My grand plans of spending the summer months painting up star players have not come to fruition. A large part of this is due to being busier than expected but the other key factor is that I have felt like converting more than painting lately.

To that end I have done some work on the few outstanding stars I still need to make models for. The first of these is Hubris, ages ago I was struggling to think of a suitable model until someone suggested I use the Dark Eldar special character Drahzar. He is actually a pretty nice model and is suitably tall and imposing to represent the rather beefy stats (for an elf) of Hubris.
Obviously the swords he was holding were not appropriate for a non-assassin model, but luckily I had a Griff alternative that I had picked up and was less keen on than the official GW 5th edition version. This model happened to have arms that perfectly suited the Drahzar body and helped him look more like a Blood Bowl player. The only other change made was to trim off some of the more sci-fi looking parts of the model.



The next model I was working on was actually a pair, Brick and Grotty. I already had a suitable model in the shape of the GW 5th edition ogre throwing a goblin. However this was a little bland and didn’t really suit a star player.
I have been working on creating an unique ogre team as they are 1 of the 3 outstanding races I have yet to complete. These will be a mixture of the dragon ogres and plastic 40K ogryns with some 5th edition BB Ogres and other models thrown in. The plastic Ogryns come with parts of make the special character Nork Deaddog and his head was ideal for Brick as it has a bionic eye that is not too high tech. It can just as easily be a steampunk monocle/targeter to help him attain a super accurate goblin/snotling throw. I had a plastic hand with an open palm for his left arm that helped add to his throwing pose.
One thing I really didn’t like was the squatting legs the 5th edition ogres come with. It is fine for normal ogres getting ready to burst into action, but looks silly for him. To fix that I hacked apart his legs and combined them with the hips and upper legs from a plastic Ogryn. At present these are held together with wire, so still need to be built up with greenstuff. I also added some of the decorations left over from the Morg conversion around his legs and a shoulder pad from a Dragon Ogre. I may add a few more details as star players should always be a bit flashier than the usual riff-raff.


Grotty was inspired by Knut’s cool illustration, Brick was already holding a goblin so I wanted Grotty to be alone for ease of use on the pitch. I was really tempted to try and add those improvised wings but there was no good place to fit them to his back without it looking awkward. I did find a fantastic Gretchin head to give him for a very simple conversion. Ideally I’d like to add some more decoration to him to help him stand out, but only if I can find bits that look good.


As well as star players I have been commissioned to paint up the NAF GT 1st prize for the fifth year in a row. Previously I had done Khemri, Norse/Dwarfs, High Elves and Lizardmen. I had also been requested to avoid the tier 2/3 teams so that limited my options somewhat.
There are 2 frontrunners at the moment are skaven and slann. I have been collecting a lot of skaven bits over the years, in part for my star player project since there are 5 skaven stars I have yet to complete. However the team is looking pretty generic so far and that is pushing me towards the more ambitious Slann idea.

Slann are 1 of the 3 teams I still have to paint up and as there haven’t been any official GW models of classic slann (not the fat mages) for decades it gives me a lot of scope to be creative.
I have already got the basic parts ready for the 3 positionals, using plaguebearers for linemen, bloodletters for blitzers and kroot for catchers. One thing many BB teams suffer from is a difficulty in telling players apart and I wanted to avoid that, the plan being to use different models, poses and colouring to help differentiate between the 3 positions. The pics below are of the rough test models, I intend to add more detail and vary poses for the catchers and blitzers.





I had already converted the Slann Lottabottol from a Khorne Herald, to match with the blitzers being made from Bloodletters. As the catchers are to be made from Kroot I was going to use the Kroot shaper for Quetzal Leap, but his pose is rather static and doesn’t have a lot of conversion potential. So I hit upon the idea of using another herald as the basis for Quetzal, the herald riding the cannon of khorne was ideal and easier to convert since he was made of plastic.
After some experimentation I hit upon a pose similar to some of the skinks I had used for the NAF GT team this year, crouched and ready to dash forward. The only trouble was I couldn’t decide which model suited Lotta better and which was better for Quetzal. They have a rather eclectic choice of skills, both gain MA and catch, with Lotta adding pasblock and shadowing, whilst Quetzal gains fend, kick off return and nerves of steel. At the moment I am favouring the jumping herald for Quetzal since he does have leap in his name.