Hey everyone,
my original plan was to have a closer look at Blackstone Fortress as my next post, but seeing how I have decided to give myself the box as a Christmas present, I think this will have to wait until I actually have the models in front of me and can mess around with them a bit. For today, allow me to share something I painted earlier this week: When another joint painting session with my good friend Annie came up earlier this week, I knew I really wanted to bring along something for my Blood Bowl team, the Orkheim Ultraz:
As I have mentioned before, Annie is a huge Blood Bowl fiend, so getting her input on something related to the game was really helpful. Plus there’s an inherent goofiness and irreverence to the BB setting that can serve as a rather nice palate cleanser, every now and then. Fortunately enough, I had just the thing for our hobby session: a set of counters, re-roll markers and tokens I had converted earlier this year:
When the new Blood Bowl was released, I really liked how the team sprues include those nifty little counters and tokens. Now my original impulse was to just grab the Orc tokens via ebay, but in the end, I decided it was much cooler to create a couple of custom markers for my own team — I certainly did have enough Orc bitz knocking about, after all (granted, I caved in regarding the balls and just painted the new ones. But I did get them as a present, plus that squig ball is just too good…).
Anyway, the markers were already sitting in a drawer, all prepared and undercoated for an eventual painting session, so I was ready to go:
I was even able to add yet another marker to the collection, finding a bit that I had thought lost for good. Anyway, here’s what I had after our painting session:
A nice little collection, wouldn’t you agree? Let’s take a closer look:
First up, a couple of tokens based on fantasy orc shields. These are fairly close to the coin-like tokens that appear on the new team sprues as well. Nothing too complicated, really, but it was nice to find a use for those old orc shields at long last:
I also made two tokens based on a nifty troll-skull bit that originally came with the “Battle for Skull Pass” WFB starter set, and it looks like it was actually made to be used like this:
These are also a good match for my team because the Troll serving as a Big Guy in my team actually has the same design (as he’s from that same starter box):
You better give it your all, buddy, or your skull could end up right next to the others 
Now on the last counter, I probably got a bit carried away, but I wanted to build something a bit bigger and more ostentatious, basically somethings the Ultraz use as a totem (to invoke the spirit of Nuffle, perchance?) as well as a trophy collection:
Again, this is really just a small collection of leftover bitz, with a WFB Black Orc standard at its centre — this also provided me with the chance to finally paint the iconic Evil Sun as part of one of my models
I also had a bit of fun adding the head of an unlucky human player to the base:
Seems like this guy has had his last Blood Bowl game…
Of course I had to make sure the markers fit the rest of my team, so muddy brown and static grass it was for the basing. I also replicated the colours and markings of the players’ armour on the bigger totem
When all was said and done, this was a really refreshing little hobby project, and a lot of fun to work on: Custom markers, objectives and similar objects often fall by the wayside in favour of “actual” models, but it can be supremely rewarding to give a bit more attention to creating them, making something that really rounds out your collection of models.
So that’s it for this week: I’ll be heading back to the painting desk to finish a few models for this year. And, of course, we’ll be starting with this year’s Eternal Hunt Awards next week, so keep watching this space!
Until then, I would love to hear your feedback, so leave me a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 
