The Konigsburg Kings

Longtime followers of the blog might remember that at the start of each year I tend to set myself a set of challenges, that are largely ignored for the majority of the year only to pop up again in my end of year post. This year, one of my challenges to myself was to complete 52 painted miniatures over the course of the year, averaging one a week. Mid November, I looked back at the challenges and was reminded of this, and saw that I had 15 more miniatures to complete in order to hit this challenge. 

I briefly considered chipping away at it with a selection of odds and ends from the painting queue, but then though what better for a last dash, Hail Mary finish than a Blood Bowl Team?

A Blood Bowl team alone wouldn't be enough to hit the target though, so I also dug out this classic sculpt: 

I am not a fan of painting stripes. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out though, even if I did put off finishing him until last in order to delay having to paint the stripes!

Also, a Coach model that I converted many moons back, when I'd first planned this team:

He's an old Empire Engineer that has had his repeater pistol removed and replaced with a scroll from the Mordheim accessory sprue added (to represent either some complex play plan or perhaps a players contract), as well as having a cigar added by greenstuffing over a short length of cut paperclip that was pinned between two of his fingers! I also filed off the detail on his medallion, and added a tiny greenstuff football, to make an amulet to Nuffle. I was sure I had some WIP pictures of the conversion saved somewhere, but alas they may be on another, long-dead laptop.

Here's a picture with flash to give you a better idea of there actually being some colour on the model:

And a rear view:

I thought that his satchel of scrolls worked nicely as a bag of plays. I forget how I justified leaving the hammer on him when I was doing the conversion work...

When I planned this team way back when, I think I lifted the list almost entirely from an old White Dwarf Blood Bowl tactics article, which included a roster featuring the Mighty Zug:

He's a lovely little chunk of metal, not really done justice by these poorly lit pictures... Hmm, I need to go back and add some gloss varnish to the gem on his kneepad though...

And so, on to the team itself:

The team is mostly metal figures, supplemented with a couple of the main game box set plastics to fill out the roster. Uncle Johnny gifted me the metals yonks ago, as he is something of a 2nd Edition Blood Bowl purist and finds these Gary Morley sculpted figures a little flatly posed. For me, however, this is the era of figures I nostalgically remember!

Four blitzers for maximum bashing.

The numeric markings on the players are transfers (I figured that I should mark them, just in case I ever play in a League rather than just popping these on a shelf forevermore) - I'd originally misremembered the transfers in the Blood Bowl box set being white, but upon digging them out to apply it turned out they were black, and so would have been almost invisible on the blue pads of my players...

Enter the old faithful Cadian transfer sheet, which with some careful cutting and judicious applications of Micro Sol and Micro Set furnished me with numbers 1-11, as well as a threatening looking skull for Star Player Zug.

I'd like to pretend that I did a ton of research into how Blood Bowl teams should be numbered, but in reality I had a quick google search, and then rearranged what I found to put the catchers in positions 10 and 11, purely because I didn't fancy trying to fit a large '10' transfer onto a single shoulder pad, whereas I new that I could scavenge smaller '1' and '0' transfers from the Cadian transfer sheet to make the higher numbers that would then fit onto the tiny shields that the Catchers sport. Trying to line up those tiny transfers was a pain though, believe me...

Other things I learned whilst painting this team: if you bought a pot of Stirland Mud when it first came out to try and haven't really used it since and it's dried out somewhat, you can in fact bring it back to life by mashing it up with some Acrylic Thinner (that admittedly you accidentally bought when you meant to buy enamel thinner but hey looks like it worked out after all):

Finishing this team brings the Tally to:

52 vs 0 = +52

and as well as bringing me to 52 painted miniatures, also lets me cross another thing off the challenge list, as they're a playable 'force':

2018 Challenge:

• Finish something years old
• Finish something pre-blog old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Paint something from the stripping pot
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Build a wargames board
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Open Star Wars Imperial Assault and paint all the miniatures from it
• Paint all the miniatures needed to replace the tokens in the Imperial Assault Core Game
• Paint a complete box of miniatures (either a full regiment or starter)
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Batman)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted)
• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics
• Finish a member of the Nextwave team
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

Here's another picture of the Konigsburg kings (and yes, I realise that that makes them the kingtown kings, that's the sort of redundant humour I enjoy) that I retook with slightly better lighting:

I may come back and add a little crown emblem to their helmets one day, but for now I'm calling them done!