The British summer has remained as volatile as ever, but we have had a few nice days here and there. This has meant I was a lot less willing to spend my spare time hunched over a desk painting, so I have made a lot less progress than at the start of the year.
It is nice to work at a more relaxed pace and I have not even picked up a detailed paint brush in nearly 2 months. Instead I have been focusing my attention on making and converting more star players. My previous blog had a lot of the easier stars, many of them were using existing models either the specific Bloodbowl version or a model with very little conversion.


I had already converted up the main chainsaw stars for various teams, but most of these were themed conversions. Having already cleaned up the 2nd edition Flint I wanted to add Helmut and Urgroth to my collection, buying them from e-bay and someone on TFF. Now I just need Hack Enslash to complete the set. These are cool models and don’t need any work done to them, all I did was clean them up ready to paint.



I am still giving serious consideration to painting up a skaven team for the 2016 NAF prize. My previous blog showed 3 of the 5 skaven stars and I already had the perfect model picked out for 1 of the remaining 2. Queek headtaker is ideal to stand in for Glart and I have seen plenty of cool conversions using him. I did want to make some changes to him though. The most common conversion is to switch 1 or both of his hands with crab like claws. I wanted to do something a little different and instead gave him wolverine style claws from the night runner boxed set.

I also didn’t like that he was riding a tidal wave of rats, it works fine for WHFB but is less visually appealing for BB to me. It was pretty easy to chop these rats off, leaving the torso of 1 to pin him to the base, this can become a rock very easily. I would like to have removed the chainmail bits from his arms as they looked a bit clumsy for Bloodbowl, but cutting them off would look worse and couldn’t find suitable replacement arms.



For the last 2 models I decided to do something a little different. For the other stars I had built over the summer I was trying to make models that resembled the fluff as closely as possible. However there were some GW models that I really liked and wanted to paint but didn’t quite fit any of the existing stars.


The first of these was Count Luthor Von Drackenborg, the old 3rd edition model is not great and looks more like some fan wearing a cheap Halloween costume. There are some great vampire models and my personal favourite is Isabelle Von Carstein, a truly gorgeous sculpt. I loved the running forward pose she was in and thought that would translate well to the pitch. Although the dress she wore was not ideal for sporting activity, I did have an idea to do a Lahmian themed vampire team using a number of vampire models I had collected and wanted her to be the centre point. She would be Luthor’s sister Lucia Von Drackenborg. Should any Bloodbowl official think her attire unsuitable for the pitch I am sure she could use her Lahmian influence to persuade him otherwise, or failing that rip out their spine.

The conversion itself was very straightforward, I removed both hands and replaced them with plastic hands from other vampire models. I cast up a football from the 5th edition human team thrower and trimmed down her armour around the waist to create a hollow for the ball to sit it. I was then able to glue her left arm into an appropriate running with the football pose.




The Count wasn’t the only star I decided to swap gender on. Ithaca Benoin was very lacking in detail beyond a skeletal Sark Elf runner. I knew he was supposed to be male, but Queen Khalida had such a cool looking facemask and her more slender frame better suited an elf than the other tomb kings. I went a little bit overboard with this model and ended up buying 3 individual characters and some extra skeleton bits to make this 1 star.

I actively dislike cloaks on Bloodbowl players, anyone who has seen the Incredibles will be aware of the drawbacks and this would apply as much to Bloodbowl players as superheroes. This sadly meant that only the head and top part of Khalida could be used on this model. My initial plan was to build her a body from plastic skeleton parts, but none of my test models looked right. In the end I bought a Liche Priest to use as the body of the model. The torso and legs worked great, but the arms were too bulky. I had wanted to use dark elf forearm guards but these were all too thin. Another search through e-bay turned up the plastic tomb king from the *name* boxed set and his arms were ideal. I took the shoulders from skeletons along with the left hand from an archer to hold a football, cast from the same model as Lucia.

Ithica was already looking like a cool undead player, but not enough like a dark elf. I started by trimming her mask’s right ear to make it more elven and then added a dark elf helm spike to her forehead from the plastic corsairs and 2 leg guards from a 2nd edition dark elf thrower. I also added some spikes to her forearm guards. She still needs some greenstuff work and I am debating if I should make the skeleton she is standing on look like a dead opposing player, maybe by a shoulder pad and possibly hair if I decide to make it an elf.



Finally I have made a bit of progress on my “secret” diorama project and it is beginning to take shape. The large figure has had arms added and a head and one of the side figures is nearly done too.