Retro - Chaos Blood Bowl Players!

 

On a recent trip home to the USA, I discovered these guys in an old box of miniatures. These are the survivors of my very first Blood Bowl team! The year must have been 1996 or 1997. I was attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I was a lot more interested in hanging out in the legendary game store, Cerebral Hobbies, than I was in my academic studies.

A new Blood Bowl league was starting up (CHUBB – Chapel Hill Underground Blood Bowl), and I jumped right in with a Chaos Team. I don’t think I did particularly well in that season, and I soon realized that a Chaos team really didn’t fit my preferred play style. Still, I had fun, and evidently had fun painting the figures.

I wasn’t a great figure painter back in those days – though perhaps these aren’t the best figures to judge by. I obviously fully leaned into the ‘chaos’ idea, painting the two chaos warriors with a riot of colours.

What is really amazing is, that despite being over 25 years ago, and only playing with them for one season, I still remember two of their names! The figure on the left is Uncle Remos, which is easy to remember because he’s got a bluebird on his shoulder! The figure was a metal chaos warrior of the time with his weapon clipped off. The bird, which has it wings cut off, must have come from another kit.

The other chaos warrior is called ‘Billy Bones’. I remember this because he was originally named ‘Jolly Roger’, but that guy got killed during the season, so Billy was his replacement.

Look at the flocking I used on those guys!

I admit, I can’t remember the name of the beastman in the centre, but he’s a pretty unique character. During the season he got a strength increase and a mutation which gave him 4 arms! This is not the greatest combination in game turns, but made for a fun conversion. The base figure is a metal minotaur. The additional arms come from… a harpy.. maybe? They are pretty seamlessly added to the figure, which is impressive for my skills at the time – I expect I had some help from Joe or Mark, who were much better miniatures guys than me.

For some reason I decided to keep these three, even though the rest of the team appears to be long gone.  Perhaps I should get them some help and give them one more ride on the Blitzbowl pitch?