I thought it had been a while since I showed you a proper update on where I’m at with my Blood Bowl team, Da Mighty Redz, and so I present to you my two Black Orc Blockers – Daglash and Burga.
Yes, those of you who know your Sports Ball will recognise those names as close approximations of Dalglish and Burger – two of my favourite Liverpool FC players. Their numbers even match, though Daglash is technically ‘Also 7’ as a lot of good players have worn the No.7 shirt at Liverpool so there’ll be another ‘7’ joining my team soon. There’s not much of a similarity in looks though…
But the other thing I wanted to talk about in this post is subtle conversions, and differentiating paint jobs that can help to add some individualisation and personality to your teams. My heart sank initially when I first learnt that all the teams were made up of 6×2 models – six pairs if you like, of identical players. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time doing heavy conversions and changing stances.
So in order to give them some individuality, I took a two stage approach – minor conversions, and paint jobs. And thankfully, Orcs are probably the easiest team to do this work on as they’re supposed to look a bit more battered and smashed up.
Minor Conversions:
- Spikes – Add/Remove some of the hundreds of spikes that appear all over this team. Take one from a shoulder, and add it to a helmet. Take a couple from a knee pad, and add those removed spikes to a gauntlet or knuckle duster. Rinse and repeat.
- Scratches – Using a craft knife, just cut a few additional scratches into the edges of the armour. Don’t go overboard, but a few here and there.
- Holes – One or two only. Use something like the smallest bit in the citadel hand drill kit to make a couple of holes in the armour.
- Green Stuff – Does he have a plume? Add a few more hairs to it. Does he have a bit of cloth hanging down? Make it a little longer. Keep it simple and small, and make sure it’s different on each model.
Do this to each pair (ensuring that you keep things different) and along with the basing, you can get some real individualism into each member. Some will say that without changing the poses, this won’t be enough, but remember this – as someone who has played both Rugby and American Football, I can tell you that individualism in your stance isn’t something that’s desirable. In fact, it can get you injured pretty quickly. Good form on a player looks pretty much the same for every player. There’s only one best stance, and your guys are both good at it (they’re pros) so that’s enough. It shows that they’re pros.
Painting Changes:
*Remember, when it comes to colours, keep your armour all the same in terms of base colours and highlighting. In my team, this means red and silver with white details and the same ‘flaming torch’ emblem on their right shoulder. But everything else…
- Boots – Have you seen footballers’ boots recently? The days of plain black boots are long gone, so go wild with the colours.
- Trousers – You might want them a bit more uniform for other teams, but for Orcs, these can be changed around. Greys and Browns are your friends here.
- Skin Tone – every race has a wonderful rainbow of skin tones to choose, so don’t stick to the same formula for each. (Black Orcs aren’t the best example of this as I wanted to keep them both dark, but other team members have more widely varying tones as you can see in this post)
- Numbers & Details – Obvious one; each number gets a different number. And change where you put some of the other details. My ‘Orcidas’ stripes are a good example.
- Effects – When adding mud, scratches or rust patches, you’ll naturally be a bit more random, and that’s great. Different locations for rust really helps to set them apart.
And that’s about it. Well, that’s how I’ve done it. I’m not trying to teach you anything advanced here, but the whole team is starting to really come together and thanks to these methods, there isn’t too much of a mirror-image-vibe going on.
Here are the two blitzers that I’ve just undercoated (they’re the final part of the boxed team left for me to paint) and you can see a couple of subtle conversions in there. As for the paint jobs, these Black Orc Blockers demonstrate how to keep them in uniform, but both individual.
With that, I shall leave you for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed checking out what I’m working on, and that this gave you a few ideas to help make your identical duos a little less identical. Hopefully I’ll have the whole team ready to show you soon. Onwards!
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If you’re worried about two models the same, another, much more simple tactic that I have occasionally been known to implement is (drum roll, this is a biggy!) put them on different sides of the pitch! 😉 You don’t need your black orcs to stand next to each other…
That’s an option, but sometimes you do want your Black Orcs next to each other. between them they can make your line very tough to break through. A couple of Blitzers with their Block skill and you can pretty much bully everyone except monsters and star players. And when they’re standing side by side, I like them to look at least a little different. 🙂