Every Bloodbowl team has 6 star players available to them, these can help tip the balance when playing under strength and open up some new tactical options. They are also an ideal opportunity to paint and convert a show-piece model.
The techniques described below are not limited solely to star players, they can be used to personalise home grown stars, team captains or to help differentiate positional players from linemen. In this article I will be covering tips for how to personalise star players expanding on some of the techniques covered in earlier articles.
There is quite a diverse selection of stars to choose from, 57 in total (if you count Brick and Grotty as 2). For simplicity I will split them into 3 broad categories; elite versions of existing player types, weapon wielders and the miscellaneous/unique players.
Quite a few stars can play for multiple teams, Morg being the least fussy as he can be fielded by 21 of the 24 NAF approved races. Others are very particular, only showing up for a single or a couple of very similar teams. It will depend on how you use stars, if they are to be part of a specific team then you may want them to adopt certain colours the rest of the team use or fit their theme. Alternately stars like Zara or Helmut who can play for a diverse array of teams may better suit having their own unique style. This will allow you to use the same model for multiple teams or lend to other teams in your league as needed.
Bought stars
The easiest option to represent stars is to get someone else to do the work, the majority of the stars already either have existing specific models or those that will do a good job of representing them. Many of these are no longer on sale and thus would need to be acquired 2nd hand from another collector or a site such as e-bay.
There are also plenty of alternative suppliers who do some great looking and updated versions of the star players both new and old. In some instances these are the only way to get specific models for some of the more recent stars. These can be less recognisable so may need to have their star quality heightened through their paint scheme.
You can of course convert these models to personalise them or make them better fit the team(s) you will be using them for, in which case this would be covered below.
The existing 3rd edition Borak model was used for both a Nurgle and Slaanesh themed chaos team. He was painted in the colours of those respective gods and the nurgle version given some extra putrid growths and pustules.
These skaven stars show 3 different ways you can represent with existing models. Hakflem is a the classic 3rd edition model with no changes. Skitter uses the special character Deathmaster Snitkch, as he is already an assassin then no changes were needed for him either. Fezglitch is a plague priest with the addition of a shoulder pad, head swap and extended censer.
Elite Positionals – Griff, Soaren, Varag
Basically skilled up versions of the players you already have available. The advantage of them is that you can use those players as the starting point for the star and can even have the model on your team permanently as a team captain.
Converting
A good way to make these stars is to take a version of an existing positional player and add extra details to them. If you are using a fantasy football team then get a 5th blitzer, 3rd thrower etc and give them lots of extra decoration, maybe swap their head or arms with another model. Similarly if your team is using a fantasy or sci-fi army and a specific unit then you can save the unit champion or hero equivalent for use as a star.
Something as simple as giving them a bare head whilst the other players have helmets can be enough to make them look special. A more dynamic or heroic pose will also help differentiate the star from their mundane counterparts.
As he is pretty much a star version of a Blitz-ra this Setekh conversion used the same body as the normal models. He was given the head and shoulder decoration of a plastic tomb priest with the head from a metal tomb priest and face mask from the tomb guard to make him more noticeable.
There is no standard model available for J Earlice, he’s an undead/necro ghoul with extra catching skills. GW did produce a plastic vampiric ghoul king model, this was a cool model but a little ferocious for the rather fragile Earlice. He was heavily remodelled to be jumping and his arms repositioned to suggest he uses his claws to help catch passes rather than tear into opponents. Two shoulder pads were added to give him a more Blood Bowl look as well.
A plastic hero slayer was used as the basis for Grim. That model was chosen for the cool, dynamic pose and extra decoration in contrast with the 2 normal slayers. This is a very straight forward conversion. His weapons were removed and the rubble he was standing on trimmed down to something the size more likely to be found on the pitch, he was also given an arm swap and shoulder pad.
Painting
As these stars are elite versions of existing player types it is likely that painting will have the biggest impact. If you want to use this star for multiple teams then giving them a unique paint job is pretty simple. Add extra decoration, flashier and more diverse patterns and colouring to the model to avoid the risk of them too closely resembling any single team’s strip.
On the other hand if you want the star to be in team colours but still stand out then there are a few techniques to help with this. The simplest is to alter the colour of the metallic parts of the model, either switch silver and gold round or paint these in the team colours. Another option is to change round the colours, if all the team has red shirts and white shorts, swap this round for the star.
Slibli was made from the same bits as the normal saurus, he was given the champion head along with different shoulder pads to differentiate him, but this could just have been as team captain. The big change was swapping his colouring round, giving him red skin and bone scales as opposed to bone skin and red scales of the other saurus.
These are all standard models from the Willy Miniatures range. Not only is Deeproot much bulkier than the normal treemen on this Halfling team he also has a very different pose. To further differentiate him he got a drastic colour change, being painted a very light shade of brown. He only has a few items of clothing or armour and these are painted in team colours, the change in bark colouring being sufficient enough.
The normal throwers of this team are made from high elf phoenix guard, Soaren is taken from the Flamespyre phoenix rider so is effectively a hero version of them. He has greater decoration and more elaborate armour, note the greater amount of gold on his chest and head armour.
Weapons and equipment – Nobbla, Barik, Hemlock
These stars are probably the easiest to differentiate from the rest of the team on the pitch as their equipment is their signature.
Converting
The hardest part can be how you make their weapon as it will take a pretty special paint job to make a normal chaos dwarf blocker look like he’s holding a blunderbuss. The exceptions to this are the goblin stars and Horkon as they all have mundane equivalents so they could fall into the elite positionals category above.
For the others the most important factor is making their weapon, any human, orc or dwarf with a chainsaw will obviously be Helmut, Ugroth and Flint respectively. How the weapon is made will depend on the style you like your models to have, 2nd edition players often sported weapons that looked contemporary whilst 3rd tended to favour a more steampunk look. Chain weapons, bombs and bazookas are all pretty common amongst sci-fi models and these are an easy source of conversions.
The quickest and simplest option is to chop the weapon off and stick them onto the Blood Bowl equivalent. Even if you do it to a player otherwise identical the rest of the linemen on the team it will still be clear they are a star.
That may not satisfy a lot of coaches as the model will probably look a bit awkward, repositioning them to be holding the chainsaw above their head, getting ready to throw a bomb or concealing a dagger will help make them look like a cool star.
Horkon differs from other knife wielding stars since the dark elf team can take normal assassins. This means he needs to look special enough to be clearly a star assassin. The Shadowblade special character was ideal for this as he is a great looking and dynamic model. The sole conversion was to remove the bit of rubble he was standing on.
A common model to use as Rashnak is a classic hobgoblin sneaky git as they are of a similar appearance to the BB hobgoblins only with 2 knives. This goes further and adds the cloak and arms from a goblin backstabber to a normal BB hobgoblin body and head. The fact that the model ends up smaller is not a bad thing as it is imagined that Rashnak made up for his diminutive size by being extra sneaky. As he is effectively a hobgoblin assassin he doesn’t need a lot of Blood Bowl equipment, but has had a shoulder pad added.
Hack is made from a Necromunda redemptionist gang member. Despite this model being human and wearing robes that were ill suited to Blood Bowl it was still a great source. He was given a head and hand swap with skeletons although his fleshy arms were left as they were. The pose he is in makes the saw prominent and there would be no mistaking him for a normal player or other star.
Painting
As these stars are all about the weapons it may be tempting to paint them the same as the rest of the team. But quite a few stars are just linemen and may use standard Blood Bowl models and some of the weapons will not be that obvious from a distance in a messy scrum (daggers and bombs in particular). Therefore it is still worthwhile to add a little extra decoration or change to the team strip. Not only that but a few weapon stars can play for multiple teams. Chainsaws wielders in particular are cheap and effective against some teams and some of the most commonly taken.
You can use many of the same techniques as described in the elite positionals section for painting the model. Particular attention should be paid to their weapon, drawing the eye to it, either paint it very differently to the rest of the model or add some extra decoration.
Below are examples from 3 different lizardmen teams, each of which had a Hemlock model converted for them.
A skink hero was used for this Hemlock, as the normal skinks were made from standard BB models he was already unique. On top of that he was given a larger base.
In the Lizardmen WHFB certain characters could be given different colouring for sacred spawnings, white being an especially notable one. So the colour scheme was reversed with him getting white skin and red scales.
The difference between this Hemlock and the normal Sarcos skinks is even more obvious as they are from entirely different ranges. This conversion also used a skink hero. The team had a more natural colouring, this was reflected in Hemlock the huge difference in the models being enough to separate him.
This team went back to using GW models, but this time WHFB skinks were converted for use as the normal players. Again a hero model was used for Hemlock. A much lighter shade of blue was used for his skin and with more detail such as a greater level of highlights and pale bone coloured chest.
Unique and miscellaneous stars – Willow, Zug, Ithaca
Most of these are player types or positions that either only exist as a star player or a player that would not normally feature in that team. Their uniqueness can be a blessing since they will be very different from the rest of the players. On the other hand some are very new and we don’t have much in the way of background to draw inspiration from.
Converting
In some instances they will be effectively a skilled version of a normal player, but one who plays for a different team. This will make them be noticeable even if they are not a particularly fancy example of that player type different. Puggy will need to stand out when used in a halfling team, but any halfing model no matter how generic would obviously be him when used in a human team. It may well be the case that you have no intention of using the other teams that the star can play for. So in some cases these types may fall into the elite positionals and in others the unique category.
The first place to look at with these stars is their stats and skills to see the type of player you are making. This will go some way to indicate the type of look you should go for, high movement and agility coupled with low strength and armour suggest a catcher type with the opposite favouring a blocker. Mutations are a very obvious characteristic; Lewdgrip is a chaos player with tentacles, whilst hakflem is a gutter runner with extra arms, 2 heads and a prehensile tail.
A great source of inspiration is the TFF Blood Bowl Star Player Backgrounds which contains backgrounds and descriptions of the stars. This is an Ideal place to find out information on the newer stars that have never had official GW model available.
Humerus is effectively a Khemri catcher (or catch-ra) and is modelled as such. Since he only plays for Khemri teams he was made from the same types of parts as the linemen featured. He was reposed to be running and catching a thrown pass. A single shoulder pad and catching mitt further emphasise his role as catcher.
GW’s thrower ogre is the standard model often used as Brick. This conversion used that model as a starting point, but the squatting pose the legs come in was not suitable for a thrower and he was extensively reposed using parts from a plastic ogyrn and plenty of greenstuff. Extra detail was added to make him look different if playing for an Ogre team and emphasise his role as a TTM specialist. His head was swapped with a plastic ogre with a monocle to show his greater emphasis on throwing.
As Goblins don’t play for chaos or Nurgle teams and others have secret weapons on ogre team then any goblin would do as grotty. But the same goblin that came with the thrower ogre was used since he is carry the ball and matched the held goblin. He got a headswap with flying goggles to emphasise his role as favourite TTM choice.
Painting
As these stars already have obvious characteristics that make them unique there is less need to represent this through painting. However as mentioned above, care should be taken with the stars that have mundane equivalents for certain teams. Plus stars are a bit special and should be even more flamboyant than the everyday players.
Often it is tricky to come up with an interesting colour scheme, so adopting the team strip can be the easiest option. Another possibility is to use colours most commonly associated with that race of player, blue, white and silver for high elves for instance. A mixture of both of these can work too, with the model’s clothing matching their race and some armour pieces matching the rest of the team. You can imagine that having a big star being seen wearing the team kit might help ticket and merchandise sales. This can be especially useful for elven teams as although they have 4 “races” physically they all look very similar.
In this instance the classic 2nd edition Eldril model was used. Since his stats and skills most closely match a pro elf catcher he was used as the representative star for that team. To that end he was painted in the same colours as the team, a 2nd edition elf team. The model itself was different enough to show he was that star.
Lewdgrip was painted in the same colour scheme as the Slaaneshi team he was done for. This would suit him if used for a normal chaos team, nurgle or pact as he is a Slaaneshi star. His lighter armour and tentacle are more than enough to stand him out from the chaos warriors on the Slaanesh team.
The Morg model released when 3rd edition first came out is one of the most recognisable in Blood Bowl. This conversion uses keys parts from that model; his head, arms, shoulder pad and some decoration. Most of the teams he plays for don’t have access to ogres meaning there would be no chance of confusion. He was given a neutral colour scheme that shouldn’t clash with most strips. There is a slight chance he could be confused with a mundane ogre on a human or ogre team if they happened to have white tops and blue trousers.
Bases
Perhaps the easiest way to distinguish star players from the rest of the team is to change their base. This can be as simple as giving a human sized model a 30mm base when the other players have 25mm, or if you give the ST4 blocker type models a 30mm base then upgrading the star to 40mm. Care should be taken with 40mm bases as on a standard pitch, there will be difficulty ranking up players if you have too many of these.
You can instead or in addition add extra detail to the base, things like; bits of armour, missiles thrown by fans or colourful pitch markings. Going one stage further, a star player can be turned into a mini-diorama, with them modelled to be running in for a touchdown, taking down an opposing player or posing for fans.
This version of Zara was designed for an amazon team and uses the dark eldar model Lilieth. She is modelled standing on a large bit of debris that wouldn’t really look right for a Blood Bowl figure, whilst removing it would put her in a rather awkward pose.
The spear she was standing on was changed into a 1st down marker as used in American Football that had been used as an impromptu stake to take out an unfortunate vampire. The aforementioned vampire’s body was used to hide the remainder of the rubble.
In part the larger base was necessitated by the model itself being much larger. This is another way to differentiate stars, make them literally larger than life. The bigger base is another way to show their uniqueness of him compared to the normal blitzers.
To theme or not to theme
Star players are not part of the team, hence them possessing the loner skill, but many of them capture the essence of certain races. Back when 3rd edition first came out, the release of a new team would be accompanied by a star that could play for them.
When converting a unique team many coaches like them to be complete, possessing all positions, coaching staff and even with a display base. In that instance a generic star player can really stick out and ruin the carefully crafted theme. 17 of the stars only play for 1 team and thus can quite comfortably be modelled to fit in with the normal players. Of course if the star is effectively an elite positional then you may want to paint them differently to emphasise their status.
By theming the star you are rewarded with multiple interesting conversion options and can make some very creative models to represent their secret weapons or abilities. How far down this road you wish to go is very much a personal choice, it might be as simple as incorporating the team colours onto the model somewhere or adding some small decoration in keeping with the team.
She was created to play for a norse dwarf team and the existing Zara model was used. A very small conversion of adding wings to her helm for a Valkyrie look and fur to the top of her boots for warmth helped her fit in with the team. She also was given the same ice base as the other players.
These stars were converted to fit in with the Gaspez-Arts circus themed goblins. Aside from this, the permanent secret weapon members of the team were all pretty unique. A few subtle conversions were added to help them fit in such as the red noses and wig. The most notable conversions consist of Bomber swapping a custard pie for bombs and Fungus a balloon for the ball and chain. These changes are not that out of character for goblins, they are one of the comedy races of Bloodbowl. So they could just as easily play for a standard looking ogre, underworld or orc team.
In this case the team fits with the star more than the other way round. The wood elf team was made from a mixture or dryad and daemonette models. Willow is the obvious star to play for this team and nicely themed to fit in with the other players. She would fit in with a Halfling or amazon team just as well since the key elements to her are her gender and woodland nature.
Breaking with Convention
Blood Bowl offers a lot of freedom and there is nothing to say that you have to rigidly follow the fluff of a star. As shown above with the circus goblins some liberties can be taken when fitting in with a theme. Swapping bombs for custard pies and a ball and chain for a balloon are in keeping with both the comedic nature of goblins and players dressed as clowns.
But you can go further than that and change the sex or race of the stars, since they are glamorous and unique individuals there is nothing to say they have to exactly match what little fluff exists. Maybe the reason Griff is so strong and agile is because he is actually a “good” vampire? Just imagine that he is able to resist his bloodlust and the gaze is used more subtly to assist with blocking and dodging.
As with converting unique teams it should still be obvious that these individuals are star players. In fact this can be a better way to distinguish a star from the rest of the team, particularly if they are upgrading positionals.
Ithaca is an undead dark elf runner that can play for either dark elf or khemri teams. Elves don’t really differ much between the sexes and the Queen Khalida model chosen for the head and torso is really nice so she was used as the basis for the conversion, despite Ithaca being male in the fluff. The elfy bits and change in sex make her easily stand out so on either a Khemri or dark elf team it would be obvious that this model was Ithaca.
The orc team that these stars play for was made from savage orc and forest goblin models. The secret weapons normally employed by the goblin stars were a bit advanced for the Blood Bowl world much less these technically backward greenskins.
To that end Scrappa swapped his pogo stick for a squig hopper and Bomber had some poorly trained attack squigs in place of explosives.
It was rather an ambitious project to try and make a team that could be used as both dwarfs and norse, especially considering their vastly different armour ratings. Were-slayers are used for either troll slayers or ulfwereners, since they both come with frenzy. This conversion was designed to be either Grim Ironjaw for dwarfs or Wilhelm Chaney for norse. Despite being a dwarf, his wolfen appearance would work for a normal norse team and if used for a normal dwarf team his lack of armour and orange hair (and fur) would mark him out as a unique slayer.