I finished these at last, only 12 or 15 years after I started…!

This was meant to be a speedy paint job (by my standards). To be fair, it mostly was — I finished 12 out of the 16 within a matter of weeks of when I started, and the remaining four were 75% of the way there.

It’s only recently, after a 12+ year break since my last proper game of Blood Bowl, that I’ve found the impetus to get the models and paints out and finish the job.

I’ve had the notion for a while that I’d like to play some more Blood Bowl, and that perhaps ‘Sevens’ matches would be appealing (faster game, lower commitment of time and mental effort). I was starting to paint some miniatures again after another gap where I hadn’t painted for for many months, and then two more things gave me a nudge in the direction to finish my Elven Union team:

• I happened to see some really nice 3D-printed proxy miniatures for a Slann team. These got me thinking — I didn’t love the old metal proxies that I’d started to paint years ago, but I did enjoy their rules. I bought the 3D-printed miniatures— but thought that before I paint them I should really complete my Elves first.
• I happened to see that Games Workshop have released an official Sevens pitch. That made it really easy — no DIY required, and a nice-looking pitch without too much expense. I bought one. Now I really want to get around to playing again, and it’d be nice to reach for a team that is completely painted.

So, I finished the remaining four Elves (numbers 13 through 16, in reference to the photos). Not without a few hitches though.

The Citadel paints I had 12+ years ago had all dried up and I’d since bought an assortment of mainly Army Painter and Vallejo paints (plus some Citadel contrast paints). So, I didn’t have exact matches for the colours I’d used before on the flesh and hair. But, with a little mixing, I got it close enough for my liking.

The other problem was that I’d had some trouble with spray varnish — a number of the models had very noticeable frosting that spoiled the paint jobs. Very galling. It showed the worst on black areas and the edges of the bases. I patched these areas up, and then finished with acrylic gloss varnish. Good enough.

One last thing to note is that when I bought the unpainted models for this team, it was missing a Blitzer; plus, I wanted another Kicker so that I’d be able to choose from the full complement of available positional players. Players #2 and #4 were originally Lineman models — I just did a little sculpting to convert them into a Kicker and Blitzer, respectively.