Recently I did a review of the Vortice Undead team and named them as my go-to undead team for Blood Bowl. Originally my plan had been to finish the team out by the years end. Under a normal work schedule combined with my generally sloth painting speed that would have been a tough challenge for me to accomplish. Alas, work decided to move me across country with a good three week notice and also decided to place me in an new organization that has the work tempo set to 11. As you can imagine this has thrown a wrench in my dreams of have having the team painted by years end but I have made some progress and now is my time to show off what I have finished.

The background of the team borrows mostly from the NFL. If you are familiar with the Cleveland Browns then you understand why I picked them for an undead theme. Cleveland has been an almost player graveyard since their rebirth. Many a draft season sees promising young talent led off college glory to see their dreams of NFL stardom killed and buried. This idea of a player graveyard started circulating in my head and then one night I happened to catch a documentary about a burial mound (barrow) uncovered in England that had a collection of severed Viking heads. That got the synapses firing and the idea was born.

I can’t recall what I traded to Casey to get a re-work of the Cleveland Elf logo, but it didn’t take him long to change things up and the team was born. Now any longtime Warhammer follower will know that the old world was littered with old burial mounds and crypts from ancient civilizations, and these were the basis for the undead armies before the rise of the Vampire Counts and Khemri. The idea I had was that the team was setup from one of these old mounds where they recruited/raised up their players to play on the pitch.

To make things difficult on me I decided to hand paint the helmet and pant stripes and I was going to go with the Home team colors. Painting white is always a challenge but I was going to try out the Vallejo black and white color set to get a nice warm white. The traditional uniform save the orange for just the helmets but I found it to be too brown so I was more liberal with the orange. So far I have been pleased with the results.

I realize that none of these pictures show off the pant stripes I hand painted so I’ll have to do that in the next update. I like how the white had turned out and I’ve been able to get a nice warm and dirty white to go with these shambling undead. If anybody is interested here is the set:

Once I finish up the stomping zombie its off to start the ghouls. Not sure what to use for the skin tones on their flesh so there will be a bit of experimentation. Until next time…