A hobby blog about my Blood Bowl teams and blue Night Goblin army.
A documentation of my work and progress.
Feel free to leave me feedback or any thoughts.
I have a lot of team projects on the go with grandiose plans and ideas for how I want them. Some that I have finished converting but worry my painting isn't up to scratch to fit my expectation for the emotional investment in the team, and some where my imagination has dreamed up more than my sculpting experience knows how to deliver. This team drop from nowhere I feel like, please comment below if you know of an all black orc team (with goblin and troll) that has been mentioned in the Blood Bowl lore or in the Fumble secret league or something. So my thinking was the team seems to be more or less complete in the box so don't need to get any additional models. I haven't had a chance to dream up any big plans. Let's just assemble them, paint them in a quick and easy colour scheme and have another team ready for the table.
You might have noticed in the picture I couldn't actually stick to my plan and leave things alone. I assembled the first sprue then realised I couldn't just do the same model but with a different head, I had to alter some poses as well.
So the bonesaw came out... and after a bit of chopping I was satisfied with the difference between them.
I haven't gotten around to the troll yet, but I hope I can keep the ball rolling.
I will do a bit of cutting to get him to stop salsa dancing.
Varag Ghoul-Chewer. He's not part of the team but got included since he was on a green sprue.
I won't be attaching the ghoul spike I don't believe.
First pair of goblins. Left is un-modified. The right has the base of the normal shoulder pad cut off and got a new one curtesy of a Saurus Warrior from the Lizardmen fantasy range or Seraphon as they are called now.
I also cut off the squigish bug thing that he was holding. I didn't see the need for it and was a bit of an eyesore I thought.
Here I introduced a new head from the Squig Hopper pack, since both these heads are noticeably similar. New head also conveys more of the thick skull trait. Cut off the hand of the old head and rotated it slightly. Shaved off the skull motif from the armour just to have a different look.
Cut off the arm and took the arm from the upcoming pair. And assembled it all in a striking power ballad pose. I probably should sculpt on some larger ears to fit in as who ever sculpted these guys did go all in with the size on goblin ears.
I seem to have shifted over from untouched on the left to on the right now.
My least favourite pose. It's all dynamic and stuff but looks a bit odd and only has one contact point for glueing. I lowered the toes down to give two contact points so he'll be less likely to break off when being dropped and knocked over. I'm not overly fussed about either of the heads but kept the full helmet one but got rid of the weird beaky one. But still went with a beaky but more of a vulture looking one from the squig set.
So to try to convince anyone that this isn't the same model with a different head I needed to go a bit extreme. I cut both arms off. Put him down on the foot that was in the air originally and then went for the footballer/soccer player just scored and pretending he's a plane routine. Sort of goes with the avian head theme...
The smallest of the modifications- I cut the left arm just below the shoulder pad and rotated it and altered the angle slightly on the right one as well.
Easier to see from behind the difference in angle on the right/now the left arm.
Here we've got a full arm swap with the next pair since the glove/mitten is so recognisable I was going to take it out entirely first but since the muscle bulk isn't quite to scale with any other orc bits I had at hand I decided to go with just a swap and I think the poses are different enough to not be to eye catching.
I also rotated the right hand to be more of scooping motion. This is probably the modification that bothers me the most since the muscles in his lower arm do not align with that hand position but I'm trying to look the other way since I doubt it will be seen since it's shadowed by the massive bulk of his torso.
And we're back to modified on the right. Sawed off the left arm and rotated it in towards the body.
Some filling needing to be done for the hole in the shoulder or I could extend the shoulder pad to cover it but that in turn wouldn't be great for mobility, so I'll see what looks best.
As seen from above it's easily overlooked that these are the same model.
Put this post together after a request from a reddit user to clarify what reposing I've done. Hope this helps and please do let me know in comments below if I should add some more pictures with red cutting lines where the cuts have been made.
First off the Bomma, here you see a piece cut off from a spear that I have drilled out to put a piece of StripStyrene for a fuse in to make a dynamite stick sticking up of the barrel. I also used a ring of this as a lip for the fuse for the thrown bomb see below.
Here is the bomb that's going to be thrown. I scored in some texture in the fuse I'm not sure it will show up. Also added a bit of green stuff showing the fuse is lit.
Added a bit to the ears, to make him look more like the Mad Hatter.
Troll got fitted with some chainmail, an armoured fist and I started the armature for his fur tufts.
And a butt cloth almost doing it's job.
Started an unarmoured right fist for the troll.
I went for semi open. I still need to attach the last finger.
Akhorne! I got a bit distracted while listening to podcasts while working.
Speaking of distractions....
Snotlings!
I got stuck in.
And started playing with the idea of what I could do for the second pump wagon and for the two in my other snotling team...
Got some wheels out
Started looking at older pump wagon bits
I get a bit nostalgic about this beauty it's a bit too big for a blood bowl base (32mm) but I think I can recreate a smaller version for my other team,
This is my first pump wagon conversion I started back in the day. I felt the 'over pumped' rule fitted very well with the snottlings whipping the rhinox too much.
And didn't take long before this bad boy was born as you see neither ever got finished. I planed on turning them into food trucks for the blood bowl stadium but haven't gotten any further with that either.
Back to the second pump wagon I decided to turn the half a barrel for the body, upside down. That gives a whole different outlook on things.
I also decided to have the spiked barrel running behind the wagon, then to add spikes and the face shield on the front. And probably a birds nest/ towery pole in the middle instead of a roof/second floor.
Not sure if I should have a pair of wheels or a single or what to go with here. I was playing with the grind stone from the giant kit just to give that randomness feel.
In today's age of Sigmar universe, rather than Lizardmen, this is now sold under the category of Seraphon, with the following names; Saurus Scar-Veteran on Carnosaur, Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur, or Skink Oracle on Troglodon.
Quite a noticeable upgrade in size from the old carnosaur. I haven't managed to get a picture of the old metal carnosaur but I'll try to upload a comparison picture in the future
There are parts for both special character Kroq-Gar Last Defender of Xhotl, or a 'normal' Saurus Lord/Hero and a skink hero so plenty of parts for players and star players.
I find the Troglodon quite intriguing but I never manage to take it to the table or even consider assembling it. Well, I did consider it but there was no real time for pursuing it.
The skink has a split tail, the mark of Sotek.
I made a size comparison for the Sauruses next to the new blood bowl team and some others in this previous post
I've got a proper post coming up after finishing the Goblin team, so stay tuned.
Just under 200 different sources for names, you can see all of them in the list below.
32 options
and another 18 additional Age of Sigmar specific options.
Lots of new sub menu choices such as Beastmen Minotaur, Kislev Bear, Norse Yhetee, Nurgle Rotter, Orc savage orc, Orc only shamans and Vampiric Thralls to mention a few.
My Goblin name generator is still my crown jewel. With 429 source names which gives rise to (without titles) 139 931 different out comes.
I made a key to help Age of Sigmar players find appropriate name generator.
Seraphon - Lizardmen Cities of Sigmar Humans - Empire Aelf - Elf Duardin - Dwarf Flesh-eater Courts - Bretonnia Grot - Goblin Gloomspite Gitz - Night goblin Ogor - Ogres Orruk - Orc Ironjawz & Ardboys - Black Orcs Bonesplitterz - Savage Orcs Slaves to Darkenss - Chaos Warrior Troggoth - Troll
I haven’t liked going in to AoS names too much but since I came across all these lists in Warcry I thought I might as well bung them in. So that has brought me to two questions:
Should I separate things out so the drop down menu is a bit easier to navigate? This would also alleviate the key naming problem.
Keep things as they are.
Split it up! Move Age of Sigmar over to it's own page.
Should I do 40k names from kill teams while I’m at it? Necromunda?
No keep it clean and focused
More names more betterer!
Here is a poll! Oooo fancy...
Sources:
A Dying Goddess, Games Workshop Ltd., 2018
Architects of War, Games Workshop Ltd., 2008
Battle for Skull Pass, Nathan Long, 2009
Beastmen, Games Workshop Ltd., 2009
Beasts of Chaos, Games Workshop Ltd., 2018
Black Fire Pass, Fantasy Flight Games, 2010
Blood Bowl 1st Edition, Games Workshop Ltd., 1986
Blood Bowl 2nd Edition, Games Workshop Ltd., 1988
Blood Bowl Chaos Edition, Cyanide Studios, 2012
Blood Bowl Handbook, Games Workshop Ltd., 2002
Blood Bowl II Legendary Edition, Cyanide Studios, 2017
I wanted to use the creepy pointy fingers from the archer in the old night goblin set designed by Aly Morrison and Brian Nelson in late 1990s. As you can see the linemen have been equipped with number tags in the style of the Orphans from Alice: Madness Returns
I secured the hand with a pin and some cloth wrappings.
I've started to build up the fingers on the Bommas throwing hand.
Non of the positionals have received any number tags- thought I'll add the number on their equipment to make them a bit more separate from the linemen.
I got some dwarven dynamite sticks that I want to add to the bomma but not sure if I should add them to a strap/pouch on his hip or to the barrel. I'll see how things look once I've got the barrel in place.
I've started adding straps to the bomb barrel for the Bomma
Greenstuff barrel bottom glued in place
Starting to clean up the joints on Yokohama (kyodo) minazo the snow troll.
I still need to figure out how much fur I'm adding.
And started the arms of his buddy.
I started trimming the rim of the Mad Hatters hat
And gave him a bit of a nose job. I might do something about the ears as well I'll see how I feel about it later on.
Some more line men. The guy to the left has had some surgery done to his thumb that still needs a bit of cleaning up. 40k grots seem to have fingers pointing in all manner of directions, fantasy is way more reliable to have a closed fist.
The middle guy still needs a bit of the back of his skull filling in.
And some more linemen. To the left we've got an archer that had his fist a bit repositioned to be more in line with a punching motion.
I've got another lineman that still needs a number tag and some work doing to him, but that's for next post.
