Blood Bowl Part 1

07.11.2022

When last I posted I foreshadowed the next post of magnetization and Warhammer 40K minis. It turns out I'm a big fat liar because after 6 weeks of complete silence I'm going to post about non-magnetized Blood Bowl minis while completely ignoring any past foreshadowing. Pastshadowing? Retconning my posts!

At some point this year, my good close personal associate Charles Jr and I decided that we would play Blood Bowl. To be honest, we decided that we would prep to play Blood Bowl, as my joy of gaming for the past handful of years has been in the painting and making of scenery for games which I may or may not play. Now we could prep and not play a game together! The logic makes sense if you read the sentence properly, just trust me.

Now with a common focus, we each stepped out of our comfort zone. Charles Jr purchased the basic rules that came with 2 teams. I purchased a separate team (ok, 2) which I would prepare. Then, 6 weeks ago, I started painting my team of 12 Khorn Whatever-Games-Workshop-Calls-Them. 6 weeks. 2 minis/week (so far). I can whip out a mini or 3 in a day, plus a day for primer to dry and another for base-tweaking to dry. What's taking so long?

I thought I would try the "Don't Get In A Damn Hurry"™ method. We're not in a rush to play a game, so why not take some time and try out some of those things I never do, but I'm supposed to.

WASHING SPRUES - The first step for anything that needs to be glued together is to wash the parts so as to get rid of factory residue, like mold release. I'm not sure my painting is good enough to notice imperfections caused by this, but sure, why not. I washed the plastic bit in warm soapy water and then rinsed them off, followed by letting them air dry for another day.

SPRUE SNIPPERS - While I've gotten better about using proper cutting implements instead of twisting plastic bits off sprues, this time I ONLY used those snips.

SANDING AND SCRAPING - With some sanding strips and scraping with a semi-dull razor blade, I went over any burrs from the above snipping along with mold lines and tried to smooth things out. Enough dusty plastic came from this round that the washing phase was repeated.

PIN TO BASES - These minis had some very action-oriented poses, most of which didn't allow must super-glue friendly surface area between foot and base. Now armed with a new pin vise (see previous magnetization foreshadowing post that I no longer claim exists) and some paper clips, I successfully pinned my minis!

PAINT AND ADHERE HEADS LATER - I knew gluing on the heads before priming everything and then trying to paint details wasn't going to work with the angles I would have to work the brush into. I've never painted parts and then put them together. Except for some tones not matching as well I liked, it worked out ok. It worked a lot better than it would have ended up if I had glued the heads on first.

MICRO SOL AND MICRO SET FOR DECALS - While I used these solutions, I did something wrong as in the end the decals still show the decal part instead of blending in. I think I didn't use enough Micro Sol.

Now, after 6 weeks, I have a team of 12 painted, along with 2 coins. I haven't read any rules so I don't know what anything is named or does (especially those coins). While the team is painted (and sealed), the metal parts still need to get a splash of hardcoat to be glossy. For fun, I thought I would post pics as the final glossy bits are glossified - which will hopefully continue over the course of this week.

This post also gets all of the various in-progress pics I was sending Jer for the past month and a half

Permalink Blood Bowl gaming miniatures