Dreadball 2 Springclean

Greetings Programs,

Lets start at the Beginning.

I enjoyed 1st edition of Dreadball alot. Me and my best mate played it a ton. He had his faithful Veermyn Team, I played whichever team id recently painted and fancied playing. I favoured the Forge Fathers and Brokkrs more often than not. I’d collected about half the teams and as many MVP’s as I could get my hands on and painted them up.

The second edition came out and I jumped on it as soon as Mantic released it. I bought the Game and the other 2 teams that came out on release. I painted the Refbot and some of the playing pieces in the base game, enough be able to play with nothing un painted on the board. Me and my mate played with our painted 1st edition teams. I planned on painting the new teams, really liking the look of the Matsudan, but never got around to it.

A couple of years ago all my Dreadball stuff went into storage boxes as we played it less and less. I’m a father of 2, in a happy marriage, so alone time for hobby is few and far between, plus I’m a slow painter. Current things I’ve been painting the last few years has been mainly Dead Man’s Hand and Burrows and Badgers. I find, like most, its far easier to buy and imagine painting miniatures than it is to actually find the time.

With the announcement of Dreadball All stars at the beginning of the year and then Spring clean challenge has my enthusiasm building to get Dreadball back on my painting desk.

My Goals are to paint the 4 Second edition Teams at least.

Elmer and Dobbs plus MVPs and any other unpainted teams would be a bonus.

Army painter speed paints is going to be my tool of choice to try and get the teams done.

A couple of images of the base coated teams as I pulled them out in their boxes.

I’ve had a few evenings where I have been able to sit down and get some paint on the models.
I started by giving myself a quick win to get me motivated to do the first team. I painted up the Neo-Bots MVP Romeo Blue. Because I like alot of sci-fi things I like to base my paint jobs on a character or theme from another sci-fi property. For Romeo Blue I went with his name sake from Pacific Rim.

I got out my Pacific Rim concept Art and sfx book and pinned down what I wanted to paint.

Base coat – steel forge silver colourforge

Speed paint – Magic Blue

Red details – Vallejo plain red

Gold details – warpaint bright gold

The team I wanted to paint like the Manhunters from DC Green Lantern lore. I’m a big Green lantern fan and when I saw the original colour scheme for the Neo-bots I thought it’s not that far removed. If you know your Green Lantern lore you know the Manhunters were the original creations of the guardians a millenia ago to police the Galaxy. So ancient comic robots turned bad.

Base coat – steel forge silver colourforge

Speed paint – Magic Blue

Speed paint – Slaughter Red (apt)

Green details – Vallejo Green Olive

Silver details – warpaint Silver

Pick out the chrome faces

Black wash – watered down black noir ink

Give it that ancient look.

Plus some chips here and there of the warpaint silver dabbed on with a ripped up blister sponge.

The bases will be added on later. They will be first Ed: 1 to match the rest of my things; 2 I don’t like the aesthetic of second Ed; 3 they look more Tron!

I put the last title as 2 down, I meant 2 teams and forgot to add the second team and MVP.
The second team was the other team out of the main box, the Yindij. Or ninth moon tree sharks. Their colour scheme was something I took longer to decide on. I had painted up the metal character from first edition in like a grey fur, with leather and the xtreme one in a reddy brown fur with grey and orange armour. Not sure what inspired the grey fur, but I do know the orange/armour and brown was inspired by master of onion’s Bulrathi.
So my question was do I go down the line of one of these established choices or a new one?
I thought I’d have a look at watching a film or 2 with alien pieces in. Well first pick was james Cameron’s avatar. And yeh well sold on painting the yindij like the Na’avi. But the next question was the armour? Where do I go with that. Quick Google search showed some armour choices for the avatar game to coincide with the film.
I picked the colour I liked which contrasted with the blue skin. So a leather/brown armour with bone parts sticking out.  Really liked it when I’d completed the first 1 or 2.

Base coat – white colourforge
Speed paint – magic blue
Speed paint – leather brown
Speed paint – reddish brown
Warpaint – desert bone
Bronze details – Vallejo Bronze
Base coat – Vallejo black
Wash – strong tone 

With the MVP i wanted to carry on with the blue skin like Na’avi, thought it looked cool and more alien.
While looking at the armoured Na’avi I saw one with pieces of red armour and liked that too, so as the red was out for the bots I put some on the MVP. I think he turned out pretty cool, definitely draws the eye between the red and blue. And sticks out from the team.

I’m now trying to convince myself I don’t need a Toruk toy for my desk!

Base coat – white colourforge
Speed paint – Magic Blue
Speed paint – leather brown
Speed paint – Slaughter Red (apt)
Warpaint – desert bone
Bronze details – Vallejo Bronze
Base coat – Vallejo black
Wash – strong tone 

Like the Neo bots the bases will be added on later. Think the old hex bases exude more Tron energy! Always more Tron!

I had an evening last night to sit, chill, and do the bases while we watched something we’d seen before.

I painted both teams round bases black like I have done with all my previous teams. I then glued them to the hex bases. Once dried I then painted a contrast colour onto the front 3 facings, this was something for the solid colours to cling onto a bit better.
With all my basing for dreadball I’ve always painted the threat hexes amd I’ve always done them in a solid block colour. For some reason it feels more tron to me, simple solid colours.
With the Neo-bots I went with a flat red as it matched their main colour and went with their starting colour and ball.
With the Yindij team I went with an olive green to match their main colour and went with their starting colour and ball. In hindsight I feel like I should have painted it a sky blue to go with the skin/fur.

A thing I’m doing, some may think odd, is pulling in other sci fi miniatures and IPs to use for things like coaching staff, and cheerleaders possibly even spectators. I picked up some miniatures for starfinder the RPG, with plans to play it someday. I may even jump in and pick up some of the Archon plastic ones. At the moment I’ve picked up some of the wizkids ones. As the speedpaints were being used for the teams I painted up a little Shirren miniature I could use as coaching staff with his hologram item in his left hand (ignore the gun in his right hand). He came out alright. Could go back later and pick out a few details, but hes not a main priority atm.

As for other ideas I have had, in future. Ive never liked the dreadball medibot, but could possibly use beyond antares drones as medibots. Possibly planet of the apes characters as coaching staff/cheerleaders for the Zees. Cylons or even cylon command and Baltar from Tangent miniatures as coaches. And I’ve seen some 3d printed Londo Molari and G’kar plus other B5 minis that could be coaches/spectators. But this is all pie in the sky, way down the line ideas. But also added motivation to keep me going and get the official stuff done first.

With the Matsudans I’d gotten a bit lucky. When I pulled them out they had been undercoated but also had 2 layers of the Malignant flesh Speed paint put on they’re skin. This was great for the belly colour and just one coat of a darker green all over apart from the belly would be perfect. What I settled on for the colour scheme was the concept Art for the matsudan. I really wanted to do a lizard race from one of the 4x games I like but yeh age of wonders planetfall’s Lizard race the Shakarn are green skinned with red armour, the Sakkra from master of orion are green skinned with red armour, the Matsudan concept Art is green skinned with red armour. I mean if its worked countless times its got to work for my team right. Not a fan usually of following the studio scheme or basic scheme for dreadball, but it’s such a strong concept I thought I’d go with it. Turned out nice and strong a look too.

Base coat – white acrylic colourforge
Speed paint – malignant flesh(stomachs)
Speed paint – Orc flesh
Speed paint – Slaughter Red
Green details – Vallejo Green Olive
Teeth and eye details – warpaint desert bone
Strong tone – to give it a lived in feeling and blend the 3 shades of green together seamlessly.

With the MVP Raiden, I really was stuck for a long time. Didn’t know what to do with him. The going through lots of space lizard concepts I came across an image of a Vessk from Starfinder with silver, purple and blue armour and liked that idea instantly. I thought it would contrast against the teams monotone really well. But with the mask I wanted a bit more of a traditional bone white kind of colour with black eyes for the mask. Think it turned out OK, pretty happy with the colour all over.

Base coat – white acrylic colourforge
Speed paint – malignant flesh(stomachs)
Speed paint – Orc flesh
Speed paint – Gunmetal silver
Green details – Vallejo Green Olive
Mask details – warpaint desert bone
Teeth and horns – ivory vallejo
Strong tone – to blend the 3 shades of green together seamlessly on his skin.

I haven’t had time to paint the last couple of evenings as I’ve been away. I went up to the big City, London, for a stag do. After being really rinsed by how expensive everything is, I’ve now come home hoping I can financially recover from the trip.
Great fun was had for sure, lots of drinking and eating and catching up with old friends and making some new ones too. It was really nice to see my close mate enjoy himself and have a few days all centered around him and his likes.

As part of some of the events and things we did for his stag do we went to an experience. As my mate is a big star trek fan and sci-fi in general we partook in bridge command the experience. We had great fun, he was the captain, obviously. My mates didn’t quite take it seriously as some would and had a laugh, and everything that could go wrong did. The captain named me chief engineer, well that was crazy for me, jumping between 2 stations and trying to fix/change 3 different areas. I spent alot of it running around to say the least. I may have also jettisoned the warp core as I saw it going haywire and yeh cost us the mission. But I wouldn’t change the experience we all enjoyed especially the captain stag!

They had a bar and lounge in the experience like a small 10forward. Was a nice place to sit and drink some interesting cocktails and Ipas, and also try and take some photos of some dreadball MVPs in some suitably sci-fi surroundings.

I’ve been quite quiet lately and haven’t had much chance to paint. And when I did it was short little bursts and wanted to do as much of the details justice on the revenants.

With the revinants I wanted to pick out alot more of the details. Because they have pistons and mechanics aswell as skin and armour I wanted to make sure I took advantage of the interesting parts of the models. The scheme was sort of inspired by well pretty obvious the bore, but also the assembly from paradoxes age of wonders planetfall. They have alot of metallic with bright colours. I’d painted the the coats of metallic and wanted to show the basic armour as worn and beaten. I decided to stipple orange onto the dark grey of the armour, showing the basic colour of the armour through the beating and chipping. This was like some of the heroes from planetfall. Adding bright red and orange and blue to the eyes and some piping really brought them out.

Base coat – steel colourforge
Speed paint – broadsword silver
Speed paint – malignant flesh(skin)
Vallejo colour – bronze
Wash – flesh wash(mainly on the bronze)
Drybrush – chain mail silver
Drybrush – desert bone
Stipple game colour – fiery orange
Eyes – fiery orange/Base red/ shieldwall blue

With the character I wanted to show him at his almost clean basic colours more inline with the Borg. Solid dark colour on the armour. So I stuck with the dark grey and didn’t stipple the orange this time. Came out nice and clean.

Base coat – steel colourforge
Speed paint – broadsword silver
Speed paint – malignant flesh(skin)
Vallejo colour – bronze
Wash – flesh wash(mainly on the bronze)
Drybrush – chain mail silver
Drybrush – desert bone
Eyes – fiery orange/Base red/ shieldwall blue

I think next I’ll try and finish my Elmer and dobbs. I’d painted the 2 characters but none of the other parts of that model. And possibly 2 mvps after that, maybe even the 4 coaching staff from magnetar circuit, before moving onto the 3 teams I have left.