Blood Bowl: Remember the Corsairs

Passing the torch.

It's been almost two years since I published a blog entry about my attempts to revive my old Dark Elf Blood Bowl team; The Kar Karond Corsairs.  For the most part I was pleased with the results of my Witch Elf conversion, I had a brand new Witch Elf plastic kit to thank for that and everything seemed to be coming along nicely.  Unfortunately I hit a rather ugly lineman.  I intended to use dark elf corsair plastic kit as the basis for the linemen and the test model looked terrible.  It really had no redeeming qualities.  The model itself was boring.  I think it's important for a lineman model to be innocuous to showcase the positional players but no miniature should be truly boring.  To make matters worse my dull test model sported a truly ugly colour scheme.  It was almost a paradox.  I couldn't recall what the model looked like but I couldn't unsee the ass-like palette.

Linemen in progress.  First two revealing prosthetic posteriors.

Time eventually heals my bruised creativity so after a long spell away I was ready to reexamine the project and see if I might be able to salvage it.  If there was any hope of making it work I would have to produce a visually appealing lineman (the most numerous player position on the team), and re imagine my team colours.

Another batch of linemen in progress.  The last man became the test model for the new team.

The former was the really easy part.  Looking back on my 3rd edition team the difference was clear.  For whatever reason I overdid the green which had been an accent and omitted the deep blue that had provided a what I thought was a striking contrast to the ill advised bright yellow I had selected.  As a spot colour I think that the green plays well with both the blue and yellow; It just needed some moderation.  At some point in interim I had picked up a set of plastic dark elf spearmen.  I thought they were well detailed but never got around to finishing them because they clearly suffered from the Warhammer disease.  This unfortunate condition causes models to be static and boring so they are able to rank up well with other sickened models.  I also had some spare dark eldar and additional dark elf parts lying around and was able to put together a squad of 10 linemen.  They are mostly assembled but I still have to fill some joins and am considering adding some sashes to a few of their waists.  The first lineman featured in the post opening is the test model for the group.  He is such an improvement from my last attempt I'm confident enough in the project that I hope to see it through.

2nd Witch Elf, Runner, Assassin.  I like them but see bench warming in their future.

Once I got started with the lineman the remaining models pretty much built themselves.  I also have 2 new blitzers, 1 runner, an assassin and another witch elf awaiting paint.  The runner and assassin mostly took shape from the dark elf rider kit while the blitzers kitted up from the cold one knight kit and got helmets from a "classic" (HA HA, No really this head actually looks cool) model and an Archon's head.

Flanking blitzers with their funny hats.  One man is still shy an arm.

To get things started on the painting front I returned to the Witch Elf I had reported on and made some changes.  I introduced some blues to the model that balanced the figure and put it more in line with my vintage team.  Specific to the figure I tried to clean up the skin tones because I hadn't been happy when I did them the first time around.  I think it looks better but I had to be careful because I was throwing still more paint on top of paint.  I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some of the wonderful Blood Bowl miniatures showcased on the Lead Adventures Other Adventures sub forum.  All of the projects needled me to work on my team while  Supercollider and Vindice's fantastic groundwork got me to reconsider the dull astroturf flocking that I had been basing my teams on for years. 

Colour fixed Witch Elf and green ugly lineman.  Once fixed he is destined for stardom.  Lucky guy.

I was a bit out of practice (again) when I started on this project and was a long way from doing any actual painting.  To try to recoup some of my "chops" (It's like riding a bicycle but I keep falling off) I dug out some oddball dwarf blood bowl models.  I think they were sculpted by Wojtek and distributed by Warlord Games.  I got them for $10 when my old mail order "go to" went out of business.  They are fun little pervy models that would go well with Blood Bowl or Benny Hill (I'm thinking "Wacky Sax" as the cage rolls down the pitch).  It was fun painting them as I pieced together my Corsairs and having a related painting project helped me keep at the parts of the build that were troublesome.  

Benny Hill would play Blood Bowl.

Then I procrastinated and got bored and changed projects.  I completely forgot about my Blood Bowl team and started making models for TNT, Strange Aeons and Frostgrave.  The Corsirs ended up sitting untouched for another half of a year.  Not so long ago I saw news about GW releasing a fancy new version of the game next year.  I saw the previews and both the orc and human teams look awesome.  I'm sure GW will promote the game for at least a month or so once they release it so hopefully it will generate some interest in the game.  Excellent.  Now I have a goal and at least another half year to reach it.  On the promotion front it looks like they are recasting some classic star players from the late 80's and selling them at a hobby event; Looks like they are at it nice and early. 

Test Lineman back to front composite.