all around the stadium, trashing few stands and causing several fatalities, not bothering to play at all. The Punters lost that one match, but the surviving fans loved the spectacle and the team actually rose in the popularity rankings! The cheeky Nurglings got employed instead of being punished and they formed a merry band called "The Pimplettes" and their presence always rouses the audience to do their best. One or two still gets eaten by Sloth the Sloth occasionally, but it's all in good fun.

Blood Bowl Chaos Beastmen - WIP 6

Thankfully for you and me, here we are at the end of the lost & damned beastmen.  

First one started as a skill on a roster - I wanted a 'Leader'. Long have I thought how to symbolize it in a properly chaotic fashion - and I decided on giving it lots of eyes wandering around on their very nerves, observing the match and adjusting the game plan. That idea also went through numerous options, to finally end with a lion's head - it's big, impressive and atypical for a beastman - perfect. There are no eyes on the face - which fits the general theme, but should also give it some extra creepyness.  

The second one, the last one, was one of the first to be designed, but sculpted last. I wanted disproportionate limbs somewhere - and I would love an armless beastman somewhere - but you have to catch the ball somehow! Not being able to do much there, I decided to get rid of its legs - mostly. I had a weird snotling in my bits box and his legs worked just right with a Crypt Horror arms - creating a weird player that was blessed with hands and basically nothing else. I gave him proper Blood Bowl gloves - so that at least one player will be somehow properly dressed.

Blood Bowl Chaos Beastmen - WIP 5

Getting very close to finally finishing the beastmen...  

First one is a malformed creature inspired a tiny bit by the #turnip28 universe - especially with the weird face hiding under a historical helmet - all on an Ur-Ghul body I really wanted to use. He was supposed to use the Claw uprade (hence his left hand), but as I was expanding on the metal armor that may or may not be his body, I decided to make that big metal arm the defining feature - so he's sporting the Dauntless skill. It's a risky option to raise your strength when attacking a more powerful opponent, with absolutely no bonus on the defense - which semeed fitting for such a god-hand mounted on this frail body. Overflowing with metallic 'growths', he has also some chaotic spikes growing from of back.  

The one on the right was created almost by accident, when I was mixing and matching random bits that I planned to use for this project - legs from a steed of Slaanesh and a boar jaw, which I set in a vaguely jumping position, giving me this weird creature - which uses the 'Leap' skill of course. The idea with the head above the giant jaw was taken from the Berserk manga, lots of apostles there seem to sport this feature. I had some problems with the hands, though... I wanted to give it some to make him conform to the rules, but the 'from the mouth' option was taken - and putting them growing as normal arms from the body seemed too 'normal' - so I gave it an elongated limb with a single hand on the end, because why not.

Blood Bowl Chaos Beastmen - WIP 4

Guess what, even more weird Beastmen for my Chaos Team.  

On the left you have, in my opinion, the weirdest member of the team, the flatface. Inspired by the Pantheon of Chaos banners the most - which, in turn, take a lot from Ian Miller's art for the Lost&Damned book - and the Demibuer from the Gardens of Hecate. I was intrigued by the idea, that with Chaos you can have such a logic-defying creature running about. Multi-jointed legs that probably creak with movement just add to the whole effect. Thus, he has the 'Disturbing Presence' skill.  

The second one is the sackboy, as I currently call him - literally a sack of flesh and bones, stitched together on stick-figure legs and let loose on the pitch. Like this, it's only natural that he has the Frenzy skill - in his state, the is not much place for sanity. This one will be probably the only kinda-gory one in the whole bunch - I guess I can't escape my undead roots. The head was inspired by Jon Davies' pestigors - and that idea was mixed with the Tubby Demon by Emortal982. Weirdly enough, I was unaware of the second inspiration - I thought I devised it on my own, but after sculpting it and looking in my inspirations folder, I noticed an uncanny resemblance between them... oh well, subconsciousness!

Tutorial - Quick & Easy Lava Bases

Many months ago I previewed a project of a Chaos Renegades team for Blood Bowl - and while working on them is getting delayed and delayed, I had at least time to experiment with their basing. To go with their full-on-chaos theme, I decided to give them lava bases - with some lines on the bases to simulate pitch markings. After several failures, I got the process right and I want to share it with you. It's actually very easy if you keep some things in mind.

I start by painting the bases white. It's mostly to make the next step easier...

...which is painting them yellow. This color doesn't cover very well, so it works the best at the bottom layer.

Now it's time for the lava colors themselves. I gathered some warm yellows, oranges, browns and reds, with some white and black for the extremes. The precise colors are not that important, but the general tone and range.

Then, using a fair amount of water, I began wetblending the lava image. It may sound daunting, but we are not going for smoothness or precision here - I start by doing a yellow center and a red outside, after which I mix some oranges in the middle, while dabbing a bit of brown and black on the outside, with some white in the middle. Here it how it looks during the painting.

Here are my first layers. I didn't know which direction of the gradient I wanted, so decided to try them both out.

The colors were uneven after the first layer, so I did a went gradient again over them - if you are not satisfied with the work so far, you can just wait for this step to dry and try once again. Once there's some paints underneath, every next layer is easier and easier. If wentblending doesn't work, stippling various colors around the base would work too - even a bad gradient will work fine from the thin cracks of the finished piece.

Here are the bases after two coats:

Then, the sporty lines. Just like with the bases themselves, I start with white.

Followed by yellow, going somewhat outside the white line.

Now it's time to blend the lines a bit more - it's flowing lava after all. This part needs even less neatness. If the yellow line is on the yellow background, nothing needs to be done. If the yellow line is on the orange, then I add a bright orange between them. If it's on the red, then I add bright orange followed by dark orange. If it's on the brown, then orange and red - and so far. When that's done, I painted a thin, dotted line of white along the very middle of the line to make it look just a bit hotter.

NOW, A VERY IMPORTANT PART:

Matt Varnish the lava image before proceeding! Crackle paints tend to pull on the paint when contracting, tearing the layers as it goes - I had to redo the whole process several times because of that...

After the Varnish is nice and done, it's time for crackle paint - I used Mordant Earth from GW, a completely black one.

And I applied it with a very thick layer (if you are unsure how thick, just know that it's better to do it too thick and too thin), going up to the middle of the line. When it contracts, it will move away from it, showing it completely, so no worries there.

And after it's dry.

Then do the same thing for the other half - nd the whole thing is ready! The one on the left, hot in the center and cooling near the edges - and one on the right, inversed.

And this is how it looks with a mini on it (a random High Elf 'volunteered' to stand on the lava).

I decided to go with the right one on my minis - not only the cooler part in the middle gives an impression of a shadow underneath a model, the bright yellow edges look more striking against the base's rim.

Blood Bowl Chaos Beastmen - WIP 3

The third batch of the weird beastmen, bringing us to a total of 6, half of the planned 12.  

A long time ago I bought a set of random bits, with a Mournfang head included - I knew I had to use it on this project. Still, the head was quite large and didn't fit all the beastman bodies that I had. After some experimentation, a ghoul body worked perfectly, creating this head-torsoed creature slouched under its own weight. I was unsure what to do with the arms until I finally decided to make them grow from the mouth itself - it's meant as a bifurcated tongue that happened to grow actual arm muscles and fingers on the ends, to be used as extra legs for running and handling the ball.    

The one on the right is the thrower - I really wanted to have at least one beastmen capable of passing the ball. It took me ages to decide on an interesting mutation to represent that - I considered a mouth that would morph into a grotesque launcher, spring-like limbs, or a fleshy catapult growing on top of the unfortunate player. Finally, I thought of incorporating some mechanical elements - a wheel! It is mounted inside the beastman's body and is integrated with its limbs - with the spin creating extra momentum, this thrower can pass farther any mundane being! The feet from this body were used on the birdlike beastman so this one got some vaguely Salvador Dali-like legs.

Blood Bowl Chaos Beastmen - WIP 2

People seemed to like my Hieronymus Bosch-esque beastmen for Blood Bowl, so here I am with some more of them.

The one on the left, The Snail is one of my favorites in the whole bunch - and was mostly inspired by one weird apostle found in the Berserk manga (which was a great inspiration for this project in general!). This concept was just the right mix of silly, weird and disturbing. That got then mixed with the idea of two similar heads made from Daemonette musician horns to create the dysfunctional player you can see below. Legs and arms were supposed to go from the same hole as the heads, but that looked too busy - so I went with numerous, asymmetrical holes for the limbs. It is a mystery how it manages to even move forward and I like that. 

The other one was supposed to get the 'Extra Arms' skill, so together with a Tzaangor head that I wanted to use I got myself a vaguely Skeksis-inspired (from Dark Crystal) beastman. I didn't want his head to be horned, so he has them on his shoulders, just to mix things a little. With this skill, he will be probably the most competent player from all the beastmen - I'm not planning them to be especially competitive. 

Stay tuned, I'm not even halfway done with them.

Blood Bowl Chaos Beastmen - WIP 1

Today I'm starting with a project that was brewing in my head since April at least - a very bizarre Chaos Blood Bowl team. Long have I admired all the brilliant conversions inspired by the Inq28 style, Lost&Damned books, medieval, baroque art, and many more - creating a blend when there's no place for common sense or logic. I never had any good excuse to try doing something similar - until I realized that the simple roster for the Chaos Chosen team would be a perfect canvas for such an endeavor. Such a take on Blood Bowl is not very common, which was an additional plus.  

I am starting with the beastmen - slowly, those kitbashes take much more time than I'm willing to admit. There are a lot of them and their ruleset is simple - some hands to handle the ball and horns, everything else is up for a conversion - a perfect canvas for my menagerie! The one on the left is probably the one that started it all - a running Chaos Giant's head. The conversion was simple and the addition of helmet easily makes this model 'sporty'. At first, I intended for his hand to emerge from his mouth, but I had others with this trick planned and that would interfere with the mask. So, he got thin limbs with arthropod joints dangling about as he runs about.  

The one on the right was invented when I was trying out all the bits that I bought for this project - I wanted a lizardman head on a buff torso - because beastmen shouldn't be only goats! Thin legs from a ghoul came much, much later - they serve as a nice deformed contrast with the rest of the body. Stay tuned for more.

The Lady's Favor

More Bretonnians from ye olden times to pass the time - and today, a Trebuchet! A beautiful model, I'm happy I was about to get it when it was still being sold.

Bought in 2007 (for my 18th birthday!) and painted in 2010, this was my first warmachine ever - and I wanted to do it justice with a proper scenic base. I made it out of an MDF board - all the crewmen and the trebuchet itself are removable. I'm pretty satisfied with it - nowadays I would add freehands on the little shields and avoid making those hard-cut stones on the edge of the base.

Unlike most Bretonnian lords, Crinierre is quite a progressive person, enjoying new inventions and innovations. That’s why he was always keen on employing war machines in his forces - and after getting a team of engineers from the Empire and traditional Bretonnian architects, he built himself a trebuchet. Manned by outlanders, fashioned to look like a cathedral, and even called ‘The Lady’s Favor’, it causes more traditional lords to talk about blasphemy. Still, even those disgruntled nobles are forced to admit the contraption’s merits when they see it working on the battlefield - and seeing them jealous makes the whole endeavor even more worth it to Crinierre!

Blood Bowl Human Blitzers - WIP

Okay, those here took me a LOT of time...  

When I was converting the Pestigors for my Nurgle Blood Bowl Team, I bought myself a generic Chaos team. 4 Beastmen got convinced to work for Nurgle and another 4 were reserved for another project - which left me with 4 Blockers. After a bit of thinking, I decided to turn them into Blitzers for my Human/Bretonnian Team. This would both give me the whole allowance for Blitzers and make them much more distinct - the original ones relied on helmets to make them recognizable, which fails when I changed all of their heads... Thankfully the blockers are not mutated, not very spiky and up for a conversion - I envisioned them as some weird ubermensch Bretonnian nobles, not needing full armor when they have muscles!      

Then, the whole process began... I filed down the bracers on of them, then left the project for a week. Then I swapped the head on another one. Two weeks pause. New hands for that one - and a week of something else later - you can see where it goes. I don't even know why it turned out like this. In the end, more than 50% of the work was done in one week, after many months after starting. Oh well.      

The first two are here. The one on the left has some enhanced knuckles, with 4THE LADY engraved on them, to leave a Bretonnian mark on every fool they punch - that's Mighty Blow. The second one sports a big shield on his helmet - that's a Guard skill.

And the second pair. The one on the left sports some horns and a skull - because chivalrous doesn't mean nice - he has Frenzy. The other one has a hand on his helmet - and that's Sure Hands obviously. The spike on his bracer is also a Fleur-de-lys, I found a single, last one amongst my Bretonnian bits - so here it goes.

Hod the Chief Trumpeter

After Horik the Lord Commander and Knutr the cranky old slayer it's time for the third one of the heroes I painted for my 'Hill Dwarfs' project - Hod the optimistic trumpeter! Just like with the previous ones, it's a middlehammer dwarf on a bright green base, a nostalgic trip to the times when I was just starting with Warhammer.

The model is officially named 'King Kazador', but seeing how I want to make my 'hold' an unimportant, backwater one, I decided to downplay his royal characteristics and reduced him to being just a thane with a fitting role - the main trumpeter of Karak Valldar. In comparison with the previous ones, this one looks the most classic - with a simple pose and weapon held high, so to do him proper justice, I tried painting him as colorful as my painting style allowed for - he was pretty simple in the end, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Now that those three are done, it's time for some troops - and war machines too! Still, seeing as this is a slow project in a particularly slow time in my life, it will take some waiting...

While subterranean dwarfs can rely on their strong lungs and good acoustics of their tunnels for communication, the hill dwarfs of Karak Valldar must use some help in that regard - that’s where trumpeters come into action. Using impressive horns, they sound elaborate calls that help their leaders command the troops on expansive, grassy hills. The current Chief Trumpeter in the hold is Hod, a relatively young Thane serving under Horik. What sets him apart from all his comrades in Karak Valldar, he is earnestly enthusiastic about his work here, immune to the grumbling attitudes of older dwarfs. Lacking resources, goblin raids, irritating inspections from their superiors, Hod can find something positive in all of that and more. Hill dwarves can laugh at his naivete, but secretly they admire his view on life and find some kind of comfort in it during all the hardships.

Blood Bowl Horticulturalist of Nurgle - WIP

The third character that I kitbashed for my Nurgle Blood Bowl team as a member of the staff, we've had a doctor, the coach - so now there comes the wizard!

Just like Dark Elves and Chaos Chosen before, Nurgle also got their own specific wizard - he's called a Horticulturalist and he's themed heavily around plants and farming. I looked through the range of fantasy minis and I found good old Festus to be the best match for such a character. Still, there was a lot of converting to be done - and now I can say he definitely earns his own post here, it's not that much of a padding as before.

I cut off his staff to turn it into a shovel, he got himself a straw hat, the box on his back is filled with some extra veggies, there are 2 toothy plants behind him on the base, as well as maggots, a buried head and more veggies. Besides that, the poor sod he gives his drink to, he got converted too, so now he has proper pants and a baseball cap - I intend to paint him as a referee.

This one should be fun to paint.

Underworlds - The K'nights of Kross

So, after scrambling my motivation and some paints, I finally managed to paint something to completion since my life became busier! After being told (thanks potsiat!) about the competition on the Warhammer Community page, with the theme being 'Crusaders', I thought that was the sign. I am also posting them all at once - there's a limit to how much I am ready to drag my projects along on this blog!

There was a long break after my last Warhammer Underworlds warband, but just that one, I decided to reimagine the models into something different (the game allows for some heavy dose of interpretation). So, today I present you the K'nights of the Kross - a brave warband of greenskins that's all about crusading and reclaiming the Holeeland, wherever that may be.

The original models were heavily armored already, so making them look more 'knightly' was mostly a matter of changing their weapons, adding some tabards, and painting them in the Templar color scheme. I had a lot of fun painting all the metal, with all the plates and flat surfaces.

Also, here I am, painting an S1 warband, happy with my progress, while GW is probably getting ready to release S4 of Underworlds anytime soon...

The peoples of Vechernya have a lot of problems already in their own realm, but sometimes they have to deal with outside invaders. One of those are the crusading orcs of Chamon, always ready to attack drier, coastal regions of the land. Clad in shiny armor and bearing red crosses, they seem to emulate some knightly order from a faraway time - but nobody can say if it's their own invention, a bizarre transformation of some knights or are they just a heavily distorted part of the Withered King's dreams. Nevertheless, they're very tough in combat and can't be bargained with, thinking only about following their unknowable ideals - more than a match for anyone unfortunate to find them at their doorstep.

Fitting 4 minis in the picture above made them quite small, so here are the close-ups, with the Grand Master first. You can see the WIP HERE.

This guy was the kickstarter of the whole project and he was surely the most fun to paint - the shield, the flowing cape, he was much more special than the rest. His sword, though... I cursed myself for not sculpting any extra edges on it.

The second most favorite, Sir Bonekutta wielding a greatsword to cleave the unbelievers - despite being new in the warband, he's more zealous than the rest. You can see his WIP HERE.

I like the pose on this one, raised arms made his chest and the tabard much more prominent - and the muscles on the arms which were a real pleasure to paint.

The third one, a fan of exotic weapons which still bash skull nicely, Sir Basha. His WIP post can be found HERE.

I struggled a bit with his maces a bit - after some options, I went for mostly black metal with very strong silver highlights on the edges and points, which seems to work quite well.

The last one, Sir Hakka, hiding a disfigured face behind a full templar helmet. You can see his WIP post HERE.

I considered him the least interesting of the bunch until I got a suggestion to put a feather on his head - which improved him immensely (thanks Pepe!). Now he looks very knightly with his helmet, strengthening the whole theme even further.

Underworlds - Hakka - WIP

The scramble with the crusading boyz go on - and the final conversion is here - welcome brave knight Hakka.

The whole idea with this one was to give him a big, boxy helmet, already building over his existing mask - I didn't want a crusader warband without at least one of those. Besides that, I didn't have anything special planned for his weapons, so I just changed the knife into a sword and the axe into a spearhead of some sort.

I pushed the conversions forward a bit because there's a competition on the Warhammer Community page, with the theme being 'Crusaders', lasting for July 2020. It motivated me to actually start painting seriously, instead of just kitbashing and converting as I was trying to over the last months. They are being done right now and they will be done and ready next week - on the last Sunday of July.

Underworlds - Basha - WIP

The crusade of the orcs continues - quicker than I planned because now I have a reason to finish them all before July is over! After Ironskull and Bonekutta, I have another one - Basha.

Unlike his companions - and as his name suggests, he wields blunt weapons. I like to reinvent my Underworlds minis, but I prefer to at least reference their original equipment and/or skills, so I decided against giving him swords. Still, I wanted to change his weapons to make them more knightly, more 'historical'. Flanged maces seemed like a fun choice - they have a very specific look and I could imagine an orc smithing it somehow. I cut several pieces of plasticard to have a roughly similar shape and glued them around the handles of the original mini. I gave him a desert-y headgear to make him fit better in his scenery while avoiding pieces too similar to the ones of his pals.

Underworlds - Bonekutta - WIP

After the boss Ironskull, it is time for the rest of the crusading orcs - this time with Bonekutta.

From the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to give him a two-handed sword - but unfortunately, his pose and grip were made with a long-handled weapon in mind, so I had to be creative. Thankfully, real swords of this size were held often by the so-called ricasso, a non-sharp part of the blade - with some parrying hooks separating it from the sharp part. It call came together to make the sword much more realistic, even if it was a crude slab of orcish metal! I made it out of plasticard and damaged it severely - this greenskin doesn't care about his weapon too much.

To make his head different from the rest, I gave him a simple helmet. Here you can also see much better the cloth that I greenstuffed on his chest - which will get a nice red cross during the painting.

Blood Bowl Star Player - Bilerot Vomitflesh

With this guy, it's finally time to close the drawn-out project of Nurgle Star Players for Bloodbowl (WIP post HERE). After Tolly Glocklinger, Guffle Pusmaw and Bulla Shardhorn I have Bilerot Vomitflesh, a hardy citizen of the Empire turned into a mighty Nurgle Bloater.

He's rather simple on the pitch (just a strong, reliable guy, no gimmicks) and the painting was also simple - just following the same color scheme as earlier with the Putrid Punters. I really like how his pose turned out - he looks really sporty, not just a WFB warrior with weapons clipped off - so the final effect is still quite pleasing to me.

After their first won match in this new season, the Putrid Punters went to a bar to celebrate their unexpected victory. Unfortunately, the Nurgle table (current regulations require bars to separate it from the rest of the interior) was already taken by a single bloater. Not knowing the current scene very well, the Punters didn’t recognize the star Bilerot Vomitsflesh and got into an argument, demanding him to move away as if he was just another random chump. Bilerot, a bit insecure about being the least known Nurgle star, became extra angry - a fierce fight ensued. After the dust settled, amongst the rubbles of the bar, with no winner in sight, both parties were forced to pay for the damages and help with the repairs. The whole experience allowed the Punters to weirdly bond with Bilerot - they cleared up the misunderstandings and praised each other’s hardiness in the brawl. In the end, the star left his agent’s scrying number, telling them to give him a call if they want to play Blood Bowl one day together.

Underworlds - Gurzag Ironskull - WIP

My life is still a bit hectic, so with this project, I will take my sweet time here. I hope the readers can understand!

When the first season of Warhammer Underworlds, Shadespire, was getting out of print, I quickly scrambled to get the teams that I wanted to play, with the intention to reinvent them how I did with my Steelheart's Champions. It's a big part of the game's charm for me, to change the minis heavily while retaining their gameplay value. With the first of the two teams that I got, Ironskull's Boyz, I decided to go for a crusading theme. With their heavy armor, the orcs look knightly already, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

Today I am showing you the leader, Gurzag Ironskull himself, as a proof of concept. His pose was good enough to incorporate a shield, so he looks the most convincing - and probably even more when his cape will be painted later on. I also changed his axe for a sword - something which I will do on his comrades too.

The rest of the boyz will follow shortly.

Blood Bowl Druchii Sports Sorceress - WIP

It's time for the last mini from the staff trio I did some time ago. After the Orc and Dark Elf coaches, here comes the Druchii Sports Sorceress - a unique wizard available to dark elves, to join my Dreadspear Dragons. While normal mage casts big but unreliable fireballs, she is adept at casting very precise lightning bolts and weakening opposing players with the 'Death of a Thousand Cuts". She may be expensive to induce, but she gives a lot of flavor to the elvish force and an 83% chance to knock down any player on the pitch is quite worth it.

Obviously, I used a Dark Elf Sorceress from AoS / WFB to represent her - the model is quite perfect in this regard. Still, I decided to convert her at least a little bit to make her more sporty and fit with the team. To first thing is achieved through sneakers I sculpted on her feet and the second thing through a small piece of dragonskin on her behind. I also scattered some bits around her to make the base look less empty and bring the Blood Bowl theme a little more. Not much done here, but it's always something.