Finally...

Yesterday I played my first game of Blood Bowl!

The BB League is well underway now, with some players having played up to 5 games already

and here I was not even knowing how to play!

But visiting my club yesterday I watched a league match (with a game that was on the line, very tense!) and afterwards Guy was so kind to give me a Blood Bowl introduction and so I faced of against his Chaos. (You will a know him as "Nemesis" from Tomsche's Società di Archeologia)

There is much more to Blood Bowl than meets the eye. Watching, it looks fairly simple but being ingame is an entirely different matter.

First thing causing me a lot of trouble is the "illegal procedure", I keep forgetting and

it cost me two re-rolls and that was even after Master Guy let his young Padawan get away with it twice! Now as far as the game goes, strategy is an important part. You can't just go around and block here and run there... Careful positioning is key and leaving players on their own will soon relust i them being mobbed on and bashed into the dirt! Luckily my Orcs are very resilient and will get up again but losing players sets you back a lot.

Making priorities and not taking unneccessairy risks helps too. Causing a turnover early in your own turn will cause your players to be out of position resulting in opponent break-aways or just another beating! So I need to get around with what to do first and least risky!

Assisting is a must! Even though I had 4 Black Orc Blockers, they still needed the assist of other Orcs to be able to block without taking the chance of ending up face down for themselves...

Especially against Chaos who are so damn tough and strong themselves!

And again we I was faced with the much needed experience of positioning, to maximise the number of blocks and assists you can do and to avoid getting them back at you! This is off course the most important part in the entire game and something I have a lot to learn about!

All in all, Blood Bowl is an easy game to learn, the basics are quite easy but it's a difficult game to

master to get the best out of your team! I hope some gaming experience will help me through some of the simpler tactics!

But still, it was a very enjoyable game where lot's of things happened, highlight of the game beingmy Thrower Longfang Lungbursta passing to his Goblin teammate, successfully catching the ball and making a run for it, only to be caught up by the Chaos Minotaur and being stomped to a bloody pulp! He was last seen flying out of the stadium, several parts going in equally several directions! Ouch!!!

Thanks again to Guy for this very entertaining lesson!

Now I'm off to make some much needed roster sheets, pitch, counters, dug-outs and more of that sort! See you on the Pitch!

Night Goblins on parade!

As mentioned in my earlier Ogre Kingdoms report, the other fantasy army I own are Night Goblins! It took me quite some time to get this mushroom-crazed freak show on the road, it is not in one days' work to start a Night Gobbo force...

Most of these models are from the "Batlle for Skull Pass" range, being a cheap and easy way to bulk out on NG fast. Everything else is either 2nd hand or scratchbuilt as I really wanted a low budget Fantasy army, and I can say that this worked out rather well! (for a horde army that is!)

I tried to tie in several regular goblin units by giving them a Night Goblin makeover so they could be used but still fit the theme of the army!

Let's see what those black-clad goons bring to battle:

The first Goblin/Night Goblin switch, a Wolf Chariot. This was scratchbuilt using Chaos warhounds, regular NG warriors and some bits of sprue, wagonwheels and multiple leftover bits!

One of the units bulked out with unit fillers. I have a couple of those in my army as it really helps to save on models and looks great in the unit too! This is a Bad Moon rock with gold and ruby eyes. This unit is 48 strong (6x8) with full command and a Shaman to boast!

The command unit, a big block of 50 NG's with full command, Warboss (the nut standing on the shield), Shaman and much more bling! Behind the banner you can see a NG on a tower, this is another unit filler made from the hut that comes with the Skull Pass set.

Third unit of warriors (40) with yet another two fillers, one being a plain rock and the other a watchtower. In all, the unit fillers are saving me 28 Night Goblin models to be used elsewhere!

This means I can almost make an extra unit out of the unused models wich is great in my book!!!

Squigs, you got to have squigs! Fun and they look fantastic in an army! Nasty but unpredictable in combat! No unit filler here but I did use some Sguig Hoppers to strengthen up the unit, the 3 models wouldn't be of much other use anyway.

My giant, made from some toy store caveman. I didn't change anything on this model, just added the Gobbo with chain and painted him up with warpaint and he was intantly Goblinised! This was one of the best deals in my army, this thing only cost me about €10/£8/$13 and for that I get 200pts worth of high strength hits! Sweet!

2nd makeover unit, Spider Riders! With NG bodies but converted to garry the Forest goblin spears and shields. Fun unit that looks cool, I always liked the look of the spiders.

I have about 10 of those once they're finished...creepy buggers, yuck!

My scratchbuilt Pump Wagon. I made this because I had no Pump Wagon at the time. That was before the new army book was released and hey look, they have the option to include a spikey roller...how convenient! I love this model already and I'll love it even more when I finish it off with some more Snotlings and pimp it with warpaint and blood!

Just plain old Doom Diver. Just because it's a great and fun unit...I had to have this!

Some scratchbuilt Chukka's. They were very easy to make with some sprue and platicard. I popped on some bitsbox spears and you can hardly teel the difference between these and the original ones!

There's a lot more in My Night Goblin force than is displayed here but these are the main units...I hope to gradually expand it with other units. Not on the roll-call are the fanatics and rock lobba.

High on my "want-to" list are a unit of Trolls and Squig Hoppers!

But after painting up all those little green men I just neede to paint something else and that was where the Ogres came in! I will leave it as it is right now and we'll see where it goes!

Foul play!

A while back I introduced my Orc Blood Bowl team, and while they're still waiting to play their first game I started with reading the rules and looking up BB related stuff...

And the more I read, the more I thought about all the different teams and plays!

As many of you know, a lot of thinking never leads to no good and this time is no exception!

So it goes that researching all those skills and teams I really had the urge of making another Blood Bowl team! At first I looked around to buy some cool models but having bought a lot of other stuff recently (see my Big Bullies post) it was soon clear that that was no option.

What did I have in my pile useable for a new group of fanatic footballers?! My first find where the Mantic Ghouls and Zombies, but for any undead team I needed several models I didn't have, too bad!

Then I remebered an old regiment box of skaven clanrats I had lying around, initially stored to make a Mordheim warband...I unpacked, looked at the sprues, started carving and before I knew it I had my first Skaven Blood Bowl Linerat!!!

Skaven it is then, all I needed to do was think of ways to tell apart the blitzers, gutter runners, linerats and throwers. Here's what I could make of 'em with the help of the bitsbox!

The entire team with a Linerat and Blitzer up front. Because Skaven are reasonably small I decided not to paint the team numbers on the rats themselves but on the bases, worked out well!

The very first linerat in a testcase paintscheme. Green and bronze will be the primary colours throughout the entire team, used in different variations. The Linerats are poorly armoured to reflect their fast but fragile nature.

As some of the fastest players in the game, I needed something to emphasise that onto the Gutter Runners. Th use of flowing capes filled thet role perfectly and gives the Runners an instant recognisability vs. the rest of the players. These have little to no armour plates as their purpose is to move across the field with lightning speed and score touchdowns an harass key players!

The Blitzers, most heavily armoured hitters in the Skaven! They have heavy armour, shoulder plates and spikes, helmets and other stabby stuff while still retaining their running stances to go with the fast Skaven style.

The backbone of Skaven Blood Bowl, Linerats. I'll be needing lots of these guys so expect more of the little critters to take the field! As with the first model, very basic and simple. Little armour or fancy stuff, Skaven are and will always be sneaky backstabbin' basterds and no coach wil hesitate to throw these guys against a Black Orc or Ogre if it means his mates can score a touchdown elsewhere! Aaah, the expendable life of Skaven!

Last but not least, a thrower. Skaven are not known for their strenght but instead use their devious cunning and this one throws the ball using a sling! Very much Skaven style and much more convincing! Another one will be added, possably with an even smarter contraption the hurl the ball across the pitch!!!

As you may have seen, all of this was made from the one basic clanrats box. with some carving and glueing you can make surprisingly different poses, mine being fast and runny. More painting will come soon and all of the models get a wash to bring out all the detail. Finishing of bases will be last and then take them to the field!

There you have it, my 2nd Blood Bowl team...now I hope to play the frikkin' game soon!!!

Big Bullies!

After a 7 year break, I got into Warhammer Fantasy again...finally finishing my Night Goblin army and actually getting to play with them! A small fun tournament at our TSA club was the perfect starter. But no matter how I love the Night Goblins and their wacky style, they will always be only a part of a greater whole (Orcs & Goblins) and rarely be more than that.

Not wanting to paint even more Night Goblins to create an unstoppable horde or get started with their larger Orc cousins (hell I've got about 5000-ish points worth of 40k Orks!) I set out searching for a new Fantasy army to pick some fights with.

I started off by excluding several choices, this time no horde army so exit Skaven! Never fancied Empireor Beastmen so they're off the list too...Let's see, Dwarfs. Nope! Wood Elves, nice but no thank you! Played Lizardmen and High Elves before so no, and Daemons were a no-no either!

After some thinking I needed an elite force, with a strong punch...less models to paint for maximum effect!

This left me with Warriors of Chaos or Bretonnia! (I know there are more but those tickled my fancy the most) But lo and behold, as it always goes when you are left with two choices it's the third one you end up with...

And thus I got my hands on a 2nd hand Ogre Kingdoms army!

They looked something like this:

This force consisted of 1 Tyrant/Bruiser, 1 Slaughtermaster/Butcher , 8 Ogres, 8 Ironguts, 8 Leadbelchers, 1 Gorger, 1 Hunter with 2 Sabretusks, 1 Maneater and 1 Giant.

That's nearly a 2000 point army in one go! Some new additions with the latest models and this would be a sizeable force!

As you can see though, the models were not painted all too wonderfull and to make matters worse, they were cemented to their bases by a thick layer of sand! At some points the sand-goo covered most of the feet and reached up knee-high!!!

With carefull carving and grinding all of the models were taken from their bases for cleaning and respraying.

Starting afresh from the black basecoat and a light green army painter undercoat, I painted up the first model in the wel known rust 'n' grime set-up I think suits Ogres extremely well

Here's what I ended up with

I'm still working on details and things to stand out but this was a pretty managable way to paint it up. Right now I'm working on the rest of the models, taking on more of a "production line" approach to quicken things up...

A while ago I said to someone I didn't like the look of the new Ogre Kingdoms and now here I am having already ordered Mournfang Cavalry and an Ironblaster, painting up my own Ogre force and I couldn't think of a better choice than these big bad bullies!

Hope to show off more soon!