Avaran Treebeast, Grogan Convict Thug and Yndij Reaver for DreadBall Xtreme

L to R: Avaran Treebeast, Yndij Reaver, Convict Grogan Thug

In December I finished these three pieces for the newly released DreadBall Xtreme.  

I rushed taking the photos, so the images are a bit ropier than usual.  You should be able to see whats going on though.

DBX teams are more of a mix and match affair than the fixed rosters in original DreadBall (DBO).  Free Agents are not MVPs/Star Players as such, just other standard players that can be included in various teams, like this Yndij Reaver.

Although I have a few other armed Yndij models from Deadzone, I had yet to paint any of them before this one.  I experimented with a couple of ideas before settling on this simple scheme.  It works adequately and is different from the scheme used by Mantic for their four eyed space monkey cats, which is a plus from my perspective.  I prefer my models to look unique if I can manage it.

Another Free Agent, the concept of the Avaran Treebeast is currently right up my street.  Operating an “if it aint broke” philosophy, I painted this model in the same colours that I have been using for my recent space treepeople project.  I think that it worked out pretty well here too, even if the “tongue” looks a bit phallic, like a stamen I suppose.

Foaks – Treepeople from Spaaaace.

I will have to get another one of the Treebeast models for adding to my skirmish forces, rather than just underground futuristic sporting.  I quite like it, its a fun model.

Lastly, this Grogan is not a Free Agent but part of the Convict team.  The Mantic Convict Team colour scheme is a classic prison orange trousers and white vest affair.  As I didnt want my Convict team to look the same as the team on the cover of the box, I decided to go for other pop culture prison influences.

The horizontally striped trousers work well in this context I think.  They look quite theatrical, which is appropriate for DreadBall players.  The arrow on the shirt adds a little interest.  As many of the Convict models are non-human, it will be fun to vary the skin tones a lot around the neutral black and white outfit when I get around to painting the entire team.

I decided to paint the Grogan skin pink rather than the sandy tones that I have seen them in.  I didnt go for pink for any reason other than that I was in the mood to paint some pink really, even though I do like how it turned out.  That said, when I showed the painted figure to my wife she assumed that I had painted it as a reference to the Green Lantern Kilowog.  It wasnt intentional, but I guess that is pretty much exactly what I did on some sort of subconscious level.

It could be worse, I like Kilowog.

EDIT: one of these models showed up in a Mantic publicity shot recently…