I first posted photos of my Orc Blood Bowl team in April 2008. The team was already a few years old by that point. I think I originally put the team together in around 2003-2004-ish; possibly earlier. At the time I wasn’t very keen on the Orc Blood Bowl models available at the time (oddly enough, these days I’m rather more fond of them) so I set about converting my own from a Warhammer plastic regiment box. I revisited the team in 2008, painting up all the models I had built at that point and posting the results on here. I came back and added more models later that year, and again the following year. In 2020 I revisited the team again, painting the last few models that I hadn’t finished before. Last spring I re-based the team, along with all of the Blood Bowl models I had done at that point.

Because different parts of the team had been painted at different times, there was a marked difference between the quality of the painting on some of the older models compared to the new, and much of the team as a whole was looking quite shabby compared with the newer teams I had painted more recently. I considered stripping them and redoing them from scratch, or even just replacing them with newer models, but I eventually decided that wasn’t necessary, so instead I went through the team last week and touched-up the paint here and there to try and bring them all up to the same standard. They’ve brushed up fairly well. So here is the newly-refreshed version of Da Badboyz.

As ever, the core of the team are the Linemen, or in this case Lineorcs. These were all made from the regiment box, with the weapons removed from the models’ hands.

Adding extra muscle to the team are these blockers. In previous editions of Blood Bowl, these were identified as Black Orc Blockers, but in the 2020 edition Black Orcs have been spun off into their own team and these are now Big ‘Un Blockers. Nonetheless, I have kept them painted with a much darker skin tone than the other Orcs to make them easily identifiable as Black Orcs. I also gave them all extra armour, particularly on the shoulders, to make them appear bulkier and further identify them as blockers rather than regular Orcs.

Next up are the Blitzers. These guys got flashy squig-hair top-knots to reflect their status as blitzers. I also swapped the colours of the team’s red and brown kit so that the red would be more prominent. It’s a widespread belief amongst Orcs that the colour red makes things go faster and the Blitzers are the fastest players on the Orc team.

That’s all of the players that I converted from the boxed regiment. For the throwers I stuck with actual Blood Bowl miniatures as at that time I didn’t feel confident converting an Orc to look like he was throwing the ball. They’re both 3rd-edition era models. One is a metal model by Gary Morley, the other is the plastic thrower from the 3rd edition boxed game.

This Troll was another player that was converted from a WFB model, in this case a River Troll by Michael Perry.

An Orc team can include up to 4 goblins. These were among the last models that I added to the team. They’re Gary Morley’s 3rd-edition sculpts.

As ever, I have a collection of supporting staff for the team. The Head Coach is converted from a plastic Orc Warboss model. The apothecary is based on Bad Doc Dreggutz from Gorkamorka. The cheerleaders are 2nd-edition models by Kev Adams. Finally the referee is from Goblin Guild Miniatures, designed by Pedro Ramos. He’s the only non-GW model here.

In addition to touching up the paint job, I also added plates to the backs of several of the players. Previously, only some of the models had anywhere sensible for painting player numbers on their kit, and so had the numbers either just painted onto the backs of their jackets or squeezed onto small pieces of armour at random. By adding the armour plates, I was able to give the players numbers in a more consistent fashion.

Once I’d finished touching up the existing models, I decided to add a couple of Star players, something which the team had previously been lacking. Ugroth ‘Ripper’ Bolgrot (right) is the original 2nd-edition model by Kev Adams. Varag Ghoul-Chewer (left) is the current plastic model that comes in the starter box as well as being available separately. He’s pretty huge: bigger even than the troll. This is the fourth version of this player and I suspect that any of the previous versions would be better scaled with the rest of the team. However, I was able to get this one cheaply from eBay and, size aside, it’s a really great model. As standard it includes a ghoul impaled on a spike on his left shoulder; I wasn’t keen on that but it was easy enough to leave it off and remove the extra bits of strap etc. that were left on the shoulder pad.

Varag Ghoul-Chewer is one of the signature characters of the setting, so rather than painting him to match my team, I painted him in the colours of the Gouged Eye team that he is associated with in the game’s background. I think he’s come out rather well; probably the best Orc I’ve painted for this or any other game.

There are some other star players that can play for Orc teams, but although I do have models for them, I intend to paint them up as part of my goblin team instead of my Orcs, as most of them are actually Goblins (the other is a troll). Fortunately, I have just started painting up a goblin team, which hopefully will be done in a few weeks.