The Boys to Entertain You

"Meet the gang ’cause the boys are here —

The boys to entertain you."

"You is not Bloodbowl Players, you is a bunch of--" with these famous last words, Odin Ragnarsson, Coach of the Valhalla Vikings left coaching, and indeed, this plane of existence. The somewhat exuberant style of the Hochland Harlequins has often led their opponents to suspect a certain... elvishness in the boys, a reputation which their fans have picked up on in adopting the theme song to the Cabal Vision Situation Comedy It Don't Alf Itch, Nurgle as their anthem. 

 The main issue with the human team from the new Bloodbowl is the same as the Orcs; the minatures are excellent but you end up with two sets of sex; that is, every miniature is duplicated once. So the first job this time was to do some chopping and changing to make each one unique:

As you'll see later the figure on the right here had a new shoulderpad sculpted from GS. This was ti improve the pose and also help hide the join a little. But I forgot to take a picture so you'll just have to accept my word for it. 

This time the donor kit was some old Catachan Imperial Guard I had kicking around. I wanted to use some Gripping Beast Vikings but they were a touch too small and Catachans were so screamingly butch I knew they'd look good with the colour scheme I had in mind. 

As with the Orcs I wanted to use a rugby team name and settled on the Harlequins; this meant going with a Harlequino colour scheme which, broadly speaking in historical terms, was cream with multi-coloured diamonds. 

The base coat as airbrushed; a cork brown base, then beige for the main colour and finally a 2:1 beige:bone zenithal highlight.

I then did a test figure so I could work out how to place the colours on the plates and do the freehand diamond check on the shoulder pad. This was all done with inks and vallejo transparent paints over the pre-shaded basecoat. Basically, all I was doing was colouring the base. From a technical point of view it required a steady brush but was actually very fast.

Imagine my horror when someone told me you can buy harlequin transfers for Eldar from GW. 

 

So It was pretty quick to copy the scheme across the whole team. I left the shoes and helmets so I could colour code for positions. 

 

And here they are with the colour codes applied,

Standard Bloodbowl basing; 2mm static grass and foundation white for the markings. Blood was the now traditional transparent red and gloss black. 

Here's the final team shots in daylight so you can glory in the full kitsch value of the strip:

The team comprises of 4 Blitzers:

2 catchers and 1 Thrower

And a whole bunch of linesmen. 

I also knocked off the templates

The view from the back is not quite so bright, but it does show off the airbrushed shading. 

This now means that Bloodbowl 2016 is completed. 

Very happy with this and looking forward to the first match with the new kit.