Lots of photos of miniatures in this post, so if you found my posts last year about my Epic Chaos boring, you might want to skip this one.

Some time last month, the subject came up of the game of Blood Bowl, and I ended up offering to teach some people how to play. Having dug out my teams, however, I couldn’t help but notice that my human players were not very well painted (I painted them almost a decade ago, and even then was aiming for a quick and simple job rather than getting them to look particularly lovely). Since I was getting them out and using them, this meant they would get looked at, and so I started thinking about re-painting them. When I discovered that I could re-paint a human player in under an hour (thanks to the models’ relative simplicity and the fact that the existing paint job mostly served as an acceptable undercoat), this led to one of the most intensive painting binges I have ever managed, as I repainted twelve players in three days. Having re-done all of the players I had painted before, I then moved on to painting the additional models that I previously hadn’t got around to: a couple of spare human players, an ogre, some of my cheerleaders and the balls. Having done those, I then moved on to my orc team, and painted them up as well, along with a couple of goblin star players. Having returned to my humans last night and painting up the last two cheerleaders, I have now painted every Blood Bowl model I own. Accordingly, here are some photos of them.

First up, here’s my human team, the Pfeildorf Pirates, in all its glory:

Here are the flashiest players, my three blitzers:

Three catchers. Note that one of them doesn’t have a number. I’ll paint one on once I add him to a team that I’m actually playing with in a league, but for now the model is a spare.

A pair of throwers.

Six linemen. Again, one of them is spare, and won’t be given a number until he’s added to a team.

The heavy-hitter of the team, my ogre. Not technically a human player, but human teams can include up to one ogre to beef up the front line.

I originally converted this model to represent a star player taken from the old Blood Bowl computer game. However, the player in question was ludicrously over-powered, and with Star Players no longer available as permanent members of a team now anyway I don’t use him any more. When I came to repaint the team, I re-used the model to represent my team’s head coach:

Finally, five cheerleaders. These were fun to paint, but also difficult as they didn’t look right without properly painting the eyes (eyes are about the most difficult thing there is to paint on a model).
(Although it’s hard to see in the photo, I did the ogre’s eyes as well, but, like the rest of his face, his eyes are bigger than usual, and therefore significantly easier.)

EDIT: Shortly after posting this, I got a few extra models and painted them up. The extra blitzer, catcher and linemen are all the same as the ones I already had, so there’s no real need for photos of them, but I also converted this apothecary:

Next up is my orc team. I only have a basic starting team of twelve players for the orcs. Most of them are actually converted from Warhammer orc models.

Here’s a group shot of the team in its entirety:

Starting again with the blitzers. Both of these were painted a few years ago.

Four black orc blockers. The two on the left were painted a while back; those on the right are recent.

I only have the one orc thrower. This is the only model on the orc team that was originally sold as a Blood Bowl player. The model is older than that of the other orcs, and pre-dates the redesign that GW’s orc models underwent in the late nineties. Fortunately, throwers are not as tough as other orc players, so the slightly smaller and weedier-looking model is still suitable. This model was painted a few years ago.

Four orc linemen. These are all recent except the one with the blue wristband, whom I painted a while ago.

And finally, a troll. Trolls don’t have the intelligence to form their own teams, so they play for orc and goblin teams instead.

I also have a couple of goblin star player models. Unfortunately, neither can join either of my teams under the current rules, although the bombardier may be hired for one-off games by the orcs. Both are armed with illegal secret weapons: a sack of bombs and a chainsaw:

Last, but not least, here’s a picture of my balls: