Having spent much of the last few years building the BB16 star players I was spoilt for choice. I had already completed all but one of the crp era stars, but each new Spike magazine added several. This split them into some rough groups; Chaos, Dark Elves, Undead, Haflings, Wood Elves, Lizardmen and Underworld. For the sake of variety, I decided to switch between these groups.

Big Jobo Hairyfoot



The initial conversion had him holding a club, as per the illustration, but someone suggested that be switched to a haunch of meat, which I liked more. I could certainly see him eating that and using it as a weapon.

I used the illustration as the basis for his paint scheme, he has white and blue striped waistcoat and trousers. Painting stripes is always a challenge as you not only have to get the lines to look straight (extra challenging on something like clothing), but you also need to shade and highlight without messing these up. I think it turned out pretty well, thankfully blue and white are both colours I have had a lot of practice with.

The other tricky aspect was adding his body hair, this was sculpted on his belly which made life easier. For his arms I made a few different attempts until I got it right, it was tricky to still have the skin showing through. Looking back his feet were left bare, not in keeping with his name.

Bo Gallanté



Kind of the odd one out, Bo doesn’t’ fit into any of the other categories, guess they are too pedestrian for such a refined player.

I was really happy with the conversion job I did on him, in particular the legs as they had nothing to reference. Would like to see any new High Elf team be more like this than some of the over-decorated teams I see, which are a bit impractical for the field.

Again, his colour scheme was based on the illustration. The dark blue bodysuit turned out really well, but to avoid it looking too fat I had to add quite a few highlights. This then meant the blue armour needed to be lighter than I would have liked.

The classic high elf colour scheme of blue, white and silver with gold and red decoration is a favourite. I just think the illustration goes a little heavy on the blue. If his light blue armour was instead white or silver, that would be a far stronger scheme.

The gemstones turned out really well with a nice, smooth transition of colours. These used to be something I struggled with, so it’s pleasing to get them right.

Withergrasp Doubledrool



He was a 2nd edition star, brought back for the new rules. The illustration from 2nd edition had quite a different look from the new one, but was full body, so I’d used both as inspiration.

Some green was added to my usual skin colour mix as he was a mutant, the aim was to make him look a little off, but not undead or nurglesque. I kept the red glove and loin cloth from 2nd edition as a contrast to his green armour. The shoulder pads didn’t turn out quite right as they were meant to be a warmer green, but were already getting too pale.

'Rotten' Rick Bupkeis



Zombies tend to have rather bland and dull schemes, since their kit ends up covered in dirt and gore. Rick does have bright red added much needed colour to the model. His shorts and boots were painted dull browns, but the bandages added a bit of lightness. Zombie flesh is pretty easy to paint, it just needs grey added to the usual mix.

For a little extra colour an unfortunate human was added to the base, the blue of his helm adding a different colour to the model. I general don’t like adding too much to the base as it can be a chore having to paint more stuff after spending a week on the model. Rick was pretty simple though and I gave the grass a wash of brown ink and highlight of bone to make it look deader.

Bob Bifford



Big guys have always been a favourite to paint. The larger size allows more detail to be added, but they are not huge and impractical display pieces that take weeks to complete and often require an airbrush.

Again, the illustration didn’t have the most exciting colour scheme. Blue armour with little in the way of markings or patterns and light brown clothing, with his golden belt buckle as the biggest area of decoration. His skin was a little darker than those of a normal human as I see Ogres being more tanned and weathered. I was very proud of how the five o’clock shadow turned out by mixing some grey with flesh tones. Previous attempts on other models uses washes had never really looked right. The skin on his face and back all turned out really well.



I’ve been experimenting with how I paint metals for a while. NMM is hard to do well, I have a pretty good grasp of the technique itself, the difficulty is knowing when and where to do the highlights and shading. All too often it ends up looking yellow or grey instead of gold and silver. To combat this I have been using normal gold or silver paint and mixing it with brown/yellow or grey. It took a few attempts to get the buckle right and I ended up going back over some of the mid colour parts in normal gold. I think it is a pretty good focal point for the model, clearly gold, but with some cool shading and highlights.

The other part I am proud of is his loincloth. This was striped in the illustration and heavily textured, so hard to get at and make look good.

Wasn’t really happy with his right shoulder pad. it’s just flat and blue, which makes it hard to paint. My early attempts ended up too pale, which meant I had to go back over them. In the end added some chips and dents along with a line highlight.