Sinister Resistance

Kind of by accident, I’m embarking on a new hobby: Blood Bowl.

Having been curious about the game for a while but never played it, it was a happy coincidence that a friend decided to spin up a league amongst a few friends local to home. I was initially a little apprehensive – having never been hugely into miniatures board games and cautious about the regular commitment to field games – but, having done a little more research about the game, it appealed more and more. I managed to inherit an unbuilt team from a friend (Imperial Nobility), so I bought a few paints and started coming up with team ideas.

At time of writing, I’m yet to actually play a full game of tabletop Blood Bowl, so this first entry will mostly be about my initial (albeit mediocre) efforts to paint the little buggers.

I briefly dallied with the world of miniature painting back in the ‘90s when I first picked up a copy of Warhammer 40,000 but, having been devastated by my inability to paint them with any finesse (the results were very similar to the famous “Duncan’s first mini”), I refused to pick a paintbrush ever again. As such, any grey resin miniatures that have been bundled with any of the board games I have purchased ever since have remained in their unpainted state. But, I am older and wiser (in theory, at least) so it seemed sensible to perhaps give things another try.

It’s been a long while since I painted any miniatures, so I felt it important to practice before letting myself loose on my spangly new team of Blood Bowlers. By happy chance, I managed to pick up a Tyranids: Termagants and Ripper Swarm + Paints Set for free when I was out at GENCON last year, so I cracked this open and started piecing them together. The results were modesty successful so, when I was content enough that I could make a decent stab at painting my Nobility team, I made a start. My general approach to prepping the players was as follows: [all paint colours are from Citadel Colour unless stated otherwise]

• Two thin primer/base coats of Abaddon Black (thinned with water water) in order to get into all the nooks and crannies
• One spray of The Army Painter Matt White Colour Primer from above to recreate zenithal priming

Here’s kind of what they looked like at this point:

After that, I proceeded to get base paint on plastic in the following way, with a general flow of starting with the ‘underneath’ stuff (often flesh under helmets, material within fabric pleats, that sort of thing) before basing the features which are more on top (armour, boots, etc.):

1. Flesh Tones
   
   Luckily, the Imperial Nobility don’t have a huge amount of flesh on show, so there wasn’t really a lot to do here – most of their bodywork is armour or linen breeches, and many of the male members of the team have rather impressive beards or moustaches. That said, what is on show is hidden under helmets and around those facial hair, so paint application was a little fiddly. I modelled the team with White Caucasian-style tones (even the Ogre) by mixing (roughly 50-50) Bugman’s Glow with either Wraithbone and/or Corax White; although there is a small amount of variation in skin tones amongst the players due to the imprecise nature of the mixing.
   
2. Undermaterials
   
   The colour scheme for my team is mostly purple, black and silver, so I’ve plenty of cases where there is black present in folds and cleats of breeches and undershirts so I delicately applied Abaddon Black onto those areas, as well as pretty everywhere else which shows up as black. The exception to this was where there are adjacent blocks of black colour that could do with breaking up – mostly this was true where players had black socks adjacent to black trousers: here, I mixed things up by colouring the sock base with Corvus Black, which gave a nice metallic sheen to these to make them sparkle a bit.
   
3. Gloves and Balls
   
   The next area I worked on was players’ catching gloves: I wanted these to appear like brown leather gauntlets (with metal spikes and attachments), so I glazed these with Rhinox Hide which seemed to work pretty well as a base. At this point, I didn’t yet make a start on things like the metal clasps, knuckle-dusters and spikes: those would be tasks for when I would later tackle the armour.
   
   My team’s two throwers (plus star player) are handling a ball, so I had to apply a roughly 50-50 mix of Bugman’s Glow and Mephiston Red to give a orange-red colour (circa #DF684F) to the ball.

4. Purple Flashing
   
   With the above areas reasonably well-coloured, I wanted to make a start on the purple flashes that will really characterise my team: these appear on the ruffles of the breeches; on bows, tassels and other piping on the outfit; as well as (often) on the players’ helmets. I applied these trim sections with Naggaroth Night on top of the black primer – with the assumption that I’d apply some layer highlights on top to brighten this all up a bit. 

5. Armour
   
   After some further touching-up of the above bits in cases where I had daubed paint over bits I shouldn’t have, I made a start on the team’s armour: pretty much all of the players have solid metal torso plates, shoulder plates and knee pads, so I applied a base layer of Leadbelcher and hoped for the best. I assumed that I would touch this up with some drybrushing, highlights and layering later to cover the fine details. Many of the players have armoured gauntlet plates that I also covered in Leadbelcher, but I left the spiky knuckledusters for now.
   
   It was at this point where the players actually started to resemble actual humans: it was impressive how finishing the armour really tied the miniatures together and took them from looking 40% complete up to around 80% complete.
   
6. Belts and Accessories
   
   The Imperial Nobility models have a bunch of bits and bobs and accessories on them, so here is where I started filling in the remaining blanks on the model:
   
   • Belts and straps in Rhinox Hide
   • Clasps and buckles in Retributor Armour
   • Knuckledusters, pins, chains and other metallic elements in Leadbelcher
   • Bows and sashes in Naggaroth Night
     
7. Hair
   
   There isn’t a lot of hair on show with Nobility (see #8 below), but there is a smattering of head and facial hair that need decorating so I pressed ahead. I wanted to replicate typical “Imperial” hairstyles, so there’s no crazy/wacky colour schemes going on; just the below tones that I tended to make by mixing a bunch of base colours:
   
   • Dark Brown: Corvus Black and Rhinox Hide
   • Grey: Corvus Black and Corax White
   • Blonde: Averland Sunset, plus a tiny touch of either Leadbelcher or Retributor Armour
   • Ginger: Mephiston Red and Retributor Armour
   • Light Brown: Rhinox Hide and Wraithbone
   • Black: Straight-up Corvus Black

8. Helmet Plumes
   
   Finally, Pretty much all of the team (minus the Throwers and Ogre) are blessed with fabulous feather-topped helmets, so I was anticipating that a lot of care – and very fiddly painting – would go into preparing their plumes. At present, the team are replete with a thorough coat of Corvus Black over all of their plumes, upon which I have plans to emphasise the detail with highlights of Leadbelcher, Retributor Armour, Wraithbone and Corax White – although that’s a job for the next phase of painting. The metal hilt from which the plumes emerge was daubed in Leadbelcher, for further highlighting later.

So that’s where things currently are – I have eleven match-ready players all covered in a base colour scheme, but the fine-detail, layering and highlighting are all still to-do. Here’s what they currently look like, alongside some unpainted Imperial Retainer Line(wo)men that are still in their naked resin state:

I’m reasonably pleased with my progress – they aren’t the greatest paint jobs ever, but they’re really not that bad for effectively my first attempt at painting minis.

What I have learned from this so far is:

• I am slow at painting
• Despite the above, I still make mistakes a lot
• Painting is fiddly and I should (arguably) have considered painting some appendages whilst they were still on the sprue rather than when assembled
• The purchase of an LED magnifying glass clamp thing was an excellent decision (I went with this one)
• I shouldn’t have bothered zenithal priming my minis and just left them with the original Abaddon Black base coats that I’d already given them
• Games Workshop / Citadel paints and equipment are kind of more expensive than other brands, but they’re really quite nice and just work
• As a counterpoint to the above bullet, the inside lid of a Quality Street plastic tub makes an excellent paint palette

So that’s that: I have my first preseason friendly match coming up this weekend, so I look forward to seeing the team hit the gridiron; and, presumably, get bashed into oblivion by a superior opponent… wish me luck!

[Zinar7]