Blood Bowl-a-rama #6 – First peek at the Ravens
December 7, 2011The Blood Bowl heat is still going strong. Earlier I showed you the pitch, now it’s time to take a peek at the team. As shown before, our Blood Bowl teams have mostly taken their inspiration from existing teams and this time’s no exception. My Necromantic team – the Drakwald Ravens – is modelled on the NFL team Baltimore Ravens. The black & purple theme fits perfectly into the undead look, so this was an obvious direction to go to.
In an effort to avoid buying too many new miniatures, I’ve tried to use miniatures I already own. The only exception to this are a bunch of Mantic zombies, which I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for a while. Even these I managed to buy second hand at a low price. The rest of my team consists of Mantic ghouls, West Wind werewolves, FU-UK tank zombies (as flesh golems) and two wights assembled from bits and pieces. As most readers should know, I’ve started a few projects along the years, mostly revolving around the undead and various related critters. It should come as no surprise, then, that I’ve more than enough minis to make a Blood Bowl team. Funnily enough the zombies were the one thing that I lacked! This is mainly due to actually converting all of my medieval-ish zeds into a more modern look.
Naming is always important in Blood Bowl (to me at least). The BB/Warhammer universe is filled with more or less succesful puns and bastardisations of existing contemporary and historical names. Never one to skip a chance for some groanworthy punning, I decided to name the Ravens after various philosophers of the German-speaking world. Enter such stars as Immortal Kant, Georg Henrik von Wight, Arthur Schopenhowler and Karl Eye-Popper. Oh, I had so much fun with these. If I ever need foreign additions to the team, I’ll be sure to include David Exhume and John Stuart Kill.
Anyway, I’ve already started painting my team and I’m happy to present you my first flesh golem, Max Hurtheimer. He’s a Left 4 Dead inspired tank zombie from the 2009 FU-UK sculpting competition. In Blood Bowl, the flesh golems are usually creatures styled after Frankenstein’s monster, but I’ve always wanted to find a good use for my two tanks, so I figured they fit the bill just fine. The paintjob’s a bit more messy than my usual fare, but I still like him as I think he manages to look pretty menacing and corpse-like. He was painted mostly following my general recipe for zombies.
Click for a larger version
That’s it for now. Expect to see some more Ravens in the near future. I plan to grind through painting them in short order. After all, it’s just 14 or so models, one of which is already painted (as well as another, if I just repaint the pants and the base). How hard can it be?
Dawn of the Lead 
You say you used your skin recipe, but this don’t look like the zed in the tutorial? You change anything? I have a few experiments/freaky monsters on my painting table and I really like how this golem’s skin came out….
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As I said, it was mostly painted using the recipe. I also added some very thinned down purple ink, as well as given a fair few highlights, drybrushes and whatnot. I wasn’t really happy with how he initially turned out, so I just threw a lot of stuff at him 😀 Anyway, the purple ink is the biggest difference. It gives that creepy look of general unhealthiness. Hope this helps!
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Hey, thanks for the quick reply, will be sure to send you a pic once I’m done. Gotta say, your blog is still a pretty good motor for hobbying!
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Thanks, that comment really made my day!
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[…] The Ravens steadily upped their game throughout the season, and before the playoffs actually had a four match long undefeated streak with two wins and two ties. The only thing I wasn’t happy about was my team’s seeming inability for violence. While a virtue outside the Blood Bowl field, 11 inflicted casualties in 14 matches is appalling, especially compared to the league (sans Ravens) average of over 21. Out of those 11 casualties no less than five were executed (tee-hee) by my number one flesh golem, Max Hurtheimer. […]
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