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So welcome to my first Dakka P&M blog.
I'm never going to win any awards for my painting but I thought posting my progress might help me believe there is any progress; I paint very slowly and so even painting up a Blood Bowl team will take me some time.

I got back into the hobby in the Autumn of 2018; my son found some of my old Space Wolves and wanted to know all about them. I ended up buying him some new Space Marines to paint, and myself some Khorne Berserkers. I also started picking up White Dwarf to flick through, and that's where I was reminded of Blood Bowl.

I bought him (me, really) the BB boxed game for Christmas, and had already decided to build a new Orc team (I always played Orcs back in the day).

So this blog will be a record of my team, hopefully showing them completed in a couple of months.

So first I had to do two things
1. Decide on the colour scheme. I like to keep my colours simple, so I decided to do black armour with yellow decorations (a triangular yellow 'fang' on each of the main armour panels). Black armour is something I wanted to practice painting. As the Crooked Fang is loosely based on the Crookfang Orruk tribe I wanted to keep the rest of the colours quite rustic, so light browns, greys and lots of bare metal would make up the rest of the colour scheme.

2. Convert up the extra positionals to fill out the roster; no one uses just two Blitzers and two Black Orcs. I wanted 4 of each. So I found a bitz dealer and ordered some AoS Orc Boys and Black Orc bits. I had decided that I wanted each member of the team to be as unique as possible, so I combined all my bits with some cutting and sticking to make 4 individual Black Orcs, and 4 individual Blitzers. I've pictured the BO's below but I mysteriously didn't take a picture of the pre-paint Blitzers; I'd managed to find some extra plumes, so the head plumes mark out the Blitzers from the rank and file. I also did some arm swaps on the linemen, just so no two models are identical.

Next I got all the models primed black (apart from one, the Goblin, which I primed white. More of him later).

I've always painted over black and although I knew it would make it a bit of a challenge to get the yellow looking bright, I thought it would suit the rest of the models.

I picked a lineman to use as my test model, to try out the colour scheme and also to practice painting Orc flesh.
I haven't painted any Orcs at all since I was about 14, so did a bit of research on methods, and on this very site I found a crazy technique.

The guy painted his Orcs bu first painting the skin with bleached bone (yeah, I know, right?!), then shading them with Agrax Earthshade, then going over all that with a wash of Biel-Tan green. I thought it sounded a totally weird way of doing things, but then I looked at the final result and was astonished. Firstly, it looked good, second, it had the deep contours I like from Orc skin, and third, it looked simple and repeatable. The only tricky but was addiing a few bright green highlights to the skin at the very end.
I thought about it and thought that actually, starting with a normal skin tone might be even better; the very final highlight of Orc flesh is often Kislev Flesh or Rakarth Flesh, so if I used that it wouldn't matter if the wash left the very edges a bit bare. It might look good. Anyway, I thought it was worth a try.

First base coat of Kislev Flesh with a wash of Agrax Earthshade:

The a couple of quick coats of Biel-Tan Green Wash:

Then I more or less finished all the other colours, highlighted the flesh with Moot Green and left him to await the completion of the rest of his team (which is when I intend to weather his armour - I thought that'd be easier to do as a big batch).

So the next thing I wanted to do was check how the colour scheme would work for a Black Orc and for a Goblin.

So I gave both a coat of Kislev Flesh, and shaded the BO with Nuln Oil (so the recesses of his skin would be really dark black/green) and the Goblin with normal fleshwash.

Then I went over both with the green wash, and I've highlighted up the BO's skin (with Warboss Green rather than Moot Green). The Goblin is kind of on hold though - it just doesn't look as good and so I'm trying to get my motivation together to tidy him up! Pictures below.

So to finish up the start of my WIP I'll post the others I have at various states of unfinished. The ones on bases are closest to being done, the ones still standing on bent paperclips are very much In Progress. Happy with how the Thrower is coming along though.

A quick update - two more linemen more or less finished.

Think I've got my recipe for black armour sorted. I was planning some complex procedure of going over a lot of the armour with a black/dawnstone mix to actually make most of the armour dark grey (you can see that on the 1st Lineman min above) but actually I think it's a bit unnecessary; on these I've highlighted the edges with dawnstone and I'm going to apply a final highlight of lighter grey (when I've bought the right colour) and call it done.

Thought I'd post my progress on the next couple of Black Orcs, and also show before and after of the skin washing. I really enjoy it - it's quick and suddenly they look like Orcs!

So, I've been silent but I've been beavering away painting...meanwhile glaciers have slid into the sea, the grass has grown and the continents have continued to drift apart...

I'm saying I'm slow.

Anyway, a bit of progress. Two more BOBs at substantial completion and a bit of a team shot. 10 at present with 1 blitzer and 1 BOB left to go.

Really enjoyed reading through your progress, the Orcs are looking great!


I really like the yellow, it really stands out against the dark armour. How do you get the yellow so bright on top of the black?

Cool orks!

I little bit converted guys looks much better then boxed team!

Hope Nuffle will bless your team

Aash wrote:
Really enjoyed reading through your progress, the Orcs are looking great!


I really like the yellow, it really stands out against the dark armour. How do you get the yellow so bright on top of the black?

Thanks for the kind comments.

I'm not a great painter, I just try to get a good table top finish.

All the rough bits will be more obvious when I take some proper, well lit photos once they are complete!

Regarding the yellow- I blocked out the shape in white first, a couple of thin coats. Then I painted yellow over the top, again two thin coats. There are some where I did it in one thick coat and the finish is noticeably rougher.

Quick update just to prove I'm still alive.

Last Black Orc in scruffy progress.

Last Black Orc at practical completion.

Bit of tidying up, transfers and armour weathering to go, but I'm going to do that all en masse once I've finished Blitzer No.4.

And Blitzer No.4 is the unmodified stock model from the BB box. So a bit boring.

Orc in Progress.

See what I did there?

Last member of the team getting painted, then once he's based it's time for transfers, armour damage and then we're done!

So all 12 Orcs are now on their bases and more or less painted (I probably still have a fair amount of tidying up to do), and with number transfers added.
I have, unpainted, a goblin and 2 or 3 extra linemen. But at the moment I think 12 is enough, which would be a roster of 4 x Blitzer, 4 x Black Orc, 1 x Thrower and 3 x Linemen. That's what I'd use up to about 1600-1700 TV when I might want a deeper bench.

Krakendoomcool has given me some great tips on armour damage on his own BB team blog (check it out - it's great https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/757210.page), so I thought I'd post some pics showing how I'd painted the armour damage on mine.

Pic 1 - this is the BOB more or less finished and undamaged.

Pic 2 - I've picked out some areas in the highlight colour (Dawnstone) that will be where I paint the armour damage.
These minis often have armour chips sculpted on, so I tried to make sure I picked out these with Dawnstone as well as the edges of plates that I thought would get a lot of impacts.

I made the Dawnstone 'blob' bigger than the chip as it shows where the chip has caused the paint to flake back.

Oh man, these close up pics really show off how scruffy my painting is! When I take some proper pictures I'll make sure to stand a lot further away...maybe turn the lights off too.

Pic 3 - I filled in the blob of Dawnstone with Mournfang brown. Kind of obvious but I followed the shape of the Dawnstone so it just left a thin line of Dawnstone visible, as a highlight.

Got a couple of pictures of this stage.

On the lineman I also experimented with applying a little damage to the yellow areas, just in the form of flaked paint rather than armour chips - this couldn't be easier, I just put some blobs of black over the yellow. That's all.
I have got a way of painting full armour chips onto the yellow but I don't have pictures of that yet.

Pic 4 - then I filled in the brown with Leadbelcher to show the metal of the armour showing through.

The very last stage (again not pictured) is to give the damaged areas a wash of Nuln Oil and maybe some Reikland Flesh to darken the tones down a bit and to give a metallic corrosion effect.

Project Finished!

I thought that to wrap this up and to show the individual minis (because one of the main aims when starting this was that they are all unique), I could post a shot of each with their Bio and stats from their counterpart team on FUMBBL (where I play this team quite a lot).

I'll go through the team starting with the captain.

(I also realised I forgot a team shot - I'll have to go back and do that).

Player No. - 1
Name - Krookfang Krag
Position - Blitzer (and captain)
MA - 6
ST - 3
AG - 4
AV - 9
Skills - Block, Dodge, Sure Hands
Games - 25
Touchdowns - 8
Casualties - 7
SPPs - 50

Captain Fantastic - Krag does it all. The team's main ball carrier and touchdown scorer, but equally adept at punching people in the face.

Player No. - 2
Name - Grognuk Ironfang
Position - Blitzer
MA - 7
ST - 3
AG - 4
AV - 9
Skills - Block
Games - 20
Touchdowns - 7
Casualties - 0
SPPs - 27

Also known as the Elforc - Grognuk causes the opposition headaches, both as they try to pin him down or keep up with him, and also literal headaches when he stamps on them.

Player No. - 3
Name - Ghazgut Gorg
Position - Blitzer
MA - 7
ST - 3
AG - 3
AV - 9
Skills - Block, Guard, Mighty Blow, Tackle
Games - 24
Touchdowns - 5
Casualties - 11
SPPs - 52

Ghazgut is without doubt the Crooked Fang's star player, or more precisely the star hitter. Highest SPP and highest number of casualties in the team, he's hard to escape and hard to stand up to.

Player No. - 4
Name - Balcmeg Furk
Position - Blitzer
MA - 6
ST - 3
AG - 3
AV - 9
Skills - Block
Games - 2
Touchdowns - 0
Casualties - 0
SPPs - 0

The team's rookie Blitzer, called up recently to replace the stalwart if unimpressive Igniz Brooz (who retired with a niggling injury). Hoping he will blossom into a hitter in the mould of Ghazgut Gorg.

Player No. - 5
Name - Igga the Arm
Position - Thrower
MA - 5
ST - 3
AG - 3
AV - 8
Skills - Pass, Sure Hands, Block, Kick-Off Return
Games - 25
Touchdowns - 1
Completions - 1
Casualties - 2
SPPs - 18

A thrower who doesn't really throw. Or touch the ball much. Igga is nevertheless an essential cog in the Crooked Fang machine. We just don't know what that part does.

Player No. - 6
Name - Rok Ed
Position - Blocker
MA - 4
ST - 4
AG - 2
AV - 9
Skills - Block
Games - 9
Touchdowns - 0
Casualties - 2
SPPs - 1

Rok Ed is never seen without his rock, which he carries everywhere for good luck. It tends to work, only because when he hits opposing players with it, it's definitely bad luck for them.

Player No. - 7
Name - Acker
Position - Blocker
MA - 4
ST - 4
AG - 2
AV - 9
Skills - Block
Games - 24
Touchdowns - 0
Casualties - 0
SPPs - 15

Acker is currently attempting to master the dark Blood Bowl art of 'gettin' in da way'. He's making progress, just needs to make sure he gets in the way of the opposition and not his own team.

Player No. - 8
Name - Big Vog
Position - Blocker
MA - 4
ST - 4
AG - 2
AV - 9
Skills - Block, Guard
Games - 24
Touchdowns - 0
Casualties - 9
SPPs - 28

The rock in the heart of the Crooked Fang's defence, Big Vog lets the opposition break on him. Literally. They break into really small pieces sometimes.

Player No. - 9
Name - Donk Dedard
Position - Blocker
MA - 4
ST - 4
AG - 2
AV - 9
Skills - none
Games - 2
Touchdowns - 0
Casualties - 0
SPPs - 5

Another new face, Donk will hopefully grow into a solid lump of nasty dark green Orc muscle.