This came about because I love dwarfs, possibly my favourite Warhammer race (it really would be a hard choice between dwarf, chaos [Nurgle in particular] and Kislev). But to date GW have never really got the models quite right to my eye, they have always been just short of the awesome artwork.
That's been fixed now with the new Ironbreakers/Irondrakes and Hammerers/Longbeardsbox sets, not to mention the characters and gyro-copter.
So I set about by picking up a box of each along with the slayer character and a gyro-copter to figure out how to build a team.
Below is what I came up with, which was finished in time for the NAF Champs and went on to win me my second best painted award in as many trips to this tourney.
Very pleased with that, it means a lot to win best painted anywhere, but at a 160 player tourney and against some very stiff competition it means even more.
I'm also going to take this opportunity to talk a bit about how the team was built because not only are the models nice but it is worth considering that many of GW's current plastic kits loan themselves very well to building BB teams from.
To put that in some context, Jervis didn't recognise these as GW models at first when he saw them at the weekend, seeing them without weapons and shields, and out of context, threw him for a loop and he thought they were from one of the indy manufacturers. I think that says quite a bit about the quality of some of the indy teams on the market, but also about what can be achieved with some of the plastic kits and, to be honest, very little conversion work or imagination.
And for what you get the price isn't always that bad either.
So, if you are still here, here are some pictures, and after an introduction like that the perfect place to start would be with two Avatars Of War plastic dwarf slayers
Why AoW dwarfs
Well, the new GW dwarf slayer character is a great model, but I felt a bit too dynamic to have duplicated within a BB team. The AoW plastics are a perfect match scale wise, and being sculpted by someone who once worked for GW and has put his stamp on the GW dwarf range, the style matches very well also.
After blagging a couple of frames of unused models from a club mate with a huge dwarf WFB army I selected the legs I wanted to use based on which allowed for the greatest amount of metal work, this being a major feature of the team as a whole.
The arms come from the GW Ironbreakers and are used to give the slayers that bit more coherency with the rest of the team. Slayers may not normally wear armour, but I felt it was worth this break from the norm to add that coherency and as a nod to the idea of football armour/padding.
Next up, the Blitzers:
These are made exclusively from Hammerer parts. The helmets, the style of the arms, these are both things that make the models stand out clearly from all their team mates. Also the idea fits; in WFB Hammerers are the elite guard of dwarf lords and nobles, so it fits that that the glamourous role of blitzer in the BB world (which is after all a parody of the WFB world where football has replaced war) would fall to this elite cadre.
This also guided my choices for what parts to use on the other positionals. I decided that I'd stick with the scale mail armour of the Hammerer/Longbeard models for the blitzers, runners, star players and sideline staff, and use the heavy plate armoured torsos of the Ironbreaker/Irondrakes as linemen.
Onto the Runners:
So, as with the blitzers these two boys wear scale mail. I feel this represents well the higher mobility and AG of these positions, and makes them very obvious on the pitch.
Unlike the blitzers these two boys have arms from the Ironbreakers set. This gives a strong visual link with the slayers and the line, and further helps to make the blitzers unique.
Another simple way to mark the runners was to give them both bare heads; it makes them visible and I feel explains their lower AV, something replicated by necessity on the slayers and by design on one of the star players later on.
There aren't any bare heads on the Hammerer/Longbeard frames useable though as the only ones included are specific to the command models; drummers and the like, so the heads used are both from the Ironbreaker/Irondrake box set. Not a perfect fit it must be said due to the designs of the torsos, but an easy trim to make fit on plastics.
Finally, both of these models wear catchers mitts taken from the plastic human team from the BB starter set. Another touch to set them apart and attempt to show their role within the game.
Number 1 wears a bandana as a reference to his previous incarnation in the original team, along with an honourific seal on his shoulder to represent Fan Favourite, an attribute picked up during the club perpetual league.
Next up, we're on to the linemen/blockers:
Numbers 7, 8, and 9.
Numbers 10, 11, and 12.
Numbers 13, 14, and 15.
These are simple models, no conversion required. Lovely.
It is a simple matter to cut away weapons, and a bit of work can remove any sign they were ever there at all.
On all of the empty hands I've drilled a small way in to the top of the fist, creating a divot which can then be attacked with a needle file to create a natural look.
The lower, inside part of the fist has had the remnants of the weapon hafts carefully trimmed away also and a more natural look created again by attacking the palms and fingers with a needle file.
Another benefit of these models is the ball and socket style shoulder joints.
Normally, when ranked up in a regiment, this won't mean much as the models will fall into very similar stances to add a regimented, shield-wall look, and for ease of ranking the models, but when used to create a BB team these ball and socket joints are a blessing. They allow for sufficient variety of pose and suggestion of movement in the models that all look unique on the pitch and all capture at least some small sense of motion.
You may have noticed that all the players feature circular plates on their backs to display team numbers.
These are a very easy thing to add.
All plastic sprues have 'feet' on them; small, circular nubs that stick out and are designed to prevent the sprues rubbing together whilst packed in a box, which can cause damage to fragile parts.
These feet are perfect for number plates. Simply cut them from the sprue and trim (CAREFULLY!) with a craft knife. Then glue them to the player's back, shoulder, wherever, and instant number plate!
Finally for this post, no dwarf team is complete without a Death Roller:
Ok, so it's a gyro-copter.
I love the model; it's small, compact, and looks incredibly dwarfish and brutal. Whilst trying to decide if I could justify using it I remembered a scene from the film 28 Weeks Later, in which a helicopter flies low over a field full of zombies, tilting its rotors towards the ground and cutting them into sushi whilst risking a terrible accident.
That was all the justification I needed.
The model features the directional rotors from the gyro-bomber (same box set) in place of the traditional gyro-copter fins with drop bombs, for a bit more blending power.
At the front the steam gun was trimmed away so that the ball mount could be reversed in the socket (the standard model features a positionable steam gun, a nice feature but one I didn't need) to give a nice, smooth domed plate on which to place the player number.
And that is it really for the team itself. Very little work required for a very characterful team.
In the next post I'll share the star players and sideline staff.
Thanks for looking, and if you managed to read all of that, you show great fortitude
Cheers,
JT.
and i love the way that even the armour has a rustic purple to it.
