Two years ago, I had three Blood Bowl teams: Humans, Orcs and Elves. I actually had a fourth (and still do), but I tend not to count the ‘Wicked Elf’ team from Shadowforge Miniatures. The figures are actually fairly nice but a fetish-themed Dark Elf team isn’t really one that I want to be using any more. The other three teams were all good, though. The Human and Elf teams were fully painted and the Orcs were almost done, with only a few models left to finish off.

Then, over the last two years, I started buying more. I started fairly slowly, getting just a few more teams last summer. But this year I’ve been buying lots of teams, and in November I finally got to the point where I have one of every team that featured in the CRP.

The very last team that I got around to was the Nurgle team. For some reason it was one that I hadn’t particularly been interested in getting, and if not for the sake of completing the collection I might never have done so. However, when I finally did come around to putting the team together, I found myself unexpectedly filled with enthusiasm for modelling and converting the models, and this enthusiasm carried through into wanting to get the newly-converted models painted as well. So in the space of about a month, I painted up my latest Blood Bowl team, the Suppurating Superstars!

Here’s the whole team:

At only 21 models including staff, stars and other extras it’s my smallest painted team so far. That’s partly because I already had most of the star players as part of my Chaos Chosen team, so there was no need to duplicate them for this team. But it was partly because there were exactly 21 spaces left in one of my Blood Bowl miniature cases, so by not getting lots of extras like mutants, extra cheerleaders, etc. I was able to avoid having to buy another case to put them in.

Mostly the models are the current plastic team from Games Workshop, but with quite a few conversions. The colour scheme is perhaps slightly unusual; blue isn’t a colour that’s traditionally associated with Nurgle. However, it contrasts well with the orange and also ties them into my other Chaos team, with whom they will share most of their star players. And with their overall appearance, I don’t think there will be any doubt or confusion as to which particular Chaos god this team is dedicated.

On a Nurgle team, the basic, lineman-equivalent players are the rotters. While most Nurgle players are quite expensive, these players are pretty cheap and honestly they’re not bad. They do have a habit of falling to pieces, but as long as they can stay in one piece they’re pretty solid. These are the only players on the team that aren’t converted in some way.

Next up are the Bloaters. They’re the Nurgle equivalent of Chaos Warriors, and they’re slow, strong and disgusting. These have all been converted in some way. I’ve swapped the hands of a couple over so that the poses would be more varied and modified some of the helmets. I also got busy with modelling putty to add some more distinctive details to a couple of them. Finally I removed the little wooden signs from the backs of the taller ones, as I wasn’t keen on them.

Then the Pestigors: Nurgle beastmen. I quite like the Pestigor model that comes with the team, but it is quite distinctive and I didn’t want to have all four models the same, even with two variant heads. I had a couple of regular beastmen left over from my Chaos Chosen team, so I decided to get a couple more from eBay and Nurgle them up. I got quite busy with the green stuff on these and I’m rather pleased with the results.

Finally the Rotspawn. I quite like the standard Forgeworld model, but felt that the two tentacles on the top of its head weren’t quite enough. I removed those and re-sculpted the top half of its head, adding an eye and incorporating a couple of antlers that I produced on my new 3D printer. To replace the removed tentacles, I sculpted six new ones and added them to its back.

Finally, I have a complement of staff and extras for the team. The head coach, cheerleader and plague doctor are from Willy Miniatures. Nurgle teams can’t hire an apothecary, but they can hire a plague doctor as an inducement, who allows them to re-roll when players attempt to regenerate injuries. The referee is a 3D-printed Nurgling to whom I added the whistle and the rag that passes for his referee’s uniform with putty. I’ve also included the Star Player Bilerot Vomitflesh. In the CRP era, Nurgle teams could hire the exact same selection of Star Players as Chaos Chosen teams. BB2016 added four Nurgle-themed players, but only one of them ever had a model, as he was a re-introduction of an old 2nd-edition player. Consequently he’s the only one that I’ve painted for this team, using the OG model from 1988. The team will also be able to use any of the stars from my Chaos Chosen team once they are done.

That’s it for Nurgle, but I haven’t finished with Blood Bowl yet. I’ve also been painting up some Star Players for my Human team, and the Chaos Chosen team that I started way back in May is now very close to being finished, so hopefully I’ll have some shots of that soon.