Blog Tlaxtlan Terrors: The Respawning

I love Bloodbowl. It is perhaps the greatest 'specialist game' ever created by GW (with BFG coming a close second). Probably the main reason for this is twofold; you require very few models to play it, and no terrain collection.

Anyway, amongst others one of my fav teams was/is the Lizardmen. I got into them when their first BB rules appeared in Citadel Journal 22, circa 1997. The models were, like those in the original CJ article, converted from the plastic models of the day. Crude but effective.

As time went by, and the team progressed (there was a regular BB league at GW Eastbourne back then) I added the star player, using the Temple Guard champion model. I realised then that the mini stegadon skull helmet was the coolest thing since, er, dinosaur accessories.

I slowly went about replacing the plastic Saurus with Temple Guard (the Palanquin bearers from the Slann kit being the best) and considered cutting up models to get the skull helms onto my Skinks and Kroxigor. Fortunately, GW released the Skink shaman who more such a helm, better yet, his head was an individual piece!

Fast forward 10 or more years and today I have the remains o that once feared team in need of some serious TLC.

You can get a vague idea of them from this pic taken a while back;



Many of the Saurus are missing an arm, there are incomplete Skink conversions (made to replace the old plasics), and I have a small tub of bits for conversions I planned long ago.

At first I considered replacing/renewing the whole team with the GW BB Lizardman team, but they are AWFUL models.
Then there was the idea of tracking down the uber-rare, uber-expensive Lizardman team from a Games Day 10 years back. Fail.

Recently I considered using the current plastics. Having seen other peoples' attempts a the same, it seems that the most simply snip off the weapons and leave it at that. This nearly put me off. However, I am the conversion king and plant to add various green stuff extras, repositioning, odds and sods to make the models look like they truly belong on the Blood Bowl pitch (rather than having strolled off of a battlefield and ended up there).

So far I've got hold of 5 plastic Temple Guard and a Kroxigor and have begun assembling them:











I plan to get hold of Chakax for Saurus #6, and of course I need some skinks. With a little luck I can pick some up from here (I assume there's a trading post? Not looked yet).

The skinks will have stegadon skull helms, cut from the left over TG heads I have.

For painting I'm going for traditional turquoise with the odd purple player thrown in for good measure. 'Metal' areas I'm considering painting as obsidian, whilst any 'team colour' areas will be yellow.

I also have a Mage Priest for the head coach who's getting the albino treatment.

Dang! Good looking conversions. The new TG kit has endless bits and opportunities for this kind of stuff. Oh, and the Saurus kit has a few shoulder pads that you could steal.

I liked the old BB Krox. That arm spike weapon and his pose just wouldn't let me pass him up. He's all painted up in my plog if you wanna see him.

Looking forward to the rest!

Yay, Blood Bowl for the win, and my wife actually likes to play it too.

Bits and things going on...

Preparing bases for swamp/waterlogged pitch shenanigans:





Shoulder pads...








A bit more work on the Kroxigor...





Also, have been thinking about the Skinks. Experimenting with removing the skull helms from leftover plastic Temple Guard heads didn't go so well

The two interesting helmeted heads from the Stegadon kit are proving impossible to find, plus, to be honest I don't like the current plastic skinks. So I'm sniffing around for old metal ones in interesting poses that won't be too hard to convert. Still not sure what to do about the skull helms. Any ideas?

This Skink has a pretty nice helmet. Only $9 in the US and he's still a part of the current range. Should be pretty easy to get your hands on a few of these models rather than those extra bits from the Steggy.



You could vary the Skink helms by cutting them differently too. Like some would only have the top half of the helm while others get the whole thing. It'd probably be pretty easy to fill in the gaps on the helmet with greenstuff to make it look more like a skull if you aren't a fan of the markings.