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NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 11:06 am
by spubbbba
The NAF have asked me to paint up a team for the GT again. In previous years the sole restriction was to avoid the non-tier 1 teams (Flings, Gobbos, Vamps and Ogres).

However for 2018 this restriction has been dropped, I’ve added a poll to see how people would feel about including those teams in my list of options. Ideally I want to maximise the chances that the winner will get use out of them. Below I have listed the main ideas I am mulling over along with some pics of test models, there is a decent selection and plenty of time to add new ideas too.

One thing that will be an influence for me is if I can paint up representative stars to go with the team. I’m also wanting to complete all 56 stars (57 including Grotty) from the crp.

Amazon
Both Blood Bowl and GW’s other ranges in general have a distinct lack of female models. This always makes it more of a challenge to find suitable components to make a team.
I have already made an amazon team before, using Mordheim amazons combined with Dark eldar bits. The main attraction for them would be to use the new plastic sisters of silence. Those are lovely models but a bit too well armoured for AV7 and I’d have to find a way to get rid of cloaks that have no place in Blood Bowl. I could even use them as an interchangeable human team if I added 2 more catchers and Bertha, they both share Zara and Helmut making them options too.
There are 2 stars that play for amazons I still need to complete, Bertha and Helmut. Bertha is rarely taken and few existing models exist for her leaving me lots of scope for conversions. In comparison Helmut is a popular star due to being cheap and a choice for 6 quite different teams. He has an existing 2nd edition model and quite a few good alternatives. You pretty much just need to stick a chainsaw on any model and it is clear who he is and I could do a female Helmut to fit in with the team.
Amazons are one of the strongest teams in tournaments and decent in low-mid TV leagues as well.
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Norse
Despite having already completed 1 Norse team (and a half if I include the Norse Dwarfs) I do have a desire to work on them again. I’d even gone so far as acquiring most of bits and they were one of the options I was considering for the NAF GT 2017 team. I only abandoned them as I didn’t think there would be time to do them justice and complete the 3 stars.
The team would be based on the plastic Bloodreavers as they have a suitably brutal appearance along with lack of armour common to norse. I’d remove any obvious khornate symbols and add in some space wolf heads and other blood bowl armour pieces. I’m also thinking of mixing them in with the Tzeentchi cultists too since have little armour either.
The main difficulty would be with distinguishing the positional players from the rest of the team. Ulfwereners are easy and I’ve got the new Wulfen models to use. I am thinking of using the character model and barbarian from warhammer quest as the berserkers and the *name* for a thrower. That just leaves the catchers and a potential 2nd thrower, though I don’t know if many people take 1 much less 2. The snow troll would be made from a yheti, but with some conversions thrown in.
Norse are strong at low TV and still competitive right up until the highest TV, making them a good choice for tournaments and leagues.
Like humans they also have 3 stars I could use for them, Icepelt who only plays for Norse, Boomer who plays for just them and Dwarfs and Helmut. I have even got a colour scheme selected as I already painted up Wilhelm in it so could include him.

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Ogres
I have been considering doing an ogre team for some time as they are one of the teams I have yet to complete. The fact that they are regarded as the worst team in the game by many may have something to do with that. I have some of the 2nd edition ogres, but with scale creep they look more like weedy ST4 players now and I’ve even seen their bodies be used for black orcs. I also have a couple of the 5th edition range, these were cool looking models, but I was never a fan of the pose their legs were in.
Instead I decided to combine the torsos from the dragon ogres with the legs from the 40k ogryns. These legs were a bit short for the bodies and I ended up extending them with wire and greenstuff.
Making the snotlings would be harder, there are half a dozen very cool Blood Bowl versions of which I have a few, but getting the rest would be expensive. Instead I might take the fantasy snotlings I have and convert them using arm swaps and adding a few pieces of Blood Bowl equipment to them.
Another big attraction of this team is that I have just finished converting Big Bertha along Brick & Grotty, they ideally fit that team as well.
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Pro elf
I did paint up an elf team a while back, but that was using the 2nd edition range with only a couple of minor conversions. I have long wanted to do a team in that same kind of style but updated with plastic models. I like the image of the face masks and even the big hair that elves sported back in the 2nd edition days. The models still hold up for the most part but are a bit static and I like to add my own style to teams.
The 40k range has some excellent and really dynamic models in the shape of harlequins and dark eldar. There are also some good options for parts from the fantasy range. The biggest difficulty I have found is that the 40K models all seem to have some kind of backpack, removing this without the model looking rubbish is difficult and time consuming.
Elfs are seen as being weaker than either wood or dark elves but I have seen them do well in tournaments and they could just as easily be used as high elves too.
Stars are also an issue as the only one on my list is Jordell and he is a wood elf.
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Wood elf
Woof elves are another team I have yet to do a “proper” version of, only the daemonette dryad conversion I did for myself a few years back. The 3rd edition team suffered from following the super bland wood elf army at that time. Later on the range and background was completely redesigned, instead of hippy tree-huggers they were now capricious, otherworldly fey.
I’d like to do a team more in keeping with this, something along the lines of celtic warriors with bare chests and tattoos. The difficult part is to find the parts needed that suit the more slender frame of elves.
The wild riders came with useful torsos for male or female players and the witch elves could work as well. To bring them over to Blood Bowl players I’d incorporate some 40k parts. I did make a dark elf runner in this kind of style, but would need to add more variety in appearance and pose to differentiate the positionals.
Wood elves are one of the strongest teams in both leagues and tournaments, they are disliked but not as hated as something like dwarfs. You may lose 5-0 when facing them but can usually inflict some pain back.
Their only star I still need to do is Jordell, but he is very representative of the team.

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Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 11:19 am
by Glowworm
As someone who only gets close to these team when I register and they are on display.... Just wondered if Chaos Dwarves could be considered, some great conversion opertunities and with your skills they would look awesome!

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sat May 06, 2017 8:03 pm
by spubbbba
glowworm wrote:As someone who only gets close to these team when I register and they are on display.... Just wondered if Chaos Dwarves could be considered, some great conversion opertunities and with your skills they would look awesome!
I have already done Chaos Dwarfs twice, the 3rd edition team and another converted from a variety of models. I really liked the 2nd one and would find it hard to top.
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The main difficulty I always had was what to do for hobgoblins as I don't really like any of the existing models. I am working on a Zzharg conversion at the moment though, so feel free to post any suggestions there.

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 4:19 am
by frogboy
I'd like to see Wood Elves or Ogres or Goblins or....

Well any of the teams. But my preference "wood" be Wood Elves as I'm not a huge fan of any of the current teams available and if it comes down to a vote I'll be "rooting" for them...

:orc:

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 9:56 am
by lunchmoney
How about that new circus themed norsca thing, aka slann?

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 10:59 am
by spubbbba
lunchmoney wrote:How about that new circus themed norsca thing, aka slann?
I did slann 2 years ago so would not want to repeat myself.

But a Kislev themed human team is not a bad idea as they have some pretty cool looking models. The winged lancers would the ideal basis for blitzers that actually stand out. the horse archers went bare chested so I could probably use those tzeentchi cultists by sculpting on some fur and adding a bit of extra armour.

They could still be used as slann, with 4 blitzers, 4 catchers a bear as ogre and then the 2 throwers are either used as linemen or ignored.

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 9:30 pm
by spubbbba
Photobucket went and messed up all the pics that were here before sadly. Those have been updated using another source and removed a couple of teams that I was less keen on removed.

I wrote a very similar blog over on Fumbbl and the feedback there has been most in favour of an elven team using the new plastics. Pro elfs would certainly be an option, but I don’t know if there is much more I could do to the plastics aside from swapping in a few harlequin face masks and legs. That would make a nice looking team, but a bit generic compared to those done before.

One advantage of the new bulkier plastic BB models is that they are more in proportion with normal humans. This opens up a much wider variety of conversion potential as GW have a wide variety of both 40K and fantasy human models. I had bought the Tzeentchi acolytes a while back thinking they might be useable as either parts for a khorne team or marauders for a tzeentch themed pact team.

Their torsos are a great fit for elf limbs and they make nice simple conversions to make a more primitive looking AV7 team whilst still allowing a lot of pose-ability. The acolyte arms are a little bit chunkier than the elf ones, which does mean care will be needed when chopping them up. It might be easier to use entire arms and hide the join with shoulder pads. These should be pretty easy to build and paint which is good as it is always nice to complete a bunch of bodies in a short time.

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This simple kitbash was a good basis for a team, but I also had to think about the positionals. I went back to my bits box to see what I could find to help with this. I’d also bought the eternal guard boxed set and it had some arms that would suit this team and heads that could work for throwers or linemen. There were also some perfect shoulder pads from dwarfs, they even had celtic knots on them.

The test lineman had his shoulder pad removed and 2 dwarf pads added. As linemen tend to get hit more than the positionals then it seemed right they would have a little more protection. I added the arms from the eternal guard to see what they looked like. I really like these but only have a few arms I can use, there are some missing hands but these are a little too thin for the BB elf arms. They may be better suited for catchers to reflect ST2.

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I always see the throwers as the wise heads of the team, them being roughly equivalent to quarterbacks. On this model I left the Tzeentch shoulder pad, it does look suitable for elves, but maybe a bit too refined for wood elves. In either case they may only be given as single pad to avoid restricting the movement of their throwing arm. I gave him the head of an eternal guard as well. I think this suits a thrower the best as it is more decorative and I don’t think it looks very blood bowley so wouldn’t want to use it on too many players.
He was modelled holding the ball, in a more relaxed throwing pose. Something to think about is how players should be shown holding footballs, the boxed set comes with 2 pairs of arms doing this which is quite a lot and I need to add 2 more linemen and catchers. It may be worthwhile looking through my bits box for open hands or fists that match the arms.

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The wardancers don’t need a lot of work as the antler mask will really make them stand out. I intend to model them in active poses; either running forward or maybe leaping in the air. As they are in the combat role they also suit having shoulder pads. I don’t have enough of those used on the linemen for the wardancers too, but there are some other ones with runes and celtic knots. I could instead use the spiked shoulder pads from the BB elfs.
I will also give them the more “fighty” forearms, maybe looking for ones with a fist spike.
Other differences can be shown with painting, they might suit having more elaborate patterns on their leggings, maybe diamonds or stripes. They will certainly get tattoos as these are associated with wardancers anyway.

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Catchers are the 0-4 positional of the team and I will need to get another 2 of them. Luckily the elf team parts are very interchangeable so I can buy another box and have plenty of options. All the leftover parts can be added to my bitz box as they’d be useful for other elf teams and possibly humans or amazons.
Many of the cultists torsos are modelled with an arm raised which works well in a catching pose. As with the lineman I removed the shoulder pad from this model and covered the gap with an elf shoulder pad. Am thinking of giving them either light or just a single shoulder pad.
Another option is to use the eternal guard arms shown on the lineman. I’ll have just enough of these to use for the 4 catchers and the skinnier look would suit a ST2 player.

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Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:19 pm
by spubbbba
I’ve done some more work on the team and now have all 16 normal players assembled.

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Kept the eternal guard heads for the throwers and added some hands from the plastic humans. Thanks to scale creep and using the chunkier torsos these are a decent fit.

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Used the running blitzer legs for the first dancer and gave him human forearms as well. These have some brutal looking punch daggers on them. The 2nd dancer use the ribbon from a metal harlequin to be in a leaping pose. I chopped up his legs and swapped in those from another player to get them into the right position.

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2 of the catchers were modelled to be reaching up for the ball. The other 2 were repositioned to be in more active poses with one diving forward and the other jumping up. I used another metal harlequin ribbon for the jumping player. These guys also got eternal guard arms as I had to bring in thinner arms from Dark Eldar Wracks to get them to look right.
I wanted them to have unique heads from the linemen like the throwers and wardancers and used the masked faces. These are a bit high tech for wood elves for my tastes, to fix this greenstuff will be used to change these to scarves.

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They haven’t changed and are very similar to the first test model I made

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 11:07 am
by PeteW
How about a juicy post to get us excited? :D

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 11:32 am
by spubbbba
There are some pics on my twitter but sadly my computer died and the replacement won't arrive till next week. So I'm not able to transfer the pics from my camera until then.

I will say that the wardancers turned out really well and the treeman is a pretty unique conversion.

Also Jordell has some of the best detail work I've ever done on his leggings.

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 11:51 am
by PeteW
spubbbba wrote:There are some pics on my twitter but sadly my computer died and the replacement won't arrive till next week. So I'm not able to transfer the pics from my camera until then.

I will say that the wardancers turned out really well and the treeman is a pretty unique conversion.

Also Jordell has some of the best detail work I've ever done on his leggings.
Sounds super! Especially looking forward to seeing Jordell's legs... :D

Re: NAF Championship 2018 Prize team

Posted: Fri May 04, 2018 5:58 pm
by spubbbba
Got my new computer early and managed to get the pics loaded, here's the full team.

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