After a bit of a gap in model releases GW have really been spoiling us and brought out a whole bunch of stuff alongside the new Boxed set. I got pretty much everything, which will certainly keep me busy for a while. In the run up to this I have been working on building the last few stars from BB2016. Looks like most of the stars from BB16 have not made it to the new rules, however the Necromantics release already adds 3 back in.

Truth be told, I have really been enjoying the challenge of building the new stars. My converting and sculpting skills have improved a lot and am proud of how close I have got to some of the illustrations. More importantly a lot of the images don’t show the full model, in particular the legs which means I had to decide on those myself.




There aren’t any female halfling models in the GW range, which meant I had to use the male face which was closest to the illustration. The features were sanded a little to soften them, her chin was resculpted and I swapped in a thinner nose. The most obvious difference was her long hair and this was taken from several different wood elf players with some greenstuff to hide the gaps.

Chef’s tops look a little different from a jacket or shirt and tend to have less creases, which did make it easier to sculpt. It was mostly smooth greenstuff that was sanded to fit. Her chest armour was cast from a human lineman as this allowed me to trim it to better fit the smaller halfling torso and then fill in any gaps.

Her arms proved surprisingly difficult as there were not many I could find that were the right size and appearance. In the end they came from Cadians and were trimmed to be the right size. Her hands and shoulder pad were from the halfling range and these didn’t need changing aside from a finger being resculpted to better hold the pie.

I am most pleased with how her hat turned out, this was the hardest to make as it is flopping over.




The illustration for him showed very little beyond the top half of his body and a little of the shears. There was no sign of what the stilts were supposed to look like, so I took inspiration from the new snotlings as well a vintage stilts. The only halfling with a proper helmet is one of the hefties. That had a bandage over one eye, so this was carved off and the inside of the helmet hollowed out. I then took the head from another fling and sanded that to fit into this helmet. The body in the best pose for Neddley was the one with a ferret in his trousers, this was chopped off and resculpted to be flat.

For the stilts themselves I considered a lot of different options and in the end settled on the cage from the giant. This had some bindings for the struts, which was ideal as I wanted them stilts to be tied to his ankles and have some padding for the handholds. Boots from zombies were used to give the model stability and greenstuff rope to tie the foot supports to the main stilts.

The hardest part ended up being his shears. These were used the axes from Kharadron overlords for the gloves and handles, with the blades themselves from witch elves carved to shape. It was really difficult getting the arms, hands and shears all lined up to look natural.




Most of Ivan was pretty straightforward, his legs are from a Skelton and his torso a wight. The shoulder pads were carved to match the shape of the illustration and his chest armour sanded too.

The hardest part to get right was his head, and this ended up using parts from chaos marauders as well as the crest from a dire avenger. Am not a huge fan of the spike hands, but that’s what he has in the illustration for some reason. These were talons from a tyrranid model which were sanded to the right shape.

The last touch was adding spikes with trophies to his back. The dwarf helmet was easy and the other was converted from an imperial guardsman helm sanded and chopped up with some greenstuff.




There wasn’t a lot to go on for Throttlesnot as the illustration showed only a little of his top half and nothing related to the pogo stick. He did have pretty unique shoulder pads, so I built one from scratch and then made a cast to ensure both were identical. The other unique feature was the decaying skin on his face, I used the top half of a normal BB goblin for this and the bottom half was the night goblin skull from the Troggoth set. Some skin was sculpted onto that, leaving a hole in his cheek. A tongue was used from a pink horror, lolling out of his face.

The rest was down to my own imagination to come up with. The main consideration was adding something he could stab people with as that was a skill normal goblins pogoers don’t have. I had planned on giving him a spike to bounce on, but that ended up looking silly as he’d just stick in the ground. Instead I used part of an electro priest staff for the spring, an undead standard for the main stick and a jagged bone tied to the stick to stand on. A spike from a chaos marine was added to the top of the stick mainly as decoration. Some zombie parts were incorporated with ribs showing on his left side and a zombie spike in place of his left hand. Whilst a forest goblin leg and skeleton toes were added for his right foot, along with a nailed on spilt from a zombie.




The Kurnoth Hunters were the best choice for BB treemen before the new plastic model came out. The trouble was they looked a bit fast and agile for MA2, AG1 players that often take root. Maple is a tad more mobile than a normal treeman, so this was less of an issue.

The Kurnoth Hunter models already looked a fair bit like the illustration and there was one stood with legs apart in a pose that would match his top half. I started by carving the chest into the right shape and his shoulders to make space for the double pads the drawing has. I then glued these on and filled in his chest with greenstuff, sculpting the vines that make up his body. His face was a bit slim and needed a bigger jaw sculpted along with a nose and branch face guards.

The hardest part was getting his arms to look right, it took several attempts and having pink horror tentacles to use as “vine fingers” really helped as I could sculpt the other greenstuff vines round these. His legs had these weird toes which both stuck outside the base and didn’t right. These were trimmed down and his legs made to look more study by adding more horror tentacles and greenstuff vines.

Extra branches from dryads were added to both his back and feet for more decoration. I can see this model taking a long time to paint with so many branches, leaves and vines all needing to be shaded and highlighted.


With these stars done I have just 7 outstanding from the BB2016 rules and of those Forgeworld has just released a very nice Zolcath I intend to get. There has also been a preview of Skrull Halfheight as well and Rumbelow is the in new rules so will likely get a model too. Assuming these all look ok I can buy them and will just need to do Glotl, Kreek, Rasta Tailspike and Swiftvine to have completed all 80 stars (counting the skink and Swift twins individually). For teams I still need to do Vampires (along with painting Crazy Igor to finish crp) and Snotlings.