Blood Bowl – Carnival of Filth
The new season of Blood Bowl was about to start in our local league and so it was time again to start a new team. After a lot of debating with myself I decided to try a Nurgle team. These teams are a weird mix of strength (Nurgle Warriors and Pestigors) and cannon fodder (Rotters) with a strange big guy (Nurgle Beast) thrown into the mix as well which makes for unique tactics and game plans.
Unfortunately the Rotters team that is currently available from GW is not compatible with the current LRB5 version of the rules. So I had to make my own again. (EDIT: since the December 2008 revamp of the GW online catalogue there is a compatible team available. But too late now…)
This picture shows the team as a whole including the coaching staff. There are more than 16 players. I had made extra Rotters (to be used as Journeymen) and an additional Beastman with the extra arms mutation. The team was made (mostly) from metal WHFB Nurgle Champions, plastic Beastmen and Zombies and an OOP Citadel Nurgle Beast.
The name of the team was to include “Carnival”. The Carnival theme lends itself easily to Chaos and particularly Nurgle teams. Nurgle is sometimes described to be the Chaos God with a sense of humor and the wandering aspect of the circus allows him to spread disease more easily and hide the taint of chaos. Since I prefer trashy B-movie type names, the team ended up as the “Carnival of Filth”
For the color scheme I chose purple quartered with a green/grey harlequin pattern (to go with the Carnival/Circus theme). The miniatures were painted mostly with Citadel colors (”Space Wolf Grey” and “Dark Angel Green” for the diamond pattern) with the exception of the purple – this was “Dioxazine Purple” from Golden Fluid Acrylics. I chose this purple because my favorite GW Purple “Imperial Purple” is no longer available. This project was also the first one that I used the new Citadel Washes on. And I have to say I really liked the outcome.
The Nurgle warriors were converted from the WHFB Nurgle Champion. Actually the whole idea of the team started with this model, because I thought that this model would be great as a BB player. All that was done was to remove the weapon and basic head swaps. The bare horned head was taken from the plastic Beastmen box (one of the Ungor heads) the helmeted heads were converted from Bretonnian Knights’ helmets (which I got from a buddy).
The Pestigors were (more heavily) converted from the WHFB plastic Beastmen Regimen
t box. The weapons were clipped off the hands and the existing manes trimmed off. Then clothing, hair and shoulder pads were added with green stuff. The open outstretched hand of the Pestigor with the extra arms mutation was taken from the plastic Zombie box.
The Rotters were the part of the team where the Jesters/Carnival aspect of the team was to be expressed the most. They were converted from WHFB plastic Zombies. Each one of them had a Jester’s cap modeled with greenstuff. Each one of them also had two shoulder pads added (to show their AV8). And on some of them extra clothing was added (as the original Zombies were a little bit too torn up for me). The bells on the Jester’s caps were little beads that were glued to the end of each point of their caps.
The Beast was an unmodified Beast of Nurgle that is now sadly out of production. I had
managed to order one from GW mail order several years ago for a different project (that never took off). So all I had to do was put it on a flagstone base and add a pennant to paint the number on.
Coaching staff was added in the form of three cheerleaders and three assistant coaches. The cheerleaders were second edition Chaos Cheerleaders. These models were unconverted.
The assistant coaches were converted to reinforce the Sideshow/Circus theme of the team. These were a “Strong Man”, a “Lion Tamer” and a “Tattooed Lady”. The strong man was based on a WHFB plastic Chaos Marauder, the Lion Tamer on a plastic Empire Militia model. The Tattooed Lady started out as a generic 28 mm female from Bronze Age. Each one of them had clothing added or modified with greenstuff and they were also painted in team colors, albeit with the team colors not as dominant as on the player models.
Our league uses 1,000,000 gc for starting teams. So my line-up in the beginning consisted of 3 Warriors, 2 Pestigors, the Beast and 5 Rotters. I also bought 2 rerolls. The first purchases were to be the remaining Beastmen followed by the last Warrior and then rerolls. This would allow me to fire the extra Rotters once they decay too much and hopefully get the odd free one.
In my case no project is ever fully done, they are merely put on hold for a while. Depending on how the season/team develops I might add some more players. I have a spare Nurgle Champion, in case I need to add a Mutation (the ever-so-tasty claw and mighty blow combo for example). There is a chance I add more mutated Beastmen (in case I need another one with an extra arm) and some non-human Rotters (if I manage to infect someone).
Until next time
Lamenter
