Having got myself the new boxed set, dice and necro team for an early Christmas present I thought it about time I painted up another team. Since finishing off the Old World/Humans I have focused on completing all the stars from BB2016. These stars are scattered cross multiple rule books and Spikes, but I was able to find a source which listed all these stars, including one I had missed. Rasta Tailspike was a classic 2nd edition star, who had been brought back. So whilst working on building the new team I also worked on him.
There were 2 sources of inspiration for him, the old model and the illustration from the star players book. I preferred the illustration as the pose was cooler and the model looked odd with the extended torso. The legs and lower left arm came from the Spiteclaw swarm, as it was a mirror of the illustration’s pose. His torso was from a ghoul, with extra fur added to it, though a lot less than the old model as that tended to look too ape-like. His head was from a stormvermin with some details carved off and the face guard sculpted on. Whilst the other 3 arms came from standard BB skaven with the gloved hand of a rotter used on his lover right arm.
I then sculpted extra detail like rivets to gloves and the chainmail on his upper right arm as well as the border for his shoulder pad and a strap holding the pad on.
Finally, the Spiteclaw model came with a base textured like a dungeon floor, but this was only 20mm. So I cut and sanded the bottom of that off and glued it to a standard BB base and then extended the flagstones with greenstuff to fit.
Making this star was been a real test of my limited sculpting skills, often I’m able to cast or kitbash the bits I need, for this guy a lot of extra detail had to be done from scratch. I could have probably got away with less, but wanted to ensure he was clearly different from Hakflem, who also has 4 arms.
The Black Orcs in the new boxed set are really nice models and all players come with alternative heads, which helps them all be unique. I planned on treating them in the same way as the other new plastics I have painted up. Have one of each model as normal and the rest of the team be conversions.
3 black orcs, 3 goblins and Varag were all made from the standard models with no changes.
There didn’t need a lot of changes to these guys due to the alternative heads, but I always enjoy hacking up models and adding different parts. To that end I chopped off all the arms for these players and swapped them round, also taking arms from a Orc Brute for one. Another model got the head from a Brute and I see him as the team captain.
The first batch of converted goblins uses the standard bodies with parts mixed in from 40K grots, squig hoppers and the normal BB goblins.
I wanted there to be a full team of 16, which meant adding 3 more goblins. For these I took the bodies of 40K Grots and added spare heads and hands from the gobbos along with normal BB goblins.
The last player to add will be the Troll, am not a huge fan of the pose of the standard model and may use the Forgeworld armoured troll since he fits the team better.