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!

Family gaming: The Rescue of Edwin

With some time on my hands (and trying to keep the kids occupied), I organised a more complicated version of our family gaming, in that the kids chose their own adventuring parties, with different characteristics for different races and a more in-depth combat sequence.
Basically their hero (a model representing them) had superior stats that were representative of their character. Ie youngest son was a Fighter, so had better combat stats, but was small so had the ability to dodge 1 attack. Eldest wanted to be a sorceress so had access to more spells but had weaker stats. The equipment and magic was based upon Heroquest cards, all dice rolls on 2d6, heroes could take any two actions (from movement, to conversing, to searching, to spell casting) and all others had one action. Their retinue were made up of 1 human, 1 dwarf, 1 barbarian, 1 attack animal and 1 pack animal (purely because these were the only models painted!) Each of which had slightly different characteristics. Some pictures may help explain. The enlisting of an adventuring party:

The adventuring sheets (I miss a photocopier!) 

Here are the chosen adventuring parties with heros:

Eldest daughters, mostly female group. 

Middle daughters group, she was desperate to get the white horse and the witch! 

Youngest sons party, keen on swords, muscle and treasure hunting! 

So the scenario of the game:

The three children had been isolating at home, the parents had gone shopping for food, so would be a long time queuing. The kids played hide and seek and the youngest hid in an old wardrobe in his parents room, squishing in amongst the coats, onesies and musty cardigans that hadn't been worn in an age. He could hear his sisters getting closer and as the wardrobe door opened he leaned fully against the back of the wardrobe hoping to not be found. Expecting resistance, he was surprised to fall out through the back of the wardrobe... The girls knew he was in there, they had heard him wriggling around. They opened the door and rummaged inside, but he could not be found, so they emptied out the entire clothing range but there was nothing. The eldest had read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe recently, so checked the back, wooden panels and her hand disappeared through! She called her sister and they both tentatively squished through, calling out for their brother.... 

All three were greeted by a bald man in what looked like bathrobes. In a quiet voice he told them that he was Bayaz, the Mage and he had called them forth in a time of need. His son, Edwin, had been captured in the town of Rensburg, a town where night had permanently descended and a suffocating fog remained. The residents had locked themselves away, scared of the rumours and noises of the night. The brave adventurers were to enlist a team and go find the boy. 

So with the scenario set and the parties chosen, we began with all parties setting up along a table edge:

And then we were off, rolling a D6 to see who went first... 

Exploring the caravan, the sorceress found some gold, a potion and an orb. She looked into the orb and saw the crying face of a boy. When she returned her gaze she was surrounded by three ghosts. 

The young warrior led his party across the rickety Bridge. The clumsy barbarian made a racket and a swarm of bats flew out from beneath, swarming our hero. A few swings of his flail scared them away! 

The girls tried talking to the ghosts, with little response, until the sorceress held up the orb to them and the face of the boy appeared. The ghosts wailed and drifted towards one of the houses on the town square 

The boy searched the towns statue, reading the inscription on the plinth. As he did so the words lit up and a hole appeared. He put his hand in, took a wound but found a powerful potion of strength. Unfortunately the statue came alive and attacked!

The parties converged on the house marked by the ghosts, knocking on the door (so polite!) but awakening the undead - zombies! 

Having disposed of the bats and the living/unliving statue, the youngest approached a small cottage. Not knocking, but bursting straight in he saw a wardrobe and a pile of swords. The wardrobe offered up some chainmail and gold pieces whilst the swords became animated in the hands of some skeeltons - fight! 

Lack of photos here. But the boy Edwin was found in the house and coaxed out after fighting some more undead. Inexplicably my daughter, slightly peeved that she hadn't found Edwin first, cast a lightning storm on the ghosts. They attacked back and recruited some skeleton warriors. The fighting saw my daughter lose both her beloved wolf and her beautiful pony!

A quick look into the orb of clairvoyance showed a portal opening by the towns fountain, quick run and get out of here! Game over and tidy away! 

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro

I recently finished reading a wonderful fantasy/historical novel named The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a story of an old couple's journey in Saxon England and the characters they meet along the way and my it is so beautifully told by the author. I can't recommend it enough, so read it if you haven't already and I won't go into the plot here. But if course it so inspired the model making part of me and with the characters so fresh in my minds eye, I made a few purchases and found a few old models to represent the characters of Axl and Beatrice (the two elderly main characters), Edwin the boy and Wistan the warrior and Sir Gawain and his steed:

The first two models I bought were for Axl and Beatrice, they are Reaper models (part of a villagers set) and when they arrived they were quite a bit bigger than I expected. I removed the broom from her and sculpted a hood and scarf over her head:

Then for Wistan I used an old Citadel warrior, however he looked tiny next to the Reaper models, so I cut his legs and extended them to give him a more heroic size. The boy Edwin is a resin model that I bought direct from ebay:

Finally, the ageing Sir Gawain is a Citadel paladin I got from an eBay auction, again having to cut his legs and elongate them to give him greater height and his steed is an old, brown plastic steed that I sculpted some extra details on, including a new right, front leg which had snapped off at some point in its long past on my bitz box, as well as some reigns and saddle equipment to show that they have been on a long mission:

Here's the sculpting in progress:

And a few glamour shots on my modular tiles:

Now I'm tempted to tell the story with my models (I have some painted ogres) and some unpainted monks somewhere, as well as some female plastic ghosts, but it would involve me building and painting my Great Spined Dragon and I'm not sure I'm ready for that just yet... We'll see, but in the meantime, read the book!