Underworld Denizens team

Good news everyone!

After a long hiatus battling with my conversion urges using the new Chaos Chosen, and my inability to build a warband that's playable in Warcry but retains the Old World flavour (a mix of chaos warriors, beastmen and tzeentch worshipping henchmen) I returned to the thing I really love: Converting a whole BloodBowl team with zero chances of winning a single match ever.

And that's why I chose Underworld Denizens.

Back when I built my Chaos Renegades I was very proud how the rats and the goblin ended looking, so Underworld was the right choice. That and a tasty OOP box of Chaos Forsaken sent by a friend (weird bits for the bits god!).

For those who know me, I started to plan using my huge bits collection. Luckily I had lots of greenskin stuff, but lacked the Skaven bits (except for the Spiteclaw's Swarm warband).

So this is what I ended up sketching:

This was my planning for the Goblin Linemen, after building 2 regular armored goblins and a mutant with 2 heads (using a Goblin Bruiser from the Black Orc team).

I needed consistency and after thinking a lot, there were 3 things I needed to get the right look across all the team:

1. Regular bodies, with no modifications (we'll talk about mutations later).
2. Helmets: Some will have armored heads (their profile matches with the Skaven players) to represent blockers.
3. Hoods: Fanatic heads and deranged expressions for the rest.
4. Random mushrooms & fungus for some bases.

Now with Snotlings the tricky part were the arms:

1. This kit has Snotling heads attached to one arm and the other to the body. So every model needs cutting and trimming if you want to swap heads.
2. Bodies: No modifications unless I find a cool mutation to add.
3. Infected /desperate looking faces (I've been saving those little Goblin heads since the first lockdown; made me think in the Skragrott's Asylum so I needed to use them). Before finding those I tried using old Gnoblar heads on new Gnoblar bodies (they're smaller) but didn't work.

I'm also using that moon-squig face as a mutation (foul appearance) and probably the fly. There's also mushrooms and little bugs (got plenty from Gobbapalooza) .

And last but not least, the Skaven. Again, I'm not decided about all the mutations but I've figured out 2 positionals:

1. The Gutter Runner: I'm adding a night goblin hood to him (he's already wearing a cape and a mask so this should work). As a complement, I've got some smoke plumes for the base so I may try something ninja on him.

2. The Blitzer: A Mutant Skaven blitzer with horns because we all love a horned rat, right?  I've taken those mushooms from a Squig Hopper (probably one of the best kits GW has ever produced, period).

But then I needed a big guy. I had no Rat Ogres (I used mine for the Renegades, and the new Stormfiends would never work) and had a couple of failed Nurgle Trolls conversions collecting dust in a drawer... So I went for the coolest option and started building an Underworld River Troll. Long story short, I had to remove a lot of greenstuff, clean old superglue, make a new neck joint for the model (because it no longer had a neck) and dive in my old boxes looking for viable arms, hands, head and spines... I wasn't too optimistic, but I made it and recovered a whole model! Unfortunately it cost me my new Godhand clippers (it cut through 2 different River Troll wrists with no problem but utterly broke when I tried to cut the third; probably a miscast problem but I can't go to Japan to ask for a replacement).

Here he is: Mollog's right hand grabbing a Slaan player (he's definitely a big frog) with three fingers, matched with a 3-fingered Giant's left hand (even the fingernails look the same). The shoulderpads are battered shields from the Ogre team and the warpstone pendant comes from the Rockgut Troggoths' kit.

I sanded his feet so it will lean to the right and give that specific profile I've shown in the picture. It's a small detail but I love how it looks on its base.

And that's all for now.

Hope you liked the project, stay tuned on Mastodon and here.