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For as long as I've been playing Blood Bowl I've been aware of the option of a Norse team; available as a set of special rules and with (as I remember) a metal team produced at some point.

I never got around to buying the metal team but I've always wanted to have a Norse BB team, and after playing a Norse team On FUMBBL it made me determined to give it a go.

I had a clear aesthetic in my mind for what the players on the team should look like so I hunter around for the right minis and bits to start assembling the team.

The first port of call was the Chaos Marauders box set from AoS. They have the sort of Viking look I was after and cutting weapons off is a fairly easy conversion.

So my first player was just made entirely as a Marauder (note he doesn't have shoulder pads yet; my supply is limited and I want to make sure everyone has enough before gluing them on).

Next, I started work on the Ulfwereners. While I was bits hunting I'd had some good ideas to make these guys look, well, exactly how I imagined they should look.

First, the 'raw' bits.

The eagle-eyed will recognise Space Wolf Wulfen legs, arms and head, and Blood Warrior body and extra legs.

I wanted the Ulfs to look more bulky in the torso than the rank and file of the team, so the blood warrior was ideal. But I also didn't want any Chaos or Khorne icons so I cut the legs off the body shown and stuck them onto some without any symbols (and with a more dynamic pose too).

I cut the Chaos legs at the knee and tidied up the bottoms, before carefully cutting the Wulfen legs just above the kneepad. When joined, my idea was that this would look like the classic Werewolf with cut-off trousers on, with wolf legs coming out the bottom. The positions of the Wulfen legs also gave a nice running stance.

The Wulfen arms were joined to the body with some pins; all I needed to do to these was carefully remove the armour plugs and techy looking bits. The head and hands are straight out of the Wulfen kit, but I made sure to choose them without any bionics etc.

Sequence of pictures of the build below:

I built up a second Ulf in the same way, with a different pose.




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The gaps in around their shoulders and middles will either be greenstuffed or covered with shoulder pads. So forgive that for now.

I had a bit of a look around for Yhetee/Snow Troll models that I thought fit the bill, and I found a Mantic Snow Troll on ebay which looked great!

The picture below is not my model, but shows what he'll look like assembled. I like how burly he is and I think the shoulder pads make him look 'blood bowl' enough.

I wanted him to be slashing with his right claw, so (because I am mentally ill) I set to work carving the rock away. I wasn't too worried about messing up as it came with a spare hand (with club) which I thought I could use instead with the club cut off, should I need to.

I've just about got the hand to where I'd like it to be before I paint it - bit more carving and filing needed!

Last post of the day - I felt like the heads were important for this project. I could have used the Marauder heads - they are ok, but I didn't particularly like the 'viking horned helmet' look, felt a bit of an easy win and bit cliched.

So, I had a bit of a look around and found Space Wolves heads on a bits site. Perfect. They had a good variety of heads that I thought would fit the different positionals, and it would stop the models just looking like Marauders with no weapons.
Also, Norse are very lightly armoured (in rules and fluff) so I liked the idea of them all having bare heads on the Blood Bowl pitch.

When it came to it, it wasn't as easy as I hoped as they all have moulded details to fit in with power armour around the back of the head, so I had to cut and file each head at the back to remove this and make them fit the Marauder necks.
I think however, that the end result will be good.

below, a Berserker and another Lineman.

Looking good so far, RobS.

Thanks for the comment!

More updates to follow soon.

I test fitted some shoulder pads and it makes a big difference to the overall look.

Love the concept! Nords is a great BB team, if a bit fragile. One of my friends has been playing them for well over a decade (with the old minis) and these are looking good.

Thanks! I love the fluff and I'm getting to grips with them in-game (although I play almost exclusively on FUMBBL - haven't played tabletop for years).

You have to manage them carefully -they are bashy but fragile so you can very easily lose a lot of players very quickly.

I didn't like the horned/winged helmet vibe that the original minis have though.

I'm also planning to use the paint scheme to help identify the positionals - berserkers will have bright red hair, positionals (runners, thrower) blonde and linemen will all have dark hair.

Berserkers will also be completely unarmoured (baresark - without armour), runners/throwers one shoulder pad, linemen and ulfs two shoulder pads.

Ok, another update.

I made the 2nd berserker (note the hand from a human lineman), and the first runner.
As a note on hands, I thought on the Ulfs I could use 1 Wulfen hand and 1 Orc fist (I have some spare Orc Linemen), but it turns out that Orc hands are far too big even for Ulf-size guys. So I had to abandon that idea.

The Runner has 1 ulf hand in a stretched out 'hand off' position. I actually clipped the nails to keep the hand looking human - apart from them it's ok scale-wise.
I also repositioned one leg slightly to give him a more dynamic pose than the LM. Happy with the results so far.




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Just noticed how terrible that Berserker photo is - oh well, I'll take a better one once I've greenstuffed the gaps, etc.

 RobS wrote:
Thanks! I love the fluff and I'm getting to grips with them in-game (although I play almost exclusively on FUMBBL - haven't played tabletop for years).

You have to manage them carefully -they are bashy but fragile so you can very easily lose a lot of players very quickly.

I didn't like the horned/winged helmet vibe that the original minis have though.

I'm also planning to use the paint scheme to help identify the positionals - berserkers will have bright red hair, positionals (runners, thrower) blonde and linemen will all have dark hair.

Berserkers will also be completely unarmoured (baresark - without armour), runners/throwers one shoulder pad, linemen and ulfs two shoulder pads.

Oh yeah, that'll be useful! Biggest problem is always keeping track of who's who and what they have.

They're looking good, I'm looking forward to seeing the team on a pitch.

 skonis wrote:

 RobS wrote:
Thanks! I love the fluff and I'm getting to grips with them in-game (although I play almost exclusively on FUMBBL - haven't played tabletop for years).

You have to manage them carefully -they are bashy but fragile so you can very easily lose a lot of players very quickly.

I didn't like the horned/winged helmet vibe that the original minis have though.

I'm also planning to use the paint scheme to help identify the positionals - berserkers will have bright red hair, positionals (runners, thrower) blonde and linemen will all have dark hair.

Berserkers will also be completely unarmoured (baresark - without armour), runners/throwers one shoulder pad, linemen and ulfs two shoulder pads.

Oh yeah, that'll be useful! Biggest problem is always keeping track of who's who and what they have.

They're looking good, I'm looking forward to seeing the team on a pitch.

You mean in terms of skills etc?

I reckon the best way is paint names on the bases - no confusion then. That's how I used to do it back in the day of 3rd E tabletop.

I'm very much looking forwards to finishing off the conversions and getting paint on them - feels a way to go though and I still have a bit of work to do on my Orc bb team (which is a different Dakka P&M thread!).

Yeah, I always have a sheet with their number, name, and stats. I paint a color coded line on the bases as standard too, in the conventional colors (red blitzer, grey lineman, etc.) .

I'll look in on those orks then!

Updates!

Firstly, I've finished the linemen. I've made 6, which is probably what you'd get if you were to buy a 'boxed set'.

For some rosters I might want more than this but 6 will do for now.

The poses of the linemen are deliberately quite 'static' to provide a contrast with the positionals.


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Just noticed the first pic is blurry - sorry about that. Doesn't help that I keep dropping my phone...

Next I finished the Ulfwerenars - adding armour to their shoulders.

I'm really happy with how these guys look now, properly savage Norse werewolf style.

Obviously the gaps need filling with greenstuff, that's my next task.

I finished the runners - I tried to give them a dynamic, running pose. One of them is handing off, rugby-style, and I included some light armour on one shoulder each; again this is to keep them distinct from the berserkers (no shoulder armour) and the linemen (heavy shoulder armour). The armour I used is actually the leg armour from the Wulfen kit I used for the Ulfwerenars.

Nothing is wasted!

I'll note here that I attempted to make a thrower too, but he looked terrible. The head looks too big and I couldn't make a ball look good in his hands; but I'd never use a thrower in a Norse team anyway!

Lastly, we have the big beast.

The Yhetee is now fully assembled and I'm going to put him on a 40mm base; he just looked wrong on a 32mm like everyone else.

As I've noted above I hacked the rock from his hand and basically sculpted the fingers myself. I think this is looking ok now - it's hard to know when to stop!

Also considering giving that hand a coat of liquid green stuff to cover any of the file/knife marks I can't get out and to blend the texture in a bit.

Any thoughts?

Blodborn updates!

No pictures (as there's no point) but I've now got a basic squad-full of guys. 2 x Berserker 2 x Runner 2 x Ulfwerener 1 x Yhetee and 6 x Lineman.
For some of the rosters I like to use that wouldn't be enough linemen (i.e. I've just started a team with no Berserkers or Yhetee as a low TV low-risk squad which need 7 LM..but...anyway...) and there is no Thrower.
But I'd never see me using a Thrower for norse anyway.

I've green stuffed all the gaps so the next thing is to prime and paint.

I wanted to work out the bases, as I wanted something that looked a bit different. My idea was a barren, gravelly sub-arctic tundra kind of base.
So, I glued some bigger sized gravel to a base and filled in the gaps with sand. After a coat of PVA I painted it black, then Dawnstone, then highlighted with Ulthuan Grey.
It looked fine but...meh...standard.

So I tried again, base coat Mourfang Brown, wash of Nuln Oil, a brushed coat of Karak Stone, wash of Agrax, another drybrush of Karak and a highlight drybrush of Ashabti Bone.

I then glued some very small clumps of flock in to some recesses.

Result:

Once that was all done I added some patchy snow/frost.

This is currently drying. I may then dirty up the snow a bit, especially around footprints.

Pretty happy with the result though.

The Yhetee's base is 40mm so I might have to put a bit more thought into making it look special. Not sure what yet.
Crushed up bones on the base perhaps?

I started painting my yhetee. I had a good plan before starting of both what I wanted the end result would be and how I'd achieve it.
I wanted the fur to look like polar bear fur - sort of off white with lots of depth.

So, I started with an all-over coat of Dawnstone

Next was a wash of Agrax earthshade to give an earthy, dirty look to the recesses.

That gave me the base to work over. Now I started layers of drybrushing.

I started with dawnstone again and all of a sudden I felt like I was getting somewhere.

Karak stone layer...softly softly catchy monkey:

After this I then did a coat of Ushabti Bone but didn't take a photo.

Lastly I did a thorough but light druybrushed coat of Ulthuan grey. I think I'm going to call the fur finished there and move onto the rest of the model.

I might do some careful highlight brushes of pure white if I think it's needed, and I added a light wash of brown (flesh wash) around the feet to show where his feet are dirty.

We have a Yhetee approaching completion!
Metallics are more or less done - skin likewise.

Next is finishing the base and gluing him down on it so I can do the finishing touches to the paint without touching the model.

Then I can focus on the other players.

Yhetee update - nearly done. Just need to finish some details on the belts and he's finished.

So we saw the Yhetee more or less complete - since then I've been working on the first few human (ish) guys on the team.

This is my progress so far:

1 x Ulfwerenar and 1 x Runner almost complete, and the 2nd runner just started.

Originally I'd painted the shoulder pads gold, but I had a rethink and went for the team blue instead, and was much happier with it. Makes it look more like a uniform and more 'sporty'.

Coming together really nicely! Yhetee is particularly impressive.

Norse updates! So I've finished all the bases and attached all the models. Here is a base.

I've gone for a general dead earth/lichenous undergrowth/frost snow - quite pleased with the effect.