Forgeworld have been releasing a lot of older stars lately and thankfully no new ones yet. This means I have been approaching the end goal of painting up all 80 from BB16. I’m trying to be more focused and so work my way through the Spike magazines. The first 4 were done, which meant flings were next and they had 4 stars still outstanding.

Cindy Piewhistle

There aren’t any female Halfling models available from GW, so I had to use the closest I could find from the BB flings. I tried to soften the features a little, but it only did so much.

This was the first time I’d tried to paint make up on a model and the initial attempt did not turn out well. I was worried she was about to run off and start a life of crime being the antagonist to a billionaire obsessed with bats. I was able to tone down the lipstick and eye shadow on the 2nd attempt and the paint job ended up pretty decent




Neddly Verrüca

The illustration for Neddly didn’t show much of the model, but he appeared to have the standard green and yellow scheme that GW used for the team.

The only other parts were the shears which were wood and rusty metal and his stilts which were wood with some off white strapping. The pics really didn’t turn out very well for him and I think I got the lighting wrong.

That being said he is a bit dull looking, only his equipment stands him out as being a star. This is certainly my least favourite of the BB16 flings I did.




Captain Colander

As a golden era star he was special even amongst the other stars, since there were only 2 others in BB16 (Bob Bifford and Jerimiah Kool). He had a rather complicated paint job as not only did he have striped clothing, but also a patterned picnic cloth as his cloak.

For painting stripes I normally start with the darker colour, fully highlight that and then add the lighter stripes and highlight those. This was how I initially started with his cape, painting it red and adding some dark pink stripes and hoops on top. I was part way through when I realised the pink stripes combined to make light red and not what so I’d have to start again.

The cloak was very tricky as not only does it require shading 3 different colours, it’s also a challenge to paint the lines realistically taking into account the contours. These were probably too straight in the end, but it still ended up looking good.




Rumbelow Sheepskin

I’d been hoping Forgeworld would release a model for him as he’s a challenging conversion. GW don’t do any sheep models and sculpting wool was rather daunting. However it had been over a year and he was the last model from the BB16 stars to make.

I’d initially planned on using a Wild rider stag cut down to size, this was proving to be tricky as the legs were too skinny and didn’t look right when I shortened them. A quick look through my bits box turned up and old plastic boar, which would make a much better body. This was heavily sanded down to and even so was still a little chunky, but that seemed appropriate for flings. I did use the stag head with a shortened neck and snout. Then messy fur was sculpted onto the body, since rams were a bit more wild I didn’t try too hard to make him look like a fluffy sheep. The knee pad, helm and reigns were all sculpted on and the horns came from a warcry model.

Rumbelow was made from several different fling models, cut to shape and with some greenstuff filling along with small details like his braces added. The part I am most proud of is his face as I sculpted the lower jaw to make it stick out and added the took, he also needed his right eyebrow added since the fling with the colander had that covered up. His hair was sculpted on too and the hefty helmet had the bandages removed and the face mask filled in. This is probably the most work I’ve done to get a face to match the illustration, am happy that it actually looks like Rumbelow when any fling riding on a ram would do.

His fork is made from a wood elf spear and adeptus mechaninus weapon sanded to shape.




Since he’s turned out so well I wanted to do a good job of painting and decided to switch things up with the undercoating stage. Normally I use black, but that risked models turning out a little dull, especially lighter ones like flings. This time I gave a full black undercoat and then lightly sprayed white over the top of the model as I’d seen many talented painters do. This kept the shading but gave a lighter surface to paint the main colours, ideal when they’d be white, yellow and light green.

The part I spent the longest on was the wool Lambshanks, it needed to be white, but also just a little natural and dirty looking. The parts of his face and legs could be lighter since they were smoother. Aside from that Rumbelow was painted as a standard fling. His skin was made a little darker as he’d be outside a lot to get tanned and did turn out really well.




With these guys done there are just 11 stars to go, Wood Elves will be next. When they are finally completed I can look at doing the few stars added in BB20, along with the new teams which came out. I’m also tempted to redo some of the stars to either improve on them (because I have got better at painting and converting) or to match the illustrations (either due to my version being themed, a better model coming out like Barik or them being a 2nd or 3rd edition star which got a new look like Puggy).