Dreadball: the Coaches

Introduction

As well as players, games of Dreadball can involve other figures such as coaches, cheerleaders and even over-enthusiastic fans.  I haven't got the models to represent all such ancillaries, but I did recently purchase some coaches from eBay.  They were fun to paint up (and fairly quick too!), so here they are.

As an aside, for those of you who aren't really keen on Dreadball, I've almost run out of DB figures to show.  It'll be something different next time, I promise!

Coach Orky

This model is normally only available with "Mantic Points" (the company's loyalty scheme), so I was very pleased to buy him on the open market along with the other coaches.  Mind you, I imagine that even though he's a "restricted" figure, in practice there are probably quite a lot of him floating around.

He's an ork (obviously!), but rather a thin and weedy one.  Indeed, if it wasn't for the head, his physique would be spot on for a human instead.  Orky clearly doesn't believe in Theodore Roosevelt's  "speak softly, and carry a big stick" policy.  Instead, he wants to shout loudly and carry a big stick!.

Coach Shorty

Next up is my dwarf coach.  I'm not sure if he's shouting something himself or whether he's having difficulty in hearing what the referee just said.  After all, it looks as if Shorty was a player once himself and has the injuries to prove it: he's got a robotic arm and a large plate of metal fitted to his skull (where his ear once was?).

Coach Ratty

Third in line is my veer myn coach.  Unlike the dwarf above, he appears to be intact, although perhaps somewhat elderly and unsteady.  I wonder, do rat men age faster than other humanoids?  Are they particularly short-lived?

Coach Pike

Finally, we come to the human coach.  He also has not aged particularly gracefully; I assume that he was a player in his youth but was injured so badly as to require a support chair for the rest of his life.  Bonus points for anyone who can recognise the symbols on the back and side of his chair!

Conclusion

Like most of Mantic's models, these are made from their particular mix of resin and/or plastic that is sometimes referred to as "restic".  This is not my favourite material to work and it tends to have a lot of flash and to lack detail.  However, I had no problems with these figures beyond needing a little filler on Ratty.

All 4 coaches are somewhat unusual models and have no obvious Dreadball paraphernalia, so they could be transplanted into other SciFi settings very easily, I think.  I've already got some half-baked plans to do just this...

So, what shall I do for my next post?