I was looking forward to Season 3 of Blood Bowl for some time. To be clear, this was one Games Workshop game I had never played back in the day (the late 90s for those curious), but I have been enjoying Mordheim and Necromunda lately, and seeing Blood Bowl was getting a new starter set caught my attention. Here was a chance to get in on the ground floor, as it were, and pick up two teams in the process. Given the luxurious large hardcover rule book, the tokens, templates, and minis, the cheat sheets, and the board, the whole set was actually pretty good value for money I think - not something I thought I'd ever say of GW, but here we are.
Of the two teams in the starter set, the Bretonnians were the ones who caught my eye. I've been dallying over the colour scheme I wanted to use for some time: green and yellow, red and green, red and blue... I couldn't quite decide. In order to delay the choice, I decided to start work on the tokens. These tokens are used to signify various in game effects, and come about a million to a sprue. They are thick, solid, and good quality casts. I had originally considered painting them on the sprues and cutting them out, but every token had 5 or 6 connection points to the sprue frame, and beveled edges, and I felt after cutting them off and filing them down, I'd essentially be repainting them anyway, so I clipped them off, and painted them that way.
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| Cutting them off the sprues and cleaning them up actually took a bit of time. Each token had 5-6 connection points, and with the angled edge of the token, the cuts always left flashing which had to be cut and filed back. |
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| The Stunned and Prone tokens, if you follow the colour guide in the rules book, are the only ones which have one colour one side, and another colour the other side. |
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| No prizes for guessing where I was holding them... |
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| The most annoying to paint, but not that difficult really. I started with the yellow, then the red, then cleaned up. |
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| I decided to use Tamiya Panel Liner to fill the letters and symbols. I wish I hadn't. The size of the recesses for the letters and symbols really isn't suited to panel liner in my view - it took an enormous amount, and was messy to use. I should have varnished them before using the panel liner, so I could use a rubbing alcohol to clean them up, but again, I didn't. In the end I wish I had simply used a dark wash. Cest la vie. |
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| With the 'messier than I wanted' results, I decided to fork out on some new dry brushes I had been eying off. These are really nice, but... they are so soft, and with the large round heads it's sometimes tough to feel when they are actually connecting with the model. This meant some of the early ones were a much heavier dry brush than I intended, and I had to take a step back in the process. |
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This is the tokens roughly finished. I always wanted them a little dirty, but not quite this much. Still, on the whole they look ok, and are certainly serviceable. I fixed a few up after taking this shot, and the photo itself is in poor light, but they are done!
Crap, I still hadn't decided on the colour scheme for the Bretonnians... |
What would I do differently if I had my time again?
I could have gone through the same process, using a dark wash instead of panel liner. I think the dry-brush afterwards would have felt more naturally layered, and it would have been a lot quicker.
I've also seen good results on TikTok and YouTube with people spraying them black, and then using paint markers or Sharpies to lay the colour on top. From what I've seen this works quite well. I'd want to experiment with something first, but I could see this working if you wanted a more vibrant set of tokens.
Next, the balls and team token things! Which means I have to make a decision...
