Saffron Vale Blue Beards – Gnome Blood Bowl Team

So I failed bro take pictures of the building of the team or the priming. But it’s just glue and black paint really.

For some reason everyone seems to dislike painting yellow. For me it’s one of my favourite colours to paint. This was done by first covering the black with a thinned down later of pale sand. This was done using several thin coats. Next I used Army painter Ancient stone. When that was dry I lined the recesses with a thinned dark tone. This was a mistake, but it will be swapped out for a red tone on the next model. I then used white ink to highlight all the raised areas. Once this was done I thinned down imperial fist contrast and covered the areas I wanted to be yellow. This step is where I realised that the dark tone was the wrong choice. After that I added a tiny drop of fire giant orange speed paints to the imperial fist for shading in darker areas. It still looked too yellow so I decided to switch to using Zealot Yellow speed paints to get a more saffron colour. This worked really well over the imperial fist. The final step was to take a drop of liqutex White Ink and add a drop of zealot yellow to boost the highlights. This worked really well.

Ok so I built the team and I primed them in black. But really did not know where to go with the team until I decided to paint the faces. It was a start. Then I had an idea  what if the team were all to dye their hair blue… Then the name the Blue beards piped into my head.  So I now had an idea … But I decided I didn’t want the the uniforms to be blue. I then decided to follow a recent livery I used for Barons War. Yellow and Green.

So it’s at this point decided to use AI to create some details.

It suggested Saffron Vale – Bluebeard’s as a team name.

The following is mostly AI generated content.

“Saffron Vale lies on the southern edge of the Moot, a warm, fertile valley known for its saffron fields, herb gardens, and small pockets of gentle woodland magic. Gnomes have lived here for generations, working alongside their halfling neighbours but keeping their own traditions, crafts, and eccentricities.

Blood Bowl arrived in the Vale through travelling halfling leagues, and the gnomes embraced it with immediate enthusiasm. A coalition of lumber‑workers, burrow‑runners, tinkerers, and illusionists formed a team that would represent the Vale’s spirit: bright, clever, and stubbornly proud.

The team’s colours — saffron yellow, forest green, come directly from the Vale’s landscape and culture. Saffron represents the golden crocus fields, green honours the surrounding woods.

Their signature feature, the blue beards, began with the team’s founding captain and now manager Gorwick Saffronson, who declared that the team needed a colour no clan had ever claimed. Whether he discovered the dye through magical mishap or berry‑mixing accident, the brilliant azure became the team’s unifying mark. Every bearded player dyes their beard blue as a sign of loyalty and identity.

The illusionists stand out for a different reason: they are completely beardless. Their constant use of glamour‑magic suppresses facial hair growth, and even a hint of stubble causes their spells to misfire in unpredictable ways. To show solidarity with their teammates, they dye their hair the same azure shade, often shimmering or drifting slightly due to magical residue.

The Blue Beards are known throughout the Moot as a bright, eccentric, and fiercely united team. Their motto — “Bright of beard, sharp of mind, swift of foot.” — captures the spirit that has carried them from a quiet valley to the wider Blood Bowl world.

So why Gnomes, basically a few years ago I started playing a Gnome Rogue in our Otters Couch D&D campaign… Zook the Furniture salesman. It at this point I got interested in Gnomology.

So when they announced a new Gnome team for Blood Bowl I was well I may have to get that, but what with one thing or another  I forgot.. until early 2026 when visiting Battlefield Hobbies in Daventry and there I saw the team and well I bought it and that folks as they say bwas my slippery slope back into Blood Bowl.

It was around 1989, I was 14/15 years old when I first came across blood bowl. It was I believe the second edition..the one with the expanded polystyrene pitch. In those days Blood bowl was a Very different game. You could mix and match different races into a team. All the information came in the rules plus a couple of hard back books. I created my first team of misfits called the Hammers. They had a combination of Dwarfs and Humans and a halfling called the mouse. Anyway this was early days and it got me playing.. I do believe somewhere I still have this edition.

After a couple of years along came the third edition and that’s when I really got into playing it. I got the game . And started with my collection of teams. These were the two plastic teams from the box plus metal teams

From the box I created

• Paravion Pirates – Humans
• The Greenskins – Orcs

Additional Teams

• Erengrad Hammers – Dwarf team
• Jaguars – Woodelves
• Skaven Stealers – Skaven

It was at this time that I determined that the Skaven were to be my team of Choice to play and the Stealers which had an SS logo were born and that team played in Black and Gold with a white badge.

Over the years I played blood bowl on and off, I picked up the computer game I , played the living rulebook for a while, but ultimately the game fell by the wayside for me other things go in the way. But I still think it’s one of the better GW games.

So then along came Fourth edition..but my interest was very low, but the new Skaven Team appeared and well I had to buy them. And that’s as far as it went. I never did finish painting them.. I must get back to that.