Category Archives: Blood Bowl

The Clockwork Orange take to the field!

13 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Blood Bowl

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Hi guys, I’ve had a busy weekend but managed to squeeze in a game of Blood Bowl, wrap up the second of my Ostium Guides for the Chapel project, and advanced the paint-job on a few more trees for the same. No news on my Exodite warband as yet – I need to study some sculpting techniques before I take them any further. I’ll chuck a few words up on the match today, as I haven’t photographed my second Guide yet, and the trees are still WIP. Feel free to skip this if Blood Bowl ain’t your thang, but do pop back later in the week, because I’ll be posting on the Chapel stuff as the week progresses :-)

So, Blood Bowl! This was an exciting event because it was the first run-out for my Clockwork Orange team – in fact, this was my first game with undead, my first game with a painted side, and I scored my first touchdown! I am very much a novice at this game, having only played once before as an adult, but I feel that I am slowly getting the hang of it. That is a huge testament to my pal Ross and his patient, (and lenient), support! We played out a gruelling but enjoyable 1-1 draw, with Ross and his Orcs receiving the first kick-off and taking six turns to grind downfield for the first touchdown. That didn’t leave me much time to do anything in the first half, (other than crump some heads), so I had to wait for the second half to get my score on the board. I took the kick-off and caged my way down the field, before cutting loose with a speedy Ghoul. I managed my score in five turns, so that gave Ross a chance to come back at me in the last quarter. By this stage, he had a few players off the field, whereas I had been lucky with all my regenerate rolls and had a full team on the pitch. With a nice numerical advantage, I managed to stop his drive close to the half way line, knocked the ball loose and miraculously caught it. I just needed to hand the ball off to one of my speedsters to be in with a chance of pinching a late winning touchdown, and…. I fluffed the hand-off. Ultimately, a 1-1 draw felt about right – a late win would have been harsh on Ross, and the draw meant that the game was fun for both of us.

The highlight of the game for me was getting a blitz and push-back on one Orc that ended up pushing two others and dumping the last one off the pitch! Lowlight was throwing a 3 dice block, not getting a knock-down that I really needed, and then having to burn the re-roll that might have won me the game at the end. *sigh*   But hey, that’s Blood Bowl! I think I may be falling in love with the game – it is such an elegant system, and is the quintessential ‘easy to learn and difficult to master’ type of affair… frustrating as hell at times, but just so much fun :-)

Here’s a couple of pics, including Ross’ lovely Oldhammer Orcs:

 Hard-hitting Mummy

 LET’S GET READY TO FUMBLE!

 

Here are some things wot I learned about the game, and about the respective teams:

1: Move the bloody turn counter FIRST Alex, you numpty!

2: Mummies are seriously and properly HARD! Rock-hard, like Tom Hardy Hard.

3: Orcs are really well armoured, and Mighty Blow really isn’t that mighty against AV9…

4: Regenerate is great – I was still at full strength at the end of the match!

5: Figuring out how to best lend assists is the trickiest bit of the game, and…

6: Working through actions in order (most to least favourable) is key.

7: Stay away from the touchline! (Ross…)

8: Look after those re-rolls…

 

So, there we have it! As I said earlier, you can expect more posts to follow over the week, with the focus very much shifting back to The Chapel. I will also have a short story for you, for those that like such things. Hopefully it will give you a glimpse of my vision for the Albino Forest, and some of the macabre practices that happen in its depths…

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Mummy issues

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

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Hi guys, so good to be posting today. It has been ages since my last post, I’ve just been so damn busy! But hey, good news – I’ve finally finished up my heavy servitors/mummy blockers, (‘mummy blockers’ as in Egyptian undead wot do blocking rather than things wot block Mums…)

To be honest, I found the whole Mummy thing pretty tricky to reconceptualise as a 40K servitor… I mean, what is the deal with Mummies? Surely they are just wrapped-up zombies, yeah? They should be human sized, yeah? So why are they so strong compared to regular zombies?? Don’t tell me… because magic, right?    Right…   *sigh*

Look, I know it’s only pretending and all that, but the whole ‘Mummy problem’ gave me some headaches when planning this project. I was torn between making pimped out human-sized servitors, or going with something that reflected the Blood Bowl stat-line. In the end, I went with option two because I wanted these guys to read as being slow, strong and very well armoured. I used Stormcast Eternal legs and the torsos from the Kataphron kit to give a really chunky industrial look, and used Kataphron heads as well to tie them in with my Zombie Linemen. The arms were a bit hit and miss – I kind of tried for an asymmetrical heavy-lifting idea on their right hand side, but I’m not sure how well that came off. I also got lazy and used a servo-arm on the one guy, and the grabber from a servo-arm on the other, and wish I hadn’t. I think they look awkward and skinny, but done is done. Here they are – see what you think:

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To be honest, these are my least favourite models in the project, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it – I can always revisit this in the future after all. The important thing is that the team is now complete, and here they are – the Clockwork Orange in all their glory:

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Now… time to get immersed in the Chapel >:-)

Ballroom Blitz(ers)

31 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Hello chaps, just a quicky from me today – I’m still working my way through my cyber-undead Blood Bowl team ‘The Clockwork Orange’, and have completed the Wight Blitzers/guardian class servitors. Sadly, painting time has been extremely limited of late, so I only have these two minis to share with you… but hey, progress is progress, right? Here in their role as servitors:

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And here they are with the rest of the BB team:

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I’ve taken a slightly different approach with these two by going for a more skeletal look, (Necron bodies & servo-skull heads), rather than the fleshy AdMech approach I took with my counts-as Zombies & Ghouls. This kinda makes sense to me from an undead perspective, what with Wights being ‘properly’ dead and all that. I also thought ahead and figured I’d probably use Necron warrior bodies if I ever add any Skellies to the roster, so I thought I’d better go large with my Blitzers. This also nicely reflects their role on the field – fast & hard-hitting! This means that I just have the two Mummy blockers to finish up, and the Clockwork Orange is good to go! These two are next on my list of jobs, so I’ll keep you posted :-)

In other news, inspired by this post over on sho3box, I picked up a copy of Dinoproof over the weekend and had a couple of games with my eldest son and my Brother-in-lead Ross, (yes, my eldest had his first nerd-night!). This is a great little game to just pick up and get on with – you need suitable 28mm minis for your Slayers, toy Dinosaurs, some D8, a £10 rule book and a 3×3 table. Rules, tactics & gameplay are simple, so this is perfect for a short gaming session, and particularly good for kids. It also has some nice campaign development and some scenarios to work through, so it has some replayability. We all took different approaches to the game – my son went for dakka, while Ross went for versatility… I went with an angle grinder, (which I used to kill a frickin’ T-rex!), and a total lack of guns, intelligence or finesse.  >:)   Sadly, I didn’t take any pics, but trust me, this was great fun all round and for £10, this book is well worth a look.

 

Finally, the Chapel is calling to me my friends – I’ve been shopping and I have all the bits & basing material I need to start my warband. I’m really excited about this project and can’t wait to get started… I’m hoping to be able to report some progress on this in the near future, but until then, peace out dudes!

Cyber-Ghouls

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Blood Bowl, Side projects, The Chapel

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Hello chaps & chapesses, just a quick update from me today. I got the next batch of AdMech/undead Blood Bowl minis finished up over the weekend – this time it’s the Ghouls. These were a funny one to re-imagine for 40k, and they are a bit of an oddity in the BB team to be honest (what with not being dead and whatnot). In the end I focused on two key features of BB Ghouls – their speed, and their paper thin armour. The Sicarian kit seemed the obvious choice, and here’s the result:

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I’m a big fan of this kit, and have used various bits out of it a number of times, but I’ve never assembled and painted one ‘properly’ before. These guys are pretty much stock, though I did need to shorten the legs to fit the base, (easy enough to take a section out of the shin), and I had to chop some left hands to be right hands, (switched the little finger with the index finger). The backpacks got de-cluttered as well, but otherwise they are pretty standard. It’s the first time I have used the gasmask head option, and boy, are they good! I think that the inflexibility of leg poses would probably get annoying if I had to do a whole bunch of them, and the softness of the transition between armour and body suit was a bit frustrating, but overall I still think this is a brilliant kit. Painting was as per the Linemen from my last post – continued experimentation with black, that lovely orange that I’ve been enjoying so much of late, and blue for the spot colour.

In other news…

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I have started putting together some bits for The Chapel project over on Heresy of us – the project is a really cool collaborative project where creativity and story-telling is king. Real life has prevented me from getting stuck in to this as much as I would like, but I’m getting my toes wet with these WIPs for my take on the Ostium Guides brief:

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I imagine these guys as being grizzled woodsmen and guides, their age being a testament to their skill in surviving in and around the Albino Woods. They are members of a guild, one of many that exist in the various villages that dot the landscape. – there is strength in numbers after all, as there is always the temptation to avoid payment to a lone guide, (usually by simply murdering him or her at journeys end). Having a guild behind you is no guarantee that this will not happen of course, but it does promises retribution for such betrayals… Revenge is invariably terminal, as he pile of skulls amply demonstrate.

I’m looking forward to doing some more work on these guys. I changed my mind on the one fella’s arm so that needs sorting, and I have some sculpting and tidying up to do, but hopefully I’ll get them a bit further forward over the coming weeks. I’m aiming for a medieval/low tech woodsy feel if that makes sense?

I am really looking forward to working on my freehand with those lovely blank shields, and I am excited about doing the bases – I deliberately went for bigger bases than strictly necessary, and I intend to put a lot of effort into them as a test bed for my warband proper… Speaking of the warband, I think I have figured out what I am going to do in that regard – it’s going to be a huge departure from my usual fare, so I’m excited and nervous in equal measure… Hopefully it all comes together, and I end up with something worthy of the project! I’ll keep you posted ;-)

The future’s bright – the future’s Orange!

13 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Blood Bowl, Side projects

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Wow, it has been ages since I last posted anything – and with good reason I’m afraid, because I haven’t had anything good to show! My studies continue to dominate my life outside of work at the moment, but I did find time to do some building over Christmas… happily, I have just finished painting the first 5 models of my current project. Here they are:

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So, what we have here is the result of a lot of thinking, and no small measure of ingenuity on my part. They are unarmed, general purpose servitors for the 40k/RT universe – part of my long running goal to populate my imaginary world with non-combatant figures. Logically, there should be unarmed servitors all over the Imperium in 40k, kind of a Borg backdrop to the main action. I always really liked the idea of the Borg in Star Trek, kind of undead in SPAAACE! I love how they just ignore the away team when they first beam on to a cube, but then mob them when they start presenting a threat – that would be a really cool mechanic in-game.

I’m determined to push myself as a painter this year, and I made sure I was doing so when painting these, (hence they took so damn long!). I experimented with how I do black and took a very different approach to the flesh tones, and I’m quite pleased with both. Also note the dead white eyes… I’m really pleased with how they turned out :-)  Overall, I’m happy, though I may revisit them & add some light weathering in the future, just to tie them in a bit more with their role.

Anyway, here they are again with my old Agentia Scrutator team, (Salvage Agents), just doing servitor shiz:

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But… ‘Hey you, where the Jeffing-hell is this ingenuity of which you boasted earlier in this post?!?’ I hear you ask. Well, thing is, these are more than simple servitors…  Regular readers of this blog will know that I really do like a bit of reusability in my projects – like my techno-barbarians that also work as a fantasy Frostgrave warband for example. Time is precious y’awl, so if I can get a number of functions out of each mini then so much the better…  I think I may have kicked the arse out of it this time though, because this:

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Yup, that’s right peeps, my servitors are designed to double up as Blood Bowl players – specifically, they are proxies for Zombie linemen from the undead team roster – servitors are practically zombies, so it kinda works I reckon! I also built & undercoated the rest of the undead player types needed for a team over the holidays – but again, they are all intended to also work as servitors in their own right. I don’t mind showing you the WIPS for the rest of the team now that the cat is out of the bag.

First up, we have the Ghouls, (scavenger class servitors):

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Next we have the Wight blitzers, (security class servitors):

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Finally some Mummy blockers, (heavy duty servitors):

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And the whole team – provisionally called the ‘Clockwork Oranges’ (fluff pending):

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Well, there we have it – this project has been bit slower than usual, but hopefully worth the wait. I’ll be getting the rest of the team painted up slowly over the next several weeks before moving on to something new and rather exciting…  More on that in the future, but meanwhile, you know the score folks – thoughts, comments, questions & feedback are always welcome :-)

Peace out dudes!