Hello, TechRaptor readers. Today we’re going back to the Empire of the Free Cities and looking at some of the more unique and colorful characters on the Guild Ball team rosters. Mascots occupy a unique niche within the game, providing not only offensive support on the pitch, but also tend to work well with various players. Each one of the miniatures themselves have a great deal of personality as well, which is required when dealing with the larger-than-life heroes of Guild Ball.
The mascots themselves are themed for their respective teams, ensuring that creatures as diverse and odd as a giant octopus, a pile of swarming rats, and a mechanical spider and her artificial broods somehow oddly fit in well to a game of medieval soccer.
Model-wise, most of the mascots are very simple miniatures, often comprising one single piece of pewter. The one model that proved the most difficult to assemble was Mother, as a mechanical spider isn’t the most intuitive mini to assemble, especially considering the giant metal cog it’s resting on. That one took quite some time fiddling with and dry-fitting until the eureka moment when it finally fit together.
Each miniature was very easy to paint up to a tabletop standard, save for one. Quaff proved to be a bit tricky for me personally, as my typical drybrush method for painting fur doesn’t work that well due to the rather shallow fur details on the model. It may not seem important at first, but if you’re used to the more pronounced fur details from something like Warhammer 40,000, then it will cause problems for you.
Overall, my personal favorite is a tie between Vileswarm and Mother, oddly enough. Both are very well sculpted models and have lots of character. Mother is a unique idea; her trio of mechanical spider nests give Engineer players a great deal of flexibility on the field while being rather easy to paint overall (once you figure out exactly how Mother goes together). Vileswarm is another favorite simply because my family has a trio of pet rats who often behave in a small swarm whenever they get a whiff of food or hear a bag crinkling somewhere in the house.
The Guild Ball mascots are currently available for purchase from either the Steamforged Games web store or your local FLGS. Stat cards for the mascots featured in this article are available from the Steamforged Games website. The miniatures featured in this article were generously provided by Steamforged Games.