Back in another lifetime it seems I put together a Blood Bowl Team emulating the Cleveland Browns.  The idea got me thinking of continuing the trend of blending Amorical (American) Football teams into the game of Blood Bowl.  I’m not going to lie I probably (most certainly) own enough teams to do a full 32 team league, but alas I don’t paint fast enough to have enough lifetime to get to that goal.  The original goal was to plow through the AFC North Division first, but instead I drifted over to the AFC East and put together a lovely Chaos Chosen team. 

The reason for the change of plans was due to finding a team/location that would fit the style of the team I selected.  I own 3.5 Chaos Chosen teams with the half being the official GW models.  Of the three full teams I have teams from Greebo, Fanath, and MK1881.  The Greebo team is fantastic from top to bottom with individual sculpts on all the models.  The Fanath has my favorite beastmen models all based on different animals, but I find the Choas Warriors to be my least favorite.  The final team is from the now defunct MK1881 or Maki Games as it was known.  I had backed the team on Indiegogo years ago and it hadn’t really wowed me when I received them.  It did enough to stay in deep storage and was not sold off in many of my storage purges.  The team is metal and designed that no heads were attached to the bodies, and it offered a variety of head and arm mutations to use on the models.  In theory with so many different heads and bodies most players would end up with unique teams.  

The team was also Slaanesh themed which is the only team I know of to have gone down that kinky road. Their original design idea was to have semi-naked daemonettes of slaanesh but after feedback switched to bondage looking beastmen.

The Chaos Bloackers where a slighter build that what you would typically expect to see from a Stength 4 player but the design I rather liked.  There was a total of four bodies and four heads available and just like the beastmen there was options for the left arm.  

The final player on the team was the minotaur.  There was only one head option but as with the rest of the team, it would have options to use for the left arm. 

The strengths of the team are unique design, well cast metal, and the included options for chaotic mutations.  The downside would have to be the sameness of all the mutations and that the left arm was the only mutation spot.  Aditionally the armor has a lot of sharp points which on metal models can easily cause paint to chip off.  Despite this, I think the teams unique design makes it a classic and I’m glad I held onto the team.  

Image curtesy of the Gridiron Uniform Database

I opted to go with the Miami Dolphins as I figured that a Slaanesh team would be obsessed with looking their best.  I imagined a team of tanned muscle beach goers looking as close to perfect and Miami beaches just popped into mind.  Now that I had a team color to emulate, I had to decide what colors to use.  I wanted to go with the typical home uniform of the dark jersey and stick with the white pants to avoid the one color look.  I would have to add in the pant stripes when possible (and get creative on the guys wearing speedos).  Most of the beastmen don’t have helmets so I would paint their hardness/ball-gags to fill in for the missing headgear.  The hardest choice would be figuring out the main uniform color.

Aqua is the official team color of the Dolphins so I am not sure why I went with Turquoise?

I’ll be honest up front.  I didn’t nail the uniform color.  To cut myself some slack, my camera turns the color more blue no matter what lighting I try.  For reference I ended up using Vallejo Turquoise to Blue Green.  In person and in good lighting the greens do come through, but it just doesn’t scream Miami Dolphins.  

In hindsight, I should have dropped the dark Turquoise and used the blue green as my primary color.  For the skin I planned on using my airbrush as the beastmen are rocking their beach-bods.  I was originally going to start with my tanned skin recipe and then throw in some darker tones on some of the players, but I somehow mixed the perfect batch of paint, and one airbrush cup was enough to finish the entire team.  For the white pants I experimented with contrast paints with Apothecary White and on some of the fur trim with Gryph-Hound Orange.  So how did the test model turn out?  

First, I swear to God it’s not blue!  There are greens in that shade!  Beyond the camera troubles, I am rather pleased with how he turned out.  The skin tone looks great in my opinion and truly captured the idea of the perfection-seeking tanned bodybuilder. I could have done more to bring the skin to life by adding some thin bits of color on the lips, elbows, ears and such.   I’m pleased with the whites and oranges.  The contrast paints helped speed things up, but I still went back and added some highlights on top of the contrast paint to push the highlights.  Does it scream Miami Dolphins?  No.  One of the first comments I heard about this color scheme was “Cool Tzeentch team”.  A double strikeout!  Do I like it though?  Yes!  It may have taken seven years to get this team out of deep storage, but I am glad they have arrived.  

So that wraps it up this article.  Up next will be the rest of the beastly brethren. Take care!