Dark Elves Blood Bowl Team

I bought a box of 'Naggaroth Nightmares' Dark Elves back in 1994 and I painted them around that time to play at University... yes I know, another team I had from way back then! Within the original box (which has long since disappeared to a landfill somewhere, I got 2 Witch Elves, 2 Blitzers, a Thrower, and 7 Linemen. That was all fine at the time... frankly the dark elf roster was so expensive I couldn't afford to take them all anyway, especially if I wanted a luxury like a reroll!

I looked at the box and frankly I felt that I didn't like the skin. This is how the top painters at GW painted them;

For whatever reason at the time, I thought Dark Elves should have cold skin, and in my enthusiasm I decided to give them a blue hue ... it certainly would make them distinctive from other teams! Looking back, the skin pictured is really good, but hey.

Certainly at the time I couldn't do bases for the models... I just used Goblin Green (correct paint name for the time!) on the bases for the classic look of half-hearted grass. Yeah, I know... pretty pathetic. Didn't even flock them.

Well, I dusted them off and took them along to the Games Workshop Grand Tournament in Nottingham back in 2010. It was my first table top tournament ever - although I had been playing on FUMBBL from 2004 - so I did have some games under my belt... but I managed to beat both Besters AND Purplegoo in the same tournament! I didn't realise how awesome those results were at the time... I do now!!

Anyway, I digress...

Back then, Dark Elves only could take 2 Blitzers on their roster and Runners were called Throwers back then. Lastly, the only Assassin we had was the Star Player Horkon Heartripper... there wasn't a normal Assassin team member.

Later I realised too late that I couldn't easily buy additional dark elf models to fill out my team - basically Games Workshop dumped their Specialist Games arm of the company and the shelves emptied of any Blood Bowl stock. Eventually I got round to buying an unpainted team from eBay. Of course, not too long after, Games Workshop decided to re-release the Dark Elves via their Made to Order service! Fortunately I got them cheaper on eBay!

This left me with a problem. I had to match the paint colours and style (yeah, style!) from 23 years ago. Ouch.

I of course undercoated them after scraping of the mold lines as best as you can on a metal miniature with my trusty metal file.

One tip I have picked up is to use a black primer spray from directly the front and back and then a grey spray primer from above (see picture above). I think it gives a nice highlight on the exposed areas and leaves the shadier recesses nicely dark. I over-did-it a bit on the newer assassin model below, but the thrower/runner and blitzers above worked out quite nicely;

One of the treasures I saved from the original pack was the number transfers, which, after a bit of coaxing (more like a damn good soaking) eventually lifted off their sheet to be transferred to the models.

Of course my original numbering system meant I had to give the starting 11 squad numbers, so the two new blitzers are 13 & 14, with the new thrower as 12, and the assassin 15... For the keen eyed among you it does mean I have 2 x No.12 players, but I don't think I will be fielding all the linemen anyway.

In the end, I think I managed to get quite close to my original paint scheme (judge for yourselves in the following pictures). However, I did take the time to redo the bases (starting by removing 23 years of dust off them first!) and decided to experiment with a cracked-clay looking base. I was going to add black grass tufts - but it really didn't work and it was a pain to clean the model base again!

I also used the recommended NAF base colours - Grey for linemen, Red for Blitzers, White for Throwers and Yellow for Catchers. This works if you squint slightly and convince yourselves that Witch Elves are catchers and Assassins just wanted a different colour (ie Green - which is meant to be for blockers, ho-hum).

I did take the opportunity to touch up a few of the chips and redo a number of the highlights and details on some of the models. They've also been spray varnished with Purity Seal which give them a satin shine... not glossy, but I might take the shine off the assassins cloaks with a bit of Lahmian Medium. Still not great, but if you can believe it - an improvement! Perfectly fine for table top... not so great if you zoom in and look too closely at the detail... so please don't!

The left hand side miniature is the 1990's one, and the one on the right is my recent attempt to match that miniature;

The following miniatures were just touched up a little. I'm happier with the witch elf faces now which have some shade and depth.

The linemen are a still dicey around the face and could have been neater, but they benefited from a little freshening up.

However, the sense of finally completing them 23 years later was pretty nice. Job done. The bases have now been magnetised at the bottom of them now and can now be loaded into the steel shelves of my 'A-Case' storage case.

At least now I have a Dark Elf team I can field more effectively. Now, onto the next project!