Category Archives: Blood Bowl

Counter Culture

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Blood Bowl, Side projects

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Greetings Terrans, just a quickie from me today – I managed to get a quick game of Blood Bowl in last week, and so I bashed out a few counters to use instead of the standard ones. They weren’t quite finished for the game, but I’ve tidied them up this weekend & thought I would share.

For those not in the know, Blood Bowl games primarily track three things – Turn, Re-rolls and Score. Many coaches create their own snazzy counters to match their team, so I came up with these:

 

Simple things, but they are fun & are a sign of ‘doing it right’ in BB circles 😊

As for the game itself – turns out Wood Elves are bloody good… even when coached by a noob like me! I wanted to try as many positional players as I could, so I took 2 War Dancers and a Treeman, but I only had 1 re-roll for the team… A risky strategy, but the Corpse-Wood Wails comfortably ran out 2 – 0 winners against well coached a Human team. Come on the Wails!!!

Inq28 style Grim-Bowl team

13 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Blood Bowl, Bloodbowl, The Chapel

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I have a fun post for you today, as I have finished a quick project to create a Blood Bowl team. As usual for me, I wanted the minis in my team to do more than one job, so they needed to stand as their own thing as well as work as a BB team. I tried the same trick about 3 years ago when I made and painted a bunch of AdMech servitors that could double as an Undead BB team.

Coincidentally, I’ve gone back almost 3 years for the inspiration behind my latest team, and I revisited some ideas that I’ve been kicking around since I took part in The Chapel project… Long-time followers of this blog might remember that I had a lot of input into the Albino Forest – a setting that was used as part of the Chapel campaign. During the project, I bashed together some grim denizens of the forest, and even put together a short story to introduce some of my ideas. There was something about the concept of the tree-devils in particular that has been tickling away at the back of my mind ever since, and creating a horror-themed Blood Bowl team was the perfect excuse to dip back into my Sylvaneth bitsbox for another journey to the Albino Forest.

I loosely had the idea of using the tree-devil concept to build a Wood Elf team – a very literal interpretation one might say! A starting Wood Elf team can go one of two ways – either 2 Wardancers, a catcher and a bunch of linemen, or a Wardancer, a Treeman, a catcher, and a bunch of linemen… There are a few less common builds that involve fewer re-rolls, more catchers and/or a thrower, and I wanted the flexibility to experiment, so I ended up with the following list:

  • 8 Linemen
  • 2 Catchers & 1 Thrower
  • 2 Wardancers
  • 1 Treeman

The ‘linemen’ are all based on the Dryad mini – a hard-working but basic monopose plastic body with separate arms. I’ve trimmed and matched the arms, and I replaced the heads with skulls & sculpted in vines & tendrils for ‘hair’. The Catchers and Thrower are variations on the theme, just tweaked for a more catchy or throwy pose. Note the slight colouration of the ‘hair’ to denote role:

 

The Wardancers are unconverted Spite Revenants – I love these minis, so there really wasn’t anything I wanted to change! The sharp-eyed among you will notice that there are 3 of them, even though you can only have 2 in a team… I’ll explain the spare in a bit:

 

The Treeman is a re-posed Kurnoth Hunter, (obviously, he is too short to be more than a sapling compared to a real modern Treeman, but he is the perfect size for Blood Bowl). I brought the legs together so that he could fit a standard 32mm base, and I trimmed back the most extravagant branches. Again, I swapped the head, this time bringing in a bestial skull that I liked:

 

And here’s the Wood Elf team assembled in a few different ways:

 

So remember that spare Wardancer? Well, as I was building the minis I was debating whether to swap out the heads or not, but I felt that the Spite heads had a really nice vampiric look to them, and I decided to keep them. I also watched Dracula over Christmas, (superb TV btw!), and putting two and two together, I thought I’d check out Vampire teams in Blood Bowl. Turns out that they are really simple teams to build, as there are only 2 types of player – Vamps and Thralls. The only real decision is how many Vamps to include in your team… They are excellent individual players, and mathematically, you can take up to 6, but you would be mad to do so… Vamps roll for Bloodlust every turn they try to activate, with a 1 in 6 chance of failing. If they fail, you either burn a re-roll and hope for the best, feed on a Thrall, (stunning said Thrall), or bugger off to feast on the crowd… Basically, Vamp teams need to balance the number of Vamps with statistics, the number of re-rolls, and the number of Thralls available to snack on.

Most starting rosters suggest 2 Vamps, 10 Thralls, 5 rerolls, but you can reasonably push your luck with 3 Vamps/10 Thralls/4RRs. That’s why I did a spare Wardancer folks – so I can run the three as Vampires, and use the Dryads as Thralls:

 

And here’s one final pic of the lot together, and a reminder that these minis are not just a pair of Blood Bowl teams, but are a horror-inspired warband in their own right:

 

I have a feeling that I may return to the Albino Forest setting again and again… The thing is, the Albino Forest of my imagination is a wonderful and terrible place. It is not a single group of trees, but rather a multi-dimensional network of flora that spans time and space. It exists in patches across the 40k universe, but can also be found in the Mortal Realms of AoS, or the Old World. It is a place that can be visited in the worlds of Frostgrave, Erehwon, and Shadow Deep… You can find it on Toril, on Midkemia, and on Middle Earth… If you’re lucky, you can even find it in right here on our world, in our time – just ask Wudugast!

Go outside, visit an ancient and deserted piece of woodland in Autumn or Winter, and let the small hairs on the back of your neck guide you… you might just find yourself in a small part of the Albino Forest, where the normal laws of nature are twisted and the dead do not rest easy…

See you on the other side ;-)

 

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…

Mummy issues

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Blood Bowl

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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

Posted by in Blood Bowl

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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…

chapel

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 ;-)