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Barik Farblast

Barik is a 2nd edition Blood Bowl Star Player who overcame his racial inability to throw the ball satisfactorily by using a (surprisingly high tech) bazooka.  The models clean lines are quite a contrast with more recent Blood Bowl dwarf miniatures (which tend to look like Warhammer miniatures with their weapons clipped off rather than sportsfolk).  I think that the figure probably fits in better with a game of DreadBall than it does in Blood Bowl.

Barik Farblast features three rows down, third from the left.

Photos of the painted Barik miniature featured in the first White Dwarf magazine that I ever saw/bought (#108, December 1988).  Before I saw that magazine I had no idea that miniatures of fantasy sport themed, bazooka wielding dwarfs could be purchased, let alone painted to such a high standard and subsequently gamed with.

I pored over this magazine and this page in particular.  So from that day I wanted to paint my own Barik Farblast miniature.  Twenty five years later I finally got around to it.  Barik has been waiting for paint since before some of my gaming opponents were born.

I painted Barik with the same palette used for my Ursa Miner Bruins.  While it isnt a match with the original BB scheme shown in the scan above, it has some coincidental similarities.  The armoured style of the DreadBall forgefather miniatures is quite different to the sportswear look that Barik has, so I had to work a little to get the scheme to fit.  In retrospect its possible that I should have added a yellow stripe travelling front to back on the top of Bariks helmet, but that idea only just occurred to me now.

I decided to paint the bazooka in the same way that I paint the bases on my DreadBall miniatures.  I reckon that it makes the weapon look a little more like its something from TRON or Automan or possibly some sort of holodeck style re-sequenced photon projection rather than a big ol’ mechanical apparatus.  I think that it looks cool like that, but YMMV.

In DreadBall “guard” position players occasionally evolve, Pokémon-style into “keepers”.  As well as being tougher versions of regular guards, keepers also get the rather dubious ability to handle the ball crudely and launch it down the field via modified DreadBall launchers.  This makes Barik a pretty perfect proxy model as a DreadBall keeper, all the more so because the keeper models are not available yet.

L to R: DreadBall forgefather striker, Blood Bowl 2nd edition Barik Farblast, DreadBall forgefather jack.

Barik is a fraction smaller than his teammates and the style of his kit is a little different, but I think that he fits in just fine.  Im looking forward to using the model in a game after a quarter of a century wait…

Filed under: Boardgame, Miniatures | Tagged: 2013, Blood Bowl, DreadBall, Dwarfs, Forgefathers, Sci-fi, Space Dwarfs, Squats |