The circus goblin team is complete, Wilf asked me to do him a score, turn and re-roll markers. So once the normal goblins, trolls, staff, stars and markers were factored in it was a hefty amount of models.
I was a little uncertain what to do for the markers as the standard team had covered all the main circus acts I could think of. This is where keeping a huge bitz box pays off, I had some left over goblins from the doom diver I’d bought for an old
conversion.
The legs from the standing diver had already been used for the Squig hopper, so I swapped in those from a gnoblar and filled out the gap left. The see-saw base was from the killer kans I’d bought to make the mino from Topper’s chaos dwarfs, the platform was an empire drum and the see-saw itself was plasticard. These 2 goblins fit together and are meant to be used as score and turn marker.
The other spare goblin I had was wielding a big hammer so I thought he’d be ideal as the leader re-roll marker with test your strength machines for the normal re-rolls. I couldn’t find suitable parts to make 4 bells so decided to cast them myself from greenstuff using instamould. I first cast the end of a round circular teaspoon handle and then the end flat, before chopping it off to make the bell shape. This was then used to cast up the 3 other bells, each had a hole drilled in the middle and a pin added. The backs of the machines were made from plasticard and the base from a Leman Russ tank sponson, I only had one sponson so had to fill the middle 2 with greenstuff and use the end of Ogre clubs to make the “bashing pad”.
That’s the 3rd team completed this year (well 2 and a bit as the Orcs were mostly done in 2013), but 3 are still to go if I am to remain on schedule.
I had been having considerable difficulty deciding on what colour scheme to do for the nurgle team. Early attempts had used black armour and purple clothes with rusty silver metal bits. However this looked far too dull, especially on the warriors due to little of their green skin showing.
I decided that a contrasting colour was needed, so made the armour mostly purple with some black plates for variety and give them white clothes. This created a lot more interesting scheme that I really liked, the white helps break up the messy green and purple. It was a bit clean for nurgle so I had to dirty it up a little. You can see the before pic of the pestigors below.
I often find the hardest part of doing a team is deciding on the colour scheme and theme. This was very true for the Nurgle team above and they’ve been in the planning stage for nearly a year now. The good thing is that they will look very different from the earlier nurgle team I did, despite both having similar themes.
The pestigors were given dark green hair/fur and dark brown horns fading to bone. I drybrushed various shades of brown mud onto their clothes, emphasising the lower parts. I also added chips to their armour and brushed some mud on those too. It is a difficult balancing act making a model look messy and battle damaged without it appearing badly painted. One comes with the extra arms mutation.
The warriors have more armour than any other models so I was a bit more careful to add the chips and damage to their plates. They got a heavier drybrush of mud on these too since they are the most repulsive players bar with the beast. One has a claw which got white armour plates.
That team is half done now, I’m in the process of assembling and converting the rotters and beast.
I’ve made progress with the Imperial flings as well, below is the test model for the basic colour scheme, they will be mid green with white and yellow details with silver armour. The flings, trees and staff have all been cleaned up, assembled and any gaps filled so are ready to paint. They should be pretty straight forward as the models are great sculpts with lots of detail and character.
The reason I’m wanting to get 3 more teams done this year is so I have plenty of time to complete the 2015 NAF GT prize, due in May. I’ve posted a thread detailing my thinking of what teams I am considering. There’s even a poll listing my favoured choices, so if you feel like trying to influence the team I’ll do
check it out, cast your vote and/or post a comment (requires being a member of the TFF forum).
With the goblins done and Halflings planned for the autumn I am closing in on my goal of painting up all 24 teams. Just Vampires, Ogres and Slaan are still outstanding. I’m also planning on doing all 56 stars (counting Grotty and Brick as 2), 24 completed so far with multiples of some, but still 32 to go. I have managed to get my hands on either the official models or suitable conversions for all these aside from Crazy Igor, Ithaca, Sinnedbad and Zzharg. The newest acquisition was a plague priest for use as Fezglitch, he won’t need much work. But he is supposed to have foul appearance so I’m considering giving him an even more repulsive head.