Edit: Make that 28 painted figures!

With my wife out at a Christmas party earlier in the week, I found time to up my total number of painted figures for 2013 to 28, with the addition of these two to my Dark Elf Blood Bowl team.

Leather chaps are obviously de rigueur for female Blood Bowl players this season!

A hobby review of 2013

As the year draws to a close, and prompted by the ‘plans for 2014’ thread on the Oldhammer forums, I thought I might look back and review what I’ve achieved in 2013, with the aim of informing plans for 2014.

Skaven Blood Bowl Team Retrospective - Part 2, Painting the Team

In September I unveiled Part 1 in my Skaven Blood Bowl team retrospective; a very enjoyable exercise in converting and modernising Jes Goodwin's fantastic 1988 Skaven models.

When I finally got round to thinking about the paint scheme for the team, I wanted to select something with a lot of visual presence. Skaven always seem to work well with nice bright colour schemes on their gear, in contrast the the natural skin and fur tones. I set to work with an online colour wheel tool to see what I could come up with.

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

 

When Trolls Meet Elves...

This is a bit of a sneak preview of something I'm working on alongside my Dark Elf Blood Bowl team for the NAF Championship 2014.

Historically there has been a Best Painted Team competition as well as prizes for tournament play. This year there is an additional mini diorama 'Duel' category, which unlike the Best Painted Team, is a stand alone competition. The rules are simple:

Two single models mounted on a single 40mm or 50mm Slottabase. The judges will be looking for a dynamic pairing of two well-matched opponents in some kind of dramatic situation occuring as part of a Blood Bowl match.

Taking the Dark Path

Last year I made a heavily converted Skaven Blood Bowl team to take to the NAF 2013 Blood Bowl Tournament in Nottingham. Next year, the tournament falls on 17/18 May and I've been working on a new team to play with; this time it's Dark Elves.


I don't believe that either the Perrys' 2nd edition Dark Elves or Gary Morley's 3rd edition Dark Elves make the grade, especially when compared against Jes Goodwin's 2nd edition Elves.

1988 Dark Elves. Just a little dumpy and short-legged for my taste!

Mid-1990s Dark Elves, more dyanmic, but with rather large feet & hands.

1988 Blood Bowl Elves. Just fabulous!

Reinforcing Elric

Last month I announced my belated discovery of Citadel's Eternal Champions range. Like a true miniatures collector, it took very little time to work through the collecting process, which is something like this:

1. Discover models and buy one cool example / starter set. Just because you like them.
2. Research range and find out there are many more cool models.
3. Half-heartedly pick up a few other models from the range which happen to be cheap on ebay.
4. Start seriously cataloguing the other figures from the range you need.
5. Start really seriously cataloguing the other figures you need! Including linked ranges, random figures which got assimilated into other ranges and other curios.
6. Set up ebay saved searches and scour auctions/trade lists daily. The target is now to fully complete the range.

So, Marauder miniatures were actually pretty good...

Marauder miniatures for me were always a poor relation to Citadel miniatures. If you don't remember, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s Marauder released a large number of figures for use alongside Citadel's output for Games Workshop games. I remember their adverts in White Dwarf quite distinctly as "figures I probably wouldn't buy". The line drawing catalogue pages passed me by, and the photographed models always seemed a little bit cartoony, lacking perhaps a little bit of elegance, or maybe just in weird poses.

However, I've been struggling to locate suitable models to use as coaching staff for my WIP Dark Elf Blood Bowl team. After much searching on ebay through the lovely (but too fantasy-esque) Jes Goodwin Wood / High Elves, I stumbled on these 3 fine fellows:

Marauder Wood Elves