A first conversion project: Averon Stormsire, Stormcast Blood Bowl player!

By no means an original idea, I’ve been wondering for a while about converting Stormcast Eternals into Blood Bowl players. Finding myself with some spare miniatures that looked like they just might work, I took the plunge .

Through my prolific and occasionally haphazard Ebay-trawling for miniatures, some models crop up quite often.

There are a few Warhammer: Underworlds warbands that seem to be in plentiful supply — thanks largely, I think, to the Mortal Realms and Stormbringer ‘partworks’ magazines — and thrown in along with other sets on ebay.

I’m yet to settle on a consistent colour scheme for my Stormcasts and given that I don’t (yet) play AoS, the need for a consistent army is pretty low. That has meant that some of these duplicate warbands have been nice opportunities to try out different colours without too much pressure. I recently found myself in receipt of a  third copy of Stormsire’s Cursebreakers though, and that opened up even more (headspace) flexibility for what to do with them.

With two copies already banked, I could have a first go at converting/kitbashing these and still know I had a backup for either converting or painting.

The Averon Stormsire model is quite a good hero pose, while looking like it might not be  too hard to convert for Blood Bowl.

I decided to give it a go.

The standard model, like (all?) other Warhammer: Underworlds models, comes with a sculpted base. I generally really like them but for Blood Bowl I wanted to reduce down to the standard 32mm base size, which presented my first problem:  the model’s feet are part of the base.

Ugh.

Nonetheless, I still had enough enthusiasm — lacking any experience of kitbashing to imagine in too much detail how difficult a good result might be — to get started.

The Stormsire model has its right foot raised up on a stone ruin/step and I got the idea to have him resting his foot on a ball instead. Some very rough cutting later, I had a Blood Bowl ball placed underfoot to confirm that the sizing just about worked.

Next up, I didn’t want him holding any weapons and so the staff needed to go.

I thought about trying to carefully cut away just the staff and leave the original hand but as a first conversion project, that seemed beyond optimistic and instead I just cut the whole hand off at the wrist. In replacement, I found an Imperial Nobility sprue and picked out a suitably-open left hand to cut from an arm and replace on the Stormsire model.

The fit was decent but had a slight gap and so the Citadel Liquid Green Stuff I’d bought as a ‘maybe’ a couple of months ago finally came in use.

The model also carries a sword in scabbard on the back, which I wanted rid of too. This was much trickier: as a push-fit model, the robes at the back are sculpted to make space for the sword, while the sword itself is part of a push-on piece with a flowing bit of robe from the right arm.

At first I thought about trying to fill in the whole gap with green stuff but then quickly thought better of it. I decided to try cutting away the sword from the ‘robe’ piece, which didn’t work out too badly. Clearly not as-designed, but the hope was that once painted it shouldn’t stand out too horribly.

With the major surgery done, I balanced the ‘new’ model on a 32mm base next to a Human player for comparison.

Stormcast are obviously much larger than regular humans but I was OK with the size difference here. I’m happy thinking of this model as something of a star player, where standing out a bit works well.

Conversion done, it was time to paint him up. 

A colour scheme

While I have painted a few Human players up in the purple-white-blue scheme from the boxed game, I wanted to go more for an old-school Reikland Reavers style with this model: brighter blue, gold/yellow and white.

I didn’t expect to speed paint the whole mini but I did start with a Slapchop-/Zenithal-style priming and base coat.

I primed the model with Chaos Black, then ‘overbrushed’ Grey Seer with a drybrush. Next up, I did an also-generous layer of dry-/over-brushed Corax White and then finally a drybrush layer of White Scar.

Contrast paints

I did start with a few contrast paints to see where I could get best value from that high contrast base underneath: I used Talassar Blue on the outside of the robes and (I think) Imperial Fist on the inside, as well as the tabbard piece in front.

I do like a tan leather and have found Gore-Grunta Fur over a Slapchop base works really nicely for that vintage leather look. The leather straps and his gloves got that treatment.

I saw a recommendation to use Aggaros Dunes for blonde hair and decided to give that a go, which worked surprisingly well to give a kind of surfer dusty-blonde look.

Other paints

Meanwhile, I added the base metallics: Leadbelcher for the main armour and Retributor Armour for detail points like the right shoulder and knee pads plus some smaller armour details. The left shoulder pad I wanted white, in the old Reikland Reaver style.

The contrast paint for the yellow didn’t have the richness I wanted, so I went back over with a couple of coats of Averland Sunset, then a shade wash of, I think, Casandora Yellow, with some Yriel Yellow highlights.

Basing

I went a step too far on the basing: I had some new grasses and flowers from Gamers Grass but didn’t think ahead very well, so in the end the nice yellow flowers sit in the way of the ball. Live and learn…

Stirland Mud provided the base for my base and I added a few spatters around his legs and robe to suggest he’d actually been running around a muddy field.

Overall, I’m quite happy with this conversion and the paint scheme. There’s still more detail work that could do with being added like the corner details on the robe hanging from his arms and the shoulder/knee pad details.

Next steps?

I converted a Vindictor model at the same time as Stormsire, which I think should work out really nicely too.