A classic Blood Bowl Elf team.

This project has been trundling along in the background for a while, mostly because the sculptor of these wonderful 80s Citadel Bloodbowl Elves, Jes Goodwin, decided to sculpt a whole load of tiny studs on their outfits. It’s hard enough to paint them all red, I wonder how frustrating it was to sculpt them all with green stuff. At some point he must have regretted doing it as the range grew. However I’m thankful now, because it adds to the character of the team, even if it was a chore at the time.

I’ve long admired these sculpts, from when I was a kid, as for me they could not be more Elven;  their sense of grace combined with prowess through the poses of the sculpts. There is a dynamic feel to the speed and agility of the catchers and yet the blitzers have enough intimidation in their coiled spring and clenched fist pose to do some damage. Then there’s their sense of superiority (we don’t need armour) and their slightly flamboyant and superfluous uniform; long boots, extravagant hairstyles, stockings with studs etc.

With this in mind I went for the most ridiculous and impractical colour scheme; white. Imagine all those grass, mud and blood stains. Who washes the kit? To keep a uniform look to the team, I decided that all the players should have the same blonde hair colour, as the Romanian football team did in 1998 and added touches of red to the cool blues and whites.

The majority of the team are of course Jes Goodwin Elves from the Blood Bowl range, but so I didn’t have to reuse the same models, there’s also a couple of his wardancers in here too with some additions of loin cloths and subtraction of weapons. 

As you can see, my phone struggled to capture the entire team, so here’s a few shots of groups of players.

Here’s one of those re-purposed wardancers, with weapon removed but sling retained!

The model on the right is a conversion I’ve had in mind for some time, I really wanted to capture the dynamic movement you’d expect in such a team sport as this, and I can imagine the Elves as acrobatic gymnasts working together to catch, intercept etc. Ps. One of my favourite models in the range is the kicker.

Another conversion here, this Elven coach on the left is for the Eternal Champions range, Elric Kingslayer. Just removed his weapon and made a trophy from a skull and some bits. Note, he even has studs on his sleeves.

Here’s the StarPlayer, Elril Sidewinder, a classic! I spent a little more time on him and decided that he should have a green hairstyle to set him apart from the team.

And finally a Treeman. I can’t even remember whether Elves/Wood Elves can hire a treeman but the model is so cool and I’ve wanted to own/paint one from whenever, that I don’t care. I went for an old wood feel in the paint job, for two reasons, one he looks old and wooden and two a pale, silver grey would tie him in to the uniform of the Elves. A few brown and green glazes were added and of course he retained the team colours on his helmet and shoulder pad.

Here you can see the small roots I added to his base.

And the two of them together, about to dodge and bludgeon respectively.

The approach to basing also helps unify a team and for these guys I decided upon a cracked earth base with tufts of static grass and a few white line markings on the pitch to provide the bloodbowl context and not just another battlefield base. A few birch seeds for leaves to finish.

Oh and I like the Elves style of play (and the contrast with my Orc team) so I can now play a game against my kids with two painted teams at some point over the lockdown. Yay!

Blood Bowl Elf team - tester

On the back of completing a full WFB unit of 21 Rugluds Orcs, I have decided to try and maintain some momentum with batch painting and paint up my old school Elf Blood Bowl team. There is also another reason, I have an Orc team ready to go and my son and I had a quick game of Blood Bowl using those and my primed elf team (forgot to take photos unfortunately). We had a blast, I scored two touchdowns to win 2-0 but only had 5 players left standing at the end and the result is that we want to play some more - but of course it's always better with painted minis (and a scratch-built pitch... stadium) but lets get the team finished first.

So here is my test Elf player:

Initially I wanted to go blue, white and yellow, much like the Bright Crusaders colour scheme below:




but realised quite quickly that with the addition of Elf hair colours it would be too much. Therefore the yellow went towards the Elf hair and the white was combined with a range of blue hues for the teams uniform. A bit of red as a spot colour seems to work and I will look to introduce some halves, quarters, patterns and slashes into the paint design. However I would love to hear your opinions before I paint the rest of the team:

The final element is the basing. I've used the cracked earth paint, with some static grass and leaves. Does it look ok or too barren? Should I gloss it to make it look muddier? Thanks in advance!

Speed Painted Elf no.2

I couldn't resist on two counts. One, this speed painting malarky really focuses me to paint and more importantly complete a miniature and secondly, I only have two of these Jes Goodwin wardancers (such great sculpts) and felt that I had to paint up the second one too before he got separated and potentially lost in the great, relatively static, painting queue.

So here's the finished miniatures:

Matching Hobgoblin Orange garments

And this is how I got there in under an hour:

Under a minute to apply a wash of Asurman Blue with some added washing up liquid to help keep a smooth drying

A couple more washes after the first one dries under the hot lamp.

Highlighted the skin by progressively adding some white to the Asurman Blue in the raised areas

Added some glazes of Druchii Violet to the eye sockets and the cheeks to give a bit of warmth and glow to his now quite pale face. 

Blocked in some areas of colour using Balor Brown for the basecoat of yellow, Titilating Pink on the stockings, Boltgun Metal on the metal and Warplock Bronze on the bronze.

Highlighted up the hair by adding progressively larger quantities of Sunburst Yellow to the mix. Eventually adding some white to the final layer. Highlighted the pink stockings too. 

Washing in some Chestnut Ink and Badab Black mix onto metal areas.

I had to stop here for the night, as I had to help put the kids to bed and after that, really didn't feel like carrying on (I was lured onto the couch to watch tv with the missus). But I did the following night. So where was I at 22.49...: 

Highlighting up the bronze with Vallejo Bronze and gold mixes. Hobgoblin Orange onto the gloves, highlighted with white added and applied two layers of green to his towel.

In the last 6 minutes I added eyes, gems and highlighted up the brown and black shoes.

And even painted the back side too. Happy with 51.57 on the trusty old 80's Casio!

 And here's the pair of them, pre-basing:

And both finished and looking quite hostile.

So obviously I made these fellas look like Drow with their blue skin; they'll eventually be part of my Lost and the Damned retinue table challenge, when I get around to painting the other 4 elves that will accompany them.

Thanks for reading. 

The 1 hour speed painting challenge

I remember the speed painting coverage in White Dwarf from Games Days in the late 80's and was always hopeful that one day I could enter. Well I didn't, but Orlygg at Realms of Chaos 80's has re-kindled that desire, so on a digital platform I had a go the other night...

I was certain that I wouldn't get near completing a model in an hour, being, I thought, quite a slow painter, so I chose a very simple miniature to speed paint up:

A model that's been in my painting queue for a while. It looks pretty simple, but can I complete it in an hour?

 10 minutes and 45 seconds, timed by my trusty Casio:

Skin. Several washes of Asurman blue (with a little bit of washing up liquid) to help get the depth of hue. Some Druchii Violet added  for the extreme recesses and to warm up the colour. Highlighted up with the addition of white to Asurman blue. 

 25 minutes and 54 seconds:

Most other areas blocked in and a combo of chestnut ink and badab black washed onto the metallic parts

My painting space with the paints I have used so far

This was happening in the evening, so not the best light to take photos - here's a close-up to try and show some of the subtleties of colour in the skin and hair

 35 minutes and 12 seconds:

Hair and boots highlighted up and the chainmail areas picked out with some appropriately named, chainmail paint

 42 minutes and 46 seconds:

Added eyes and painted the weathered bronze areas using a variety of Vallejo game colour and some green/blue corrosion washes. The sling got shaded and dirtied with some Earthshade.

50 minutes and 58 seconds. Finished - say what?

Hobgoblin Orange on the bandana, highlighted with orange/white and glazed with orange ink. Some black and purple inks were heavily diluted and added to create old blood on the sling followed by some spots of Tamiya Clear red for fresher blood.

 Seriously, apart from the base. He's done. Now my basing technique takes a while and I like to do this in batches so I'll base him later in the remaining 9 minutes.

And I even painted his back too.

So. I'm amazed I can paint that quickly when I'm being timed and not distracted by other elements of the hobby (including procrastination, bitz box rummaging and paint queue re-organising). It certainly helped that the mini is very straightforward, but I'm seriously impressed by myself!

Does this mean I can now work through my lead pile in double quick time?

Oldhammer Legacy Warband - Elven Archer

Over on the Oldhammer forum there's an excellent idea to create a warband with painted miniatures from it's members; any miniature or race goes and it will be united through the use of an olive colour scheme.

http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=2460

A randomly chosen contributor will then win the warband and completely unify the warband through basing techniques. Hopefully the winner will be able to bring it to next year's BOYL at the Foundry...

So here's my contribution, an old elf that was languishing in my bitzbox. I wanted to go for a dark elf look (this blog is the Lost and the Very Damned after all), so I used a pale purple skin tone. As you can see from the top picture the sculpt between the notched arrow and arm is quite rough, ideally there should be a gap, so I've had to make do there:

But overall I'm happy with the colour scheme and the level of painting. Cheers for looking!