I had a lot of fun converting some of the new stars over summer and autumn, but at the pace GW have been coming out with new teams and Spike magazines I was never going to catch up. This meant it was time to get back to painting.

I’d painted up all but 4 of the stars from the old crp rules and as many of them have not made it to the new rules thought I should try to finish those off. Once they are done I can start on the new stuff. Either working my way through Spike magazines in order, painting up a full team and any outstanding stars or just picking and choosing cool new teams and stars I like the look of.



Boomer Ezassion
He’s just the metal 5th edition dwarf bomber. There’s no conversions or a lot of detailed parts on the model, making him an ideal choice for painting after a few months off. Norse are one of the teams I’m considering doing in the future and had already experimented with a green, white and silver colour scheme on Wilhelm Chaney. This scheme worked well on Boomer, I painted his accessories brown and black to not detract from the team strip and gave him a blonde beard to stand out a bit.

Some decoration was added in the shape of white borders on his armour, but aside from that he was rather plain. The old style armour and bomb would be enough to distinguish him on dwarf team, whilst he’d be really obvious when playing for Norse.





Sinnedbad

I really liked the colour scheme I had used for the NAF Khemri team I converted from necrons and Tomb Kings and decided to use this for him as well. However the model I used wore a tattered bit of cloth around his waist, making that brown would be a bit dull and instead I went for white. To avoid this clashing with the bone I used grey as the base coat for the cloth and added white to it whilst the bone started with brown.

The main distinguishing feature of Sinnedbad is his cutlass arm, I wanted this to really stand out from the rest of the model. To that end I used the metallic non-metallic metallic painting technique I’ve been with experimenting with recently. This uses the NMM method of painting, but adds normal colours to metallic paints. As he was in an ancient Egyptian I added dark brown and cream to gold paint to create a bronze looking weapon. I’m really happy with his this turned out, as it is always tricky to get the lighting right.

The rest of him was pretty straightforward with brown furs on his shoulders and brown belts and straps and a black bandana.

Since Boomer was a bit on the bland side, some extra decoration was added. The cloth was given a border and some hieroglyphs added to the ribbons.







Icepelt Hammerblow

I made this conversion a good while back and have kept putting off painting him. The big sticking point was always what colour scheme to go for. The initial plan was for him to have light blue skin with white fur that was shaded in blue. With the model having so little armour and clothing this would have been a bit too much blue. Also now the norse have a Yheti rather than a snow troll it felt like he should have a more “natural” colour scheme.

I did some research looking at the colours of real life arctic as well as other painted models. Many of these had quite a dark grey skin tone which was a good contrast to the white fur. I ended up using the blue greys from the space wolf GW paints as the starting point and added grey and white to this for highlights. I am super happy with how this turned out, in particular on his ribs, sometimes the colours blend just right. This meant extra care was needed with other parts of his body and his face, abs and hands were redone a few times.

With the skin looking good this meant getting the fur colour right was even more important since this covered the majority of the model. I did some test colouring of his limbs, using grey, blue and brown as starting points, highlighting up to white.

The brown was my favourite and the most natural looking, it started with a cold brown and then bone was added and finally white, right up to put white for fine details. His fur is heavily textured and very detailed which meant painting it took a couple of weeks. This was even with using a faster method of overbrushing rather than individually highlighting each hair. I did end up going back over and re-shading some parts. In the end I had to stop as I could easily have spent the rest of the year on his fur alone and his fur should look a bit matted and dirty.

I kept to the same colour scheme green armour, a white loin cloth (shaded with grey to differentiate from his fur and appear manmade) with silver metal bits. His claws and teeth were painted brown with white highlights and the rocks he was springing from painted brown.





Willow Rosebark
I'd painted up a version of Willow based on the old masque of slaanesh for my daemonette/dryad wood elf team. I liked the conversion and she really suited the team, but didn't quite work as the star to me. I think she'd be better as a 2nd wardancer or a coach.

The Spite Revenants from Age of Sigmar are a mixture of dryad with humanoid parts and I used this as the basis for the conversion. I had started this as a star for the GT team I did last year, but sadly ran out of time. I added a loincloth and arm from the wood elf range and gave her some branch hair from the classic plastic dryads.

Paint scheme was similar to the wood elf team with green armour and some blue details. Most of the model was made up of either skin or bark. I went for a light green as the skin colour and dark brown fading to light brown for the bark. This did make the model a bit too natural and I wanted to try something different.

The gold and silver metal parts were all painted using the NMM technique, this was the first time I had tried it on silver. It turned out ok as these were all really small metallic parts.
This was also the first time I'd experimented with lighting effects for the patterns on her armour and the orb in her stomach. I had wanted more blue on the model to brighten it up more.




With these stars completed I have now painted up every team and star from the crp rules aside from Vampires and crazy Igor.

It was also time to start giving the 2020 NAF GT team serious thought since that was due in just over 5 months.

I would like to do vampires as it would mean I could finish off the last of the crp teams and stars. However the team I have planned is very conversion heavy and I don't have all these and the colour scheme planned out fully. I don't want to run out of time like last year and have to rush some parts.
Norse are another option and already have Wilhelm, Boomer and Icepelt ready. I'd still need to convert the rest of the team and don't have all the positionals thought out fully. It's also not the most original idea as everyone and their dog has done a bloodreaver as norse team.

Humans

I'm currently favouring doing a human team, they have always been front and centre of the Blood Bowl releases along with Orcs. Humans are a solid team for tabletop tournaments and league play.

The only human team I’ve previous worked were the classic metal 5th edition with almost no conversions. I think the new sculpts are ok, though am really not a fan of how similar the blitzers and linemen look. That would open up opportunities to make an interesting team with a few conversions like I did with the skaven. I have the forgeworld booster pack and would then convert any duplicates to make all players unique. The blitzers in particular would be modelled and painted to be more clearly defined from the linemen. They need something like fancier armour or extra decoration added, I have been experimenting with giving them different chest armour from Blood angels.



The team being all plastic or resin would make them pretty hardy and useful for tabeltop play and they’d be a good choice for someone who plays regularly.

They have lots of stars I can do for them as well. I’ve already painted up Zug, Griff and Helmut using classic 2nd and 5th edition models. I really liked this colour scheme and would use it for the whole team. I could also look at other stars like Karla, Puggy and Frank as I have the new or 2nd editions models already.

This should be a pretty quick team to do, needing little conversion and with the colour scheme decided already.