Blood Bowl Gnome (Carl)

Another Blood Bowl finish! This time it’s a Gnome.

I considered using a traditional gnome colour scheme (garden variety) or even a Smurf colour scheme but in the end I rejected both of those in favour of an experiment.

I’ve leaned into the woodland spirit aspect of the Gnomes with my paint scheme, going for a Green Man vibe. In the Blood Bowl setting the Gnomes are tricksters often playing practical jokes on those that travel through their realms. So I adopted a gnome-in-the-woodland-camouflage colourway.

It’s totally darker than I intended but I’m committed now. I’ve applied the same brown and green contrast paints on all the minis at the same time, before going in to start to finish each one.

I still like him. Plus… he’s completion number 14!

Human Bright Crusaders Blood Bowl Team (Carl)

It’s been the best part of 7 months since my last entry here! My word that’s a long time without completions. Thinking about it I have finished another lizardman warrior over the course of the year but forgot to take a photo. Anyway…

Here is the completed (for now) Bright Crusaders human Blood Bowl team. I’ll add another Thrower at some point but these are the main bunch of players.

I’ve used the team uniform colours from (I think) the second edition of the game rather than the current blue and white the GW in-house team is painted in.

Overall I’m happy with these. The freehand is a bit wobbly but then I’m painting in fits and starts so not really getting sustained practice in.

Total completions for the year so far… 13!

I’ve got some work to do if I want to hit 52+ by year end.

Blood Bowl Human Thrower (Carl)

It’s the second completion of the year! Sticking with my current painting project it’s another player for the Bright Crusaders, this time in the form of a Thrower.

The oversized ball always makes me smile when I look at Blood Bowl models but I can understand why the design choice was made. Similar to all things in fantasy and sci fi miniatures, exaggeration is needed to create a strong silhouette from two foot away on the tabletop.

So two completions so far this year.

Blood Bowl Human Lineman (Carl)

My first completion of the year!! It’s in January too!! Woohoo!

I mentioned in my previous post that I started a human Blood Bowl team in December. This was a completely unintended distraction as I rediscovered them primed and ready to paint in a box.

I’ve decided to paint them in the original Bright Crusaders uniform. I’m quite pleased with how he’s turned out, even though my freehand numbers and shoulder symbol are very ropey.

It’s an old single piece plastic model from the third edition of the game in the mid 90s. Single piece models really are lovely to work with.

2025 Recap and look ahead to 2026 (Carl)

Belated Happy New Year and welcome to 2026!

It’s been over a month since my last post, Christmas and getting into the New Year having consumed most of my time.

Looking back over last year I managed a total of 45 completions.

For a recap of what I ‘intended’ to do we can look here: 2024 review-and-look--ahead

My main aim was completing my AoS Slaves to Darkness army along with my Minas Tirith army.

January

A month of distraction. I planned on continuing the Slaves to Darkness for Age of Sigmar but actually ended up delving into my Works in Progress box. By the end of the month I’d completed 6 gladiators and a Hercules model. A total of 7 completions for the month.

February

February carried on the distraction trend as I finished the last three gladiators I had. Then stumbled into a dalliance with the Seadogs and Swashbucklers range from Wargames Foundry. I completed three of those too. So a total of 6 completions for the month.

March

Will the wild swings of mood ever settle?! This month saw another Foundry Swashbuckler, a Bad Squiddo Games Viking and two GW Lord of the rings miniatures. 4 completions for the month. Two were actually towards my Minas Tirith army so… winning!

April, May and June

April through to June were dry months with regards to completions although I did get one of my Minas Tirith warriors completed. This did nudge my army along by the tiniest of steps.

July-August

Another dry spell but this time with a completely out of left field completion with an old Citadel plastic Seraphon Saurus Warrior, testing a paint scheme.

September 

This month saw a completely bonkers mad rush of completions with Knights, Arabs, Blood Angels and Minas Tirith getting a look in!

October

Then finally, finally, I get back to my focus for the year. My Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness army. September saw me complete the army. Which is a great feeling looking back, despite it taking what felt like forever.

November

This was another dry month of no completions.

December

Two Blood Bowl model completions this month brought the year to a close.

- - -

So looking back I squealed around with various distractions again before eventually settling down on getting my primary focus completed.

I only completed 45 minis in the year but I also sold quite a few models so the mountain did decrease in size.

My sales over the course of the year amounted to 212 models across various systems and genres.

My new models into the collection comprised of the Seraphon Spearhead (14 models), Resin Seraphon Kroxigors (3 models) the Spearhead Sand and Bone expansion (6 models) and the new Blood Bowl boxed set (26 models plus tokens).

Some 49 new models in, but I’m not too concerned about that, with the sales in mind my mountain is still reducing. 

So what’s the plan for 2026?

Weeeellll… previous years have shown my plans go sideways into distractions almost immediately. So, I’m aware that anything I say will likely be a hopeful aim. But… Blood Bowl is certainly a feature this year, completing three remaining models for my Orc Blood bowl team. I also want to complete a human team I started in December (a late 2025 distraction!).

On top of that I want to complete my Gnome Blood Bowl team which I have built and primed ready to paint.

I would like to get my Spearhead terrain painted along with my Seraphon models that I got last year. There’s also still my Minas Tirith army and a multitude of Works in Progress so I’ve got plenty to go at.

One of the main things I’d like to do this year is play a lot more games and use my models more.

January has already seen action there with me playing in a Spearhead Quests evening at Warhammer World and playing two games of Blood Bowl in the Boards and Swords Blood Bowl league. I’m also booked onto a one day Blood Bowl tournament in April and awaiting tickets to go on sale for a two dayer in May. Another event I’m awaiting tickets to go on sale for is a one day Spearhead event also in May.

So I’ve made a pretty good start on playing games. My Slaves to Darkness Spearhead has had an outing this year and my Orc Blood Bowl team is already in action too.

But I’m aware that this collection of boxes of Works in Progress might generate distractions and diversions through the year.

My Tyranids haven’t seen any activity since 2023/24…

Then there’s my WiP Chaos models, not actually that many to finish either… hmmm…

Along with the previous potential attention grabbers I have my WWII US models.

I’ve also got the rest of the in progress old Citadel Seraphon models…

But the most likely source of a diversion will be something random out of this box of WiP models…

Blood Bowl Gretchen Wächter (Carl)

The second Blood Bowl model completed in December this time for my other brother’s Christmas present is Gretchen Wächter (I might have mangled the spelling on that).

Another of GWs expert resin kits and another fiddly thing to construct. A separate piece for the face!? Sheesh.

I lost my way a bit on the painting as I was struggling for time but I think it turned out okay in the end.

These recent two models bring my total for the year to 45. I’m not convinced I can hit 52 as I’d need to complete another 7 today.

Blood Bowl Jeremiah Kool (Carl)

December has been a tricky month to get anything finished in, but I did manage a couple of models for my brothers Christmas presents.

First up is the Blood Bowl Dark Elf Jeremiah Kool. This was one of what GW call an ‘expert kit’, essentially this means a multi-part resin model.

It was nine parts and ooof! Yup, it was a fiddly thing to put together. The painting was reasonably easy though, I followed the colour scheme on the packaging as my brother’s team also has a purple kit.