Another month, another Blood Bowl team. This time it’s Goblins.

Goblins are not a very effective team in Blood Bowl. In fact, according to stats from tournaments and online play, they’re the worst team in the game, and even in the 2016 edition or the CRP, the are firmly in the bottom tier of teams. This is intentional. Since at least the 3rd edition of the game, Goblin and Halfling teams were deliberately under-powered compared with the others, and in more recent years the Ogre and Snotling teams were added to this bottom tier of teams. They exist partly for comedy value, and partly to provide additional challenges for experienced coaches.

With a few exceptions, the models for this team are mostly from the hilariously-named Willy Miniatures. They’re one of many third-party teams sculpted by the talented Pedro Ramos, who also sculpted the Dwarf and Slann teams that I have posted here. Like most of his teams, they’re very characterful models, infused with a lot of fun and humour. I really enjoyed painting this team and I’m pleased with how they’ve come out. So here they are, the Grim Valley Gits:

The most numerous players on the team are called Goblin Linemen in the 2020 edition of the game; previously they were simply Goblins. I have ten of them. That’s about the minimum number that would be needed for a Goblin team but hopefully it will suffice:

There are a variety of different positional players available to a Goblin team. All of them are limited to 0-1 per team and several are armed with illegal secret weapons. Going from left to right, they are the Bombardier, Loony, Fanatic, Pogoer, Doomdiver and Ooligan.

While most teams cannot field more than one ‘big guy’ player (some cannot take any at all), Goblin teams are able to field up to two Trolls. Trolls are unreliable players at the best of times, but their high strength does at least help to make up for the fact that the rest of the team is made up of small, weedy Goblins. According to the WFB setting, there are several different varieties of troll, and although the Blood Bowl rules do not distinguish between them, these models are clearly Stone Trolls. For some reason it seems to be common to paint Stone Trolls in bright blue, although I seem to remember seeing some back in the day that were more of a blue-grey colour. The latter seems to make much more sense for creatures whose diet that consists partly of of rocks has caused their bodies and skin to take on stone-like qualities. Accordingly I used a dark blue-grey colour for most of the Trolls’ skin, with a yellow-brown limestone-like colour for the creatures’ bellies, chins and ears.

As usual, I have a selection of sideline models for the team. Most of these are not from Willy Miniatures. The Head Coach is from Goblin Guild, but like the rest of the team it’s sculpted by Pedro Ramos. The apothecary is from Gaspez Arts. It was originally produced by Neomics Miniatures, but they don’t exist any more. I’m not sure whether Gaspez took over the company or just took on their miniature lines when they closed down. Sadly, I don’t know who the designer was. The Cheerleaders are second-edition models from Games Workshop, sculpted by Kev Adams. Finally the referee is from Willy.

Finally, I have these five Star Players. These are the third-edition models from GW, sculpted by Gary Morley. Going from left to right, they are Fungus the Loon, Bomber Dribblesnot, Ripper Bolgrot, Nobbla Blackwart and Scrappa Sorehead. Bomber, Ripper and Scrappa can also play for my Orc team. I originally painted Bomber Dribblesnot and Nobbla Blackwart back in 2008, but I gave them a retouch and changed a few bits to make them more consistent with the rest of the team. Along with the four goblin models on my Orc team, this means that I actually own all of the models released for the third-edition Goblin team.

And that’s it for the Goblins. All in all this team took about three weeks to paint up. However, I’m starting to find other things to do with my evenings so the rate I paint things may well decrease from here on. Next I plan to revisit my Elven Union team. I’m fairly happy with most of them so I don’t think they’ll need much of a refresh, just painting over a few chips here and there. I’m also going to add a few Star Players to the team. After that I’m hoping to make a start on my Dark Elf team. After that I’m not sure. I still have lots of Blood Bowl teams to paint, but I’d also like to try and get some Epic stuff painted as well. I still have models for both Orc and Imperial Guard armies sitting in boxes waiting for me to paint them up. And an Epic Tyranid army would be a great project for the 3D printer that I got back in the autumn. If I can get at least a tournament-sized army painted up in time to take it to the Epic UK Grand Tournament in November, that would be a year well spent. But the Elves will come first.