Undead Blood Bowl Team – Golden Vultures

Almost eight years ago, I started a Blood Bowl project in a german-speaking forum, with the aim to create a team by simply using leftovers that I found in my bitzbox. In doing so, I wanted to make sure that I painted and played as well, and that's how the concept of "Challenge" came into being, where I had to completely paint up a mini before each game.

As I rummaged in my Bitzbox, I noticed that there were still a surprisingly large number of remnants of a classic human plastic team and skeletons lying around. At that time available Undead Blood Bowl players were all made of pewter and since you touch your models often in this game, I wanted to avoid this material as much as possible. So the thought grew in me to combine the remains of the old human team with those of the skeletons.

I began to experiment with the various remains and soon I had cobbled together and painted a considerable number of skeletons. Back then, the parts were only enough for one zombie (the second from the right), but in the community the project had aroused interest and so I managed to get some zombie parts from other hobbyists.

Since I had so much fun with the skeletons, some more came over time, always thriving to capture the look of the original human team. The ghouls also came along in the course of the project, and I only used the parts I got for conversions.

My team constellation may not have been optimal, but I was never a particularly competitive player anyway and so I decided to primarily drive the background story with each coming model. Every model of the Ostland Golden Vultures, formerly the team of the Bohsenfeld Ravens, who died in a rockslide, has its own short background story. Even the opponents I was playing against were chosen in a manner that they would drive the story forward. So I spent almost three years travelling all over Germany playing the most interesting and narrative-driven games.

The look was also increasingly establishing a trend that connected two models as good as possible. The old model of Ramtut III. was in spite of his material just too nice to not use it. The wights were simple conversions, but I was able to visually resemble and connect the mummies with the look of their helmets. The wight on the right received a helmet reminiscent of Ramtut's wings, while the other received a rather pointed helmet. The second mummy was a conversion of a very old Warhammer model and a donation from my old buddy Volker - thanks and a sporting greeting to WAAAGH! -Frankfurt at this point!

A star player should`ve also been included in the team and so I converted an old goblinhead, where the nose was trimmed, parts of a Kroot and what else I could find into  a ghoul star player (J. Earlice). The right model was a blitzer from the Willy range, which at the time was just too big for the then scale of the models. But as a star player (Setekh) he looked decent.

To make them recognizable as such, I painted all of the star players in black and gray jerseys. None of my teams have this color constellation and if desired I can send an "evil" star player team into the fray for a fictional final match.

Lastly, I wanted a mini for the sideline. Trainer models have always represented the actual player in a sense. Being an orc instead of an undead is related to the background. If you get a stone to the head during the game, you might believe that you are dead when waking up. To continue eating and drinking are logic issues that you do not have to discuss with an orc - some things are “just like that”. During my passion for Blood Bowl the Squig became a running gag, because all of my coaches now have a motivational mascot.

The other model is a fan. In the former Special Play Cards you had a chance to get one as an additional player onto the field and since I still had so many parts of a skeleton and a Norse marauder left, I created an undead norscan without further ado. The beer mug gave the whole thing that certain something. Bugman's XXXXXX seems to give even undead a swipe.

Creating a fan was so much fun that later on I was going to create a whole fan block for another team, but that is a story for another time.

If you liked the team presentation, leave us a comment and let us know if you want to see more Blood Bowl related topics in the future.

Best regards from the Chaosbunker

Dino