Round 4 of the tournament saw my skavens face the dwarves once again, and they suffered a heavy defeat.
While I was able to score a touchdown in the first half, I was unable to stop the dwarves from equalising soon afterwards.
In the second half the dwarves scored a second touchdown. I started the fourth drive with only seven players, three having been killed and a fourth only narrowly escaping death thanks to the apothecary. I ran a Gutter runner deep into the dwarven half of the field, and held my thrower (who had possession of the ball) deep in my own half, hoping to do a last-turn pass and touchdown.
But he wasn't far back enough. Two dwarven runners charged my thrower, knocked him down, and one of them took possession of the ball and scored a third point for the dwarves.
This was a costly defeat for my team which will see me having to employ several journeymen the next game. At this point the dwarves have secured a place in the finals, and my skavens are struggling with the other two teams for a place. I will likely have to win the two remaining games in the preliminary round to qualify, and at the rate of casualty I am taking now, it will not be easy.
At the end of the fourth game, the standing is as follows:
After a couple of weeks' break we got back to our league again.
This time round my skavens faced the Black Orc team. Adrian spent some gold recruiting a trained troll to his team, which gave me a lot of gold for inducement.
We rolled on the weather table and got rain, which was a bad thing for me. I won the coin toss and chose to receive, and scored a classic skaven two-turn touchdown, which was a shock to Adrian.
We then rolled a "Blitz" on the next kick-off, which saw me run two players into the Black Orc's half and interfered with the Black Orc's drive. Adrian was close to the touchdown line at turn 8, but a failed throw team mate roll saw him go into the second half one point down.
In the second half he formed a cage and methodically drove down the pitch, but unfortunately the dice were still not in his favour as he failed to put any skaven into the Casualty box. He scored on turn 14, leaving me two turns to try to win the game. This time round the Black Orc team was ready for my skavens, and although I managed to run three players into his half on turn 15, he managed to mark all of them, and I dropped the ball on my final hand-off that saw me one die-roll away from winning.
I was actually worried about facing the Black Orc team, but as Adrian's team was heavy on the heavies, it left him with fewer goblins to run defence.
At the end of the third game, the standing is as follows:
Game 2 saw my skavens face off against David's Imperial Nobility team.
My thrower suffered a stat loss in my first game and I made the decision to drop him from the team, but at the same time I did not have enough gold to employ another thrower. Without a thrower, my skavens had to play a running game, and they failed to score during my possession.
In the second half, they took advantage of David's inexperience and ran into the opposition team's half and took possession of the ball and score.
David was able to capitalise on the skaven's losses in the last part of the game and drive close to my touchline line, but an ambitious Rush saw his player fall and break his neck, which allowed my players to scoop up the ball and throw it into the other half of the pitch for safety.
I scraped a 1-0 win, and made enough money to recruit a new thrower, but one of my gutter-runners died during the match, which means I end the game with the same Current Team Value as I started the game with.
At the end of the second game, the league table looks like this:
We played the first games of our Blood Bowl league on Thursday.
My Skavens faced the dwarves in their first game. Winning the coin flip, my skavens managed to 'cas' a dwarf slayer in the first turn, and score on the second turn. From then on it was a game of attrition as the dwarves methodically took my players down one by one, with one player escaping death due to the presence of an apothecary.
FG handled the dwarves boldly, scoring two touchdowns, and by the time I was receiving again I was fielding seven players against his eleven.
My Thrower lost a point of Strength, and I decided to drop him from the team. One of the Blitzers managed to gain a total of 6 SPPs due to the MVP roll, and I gave him Mighty Blow - hopefully that advantage will result in a positive feedback mechanism that will see him gain more SPPs.
At the end of the first round of games, the league table is:
The Skavenholme Scallywags play the Middenheim Marauders
FG, Adrian, David and I got together last week to play a game of Blood Bowl Season 2 - well, it was two games, each played to a half, so that makes one game...
We gave the rules a try, agreed on the league rules, and then generated a league fixture using a website that does those things. We are fortunate enough that my tabletop can accommodate two pitches at the same time, and that we have two pitches and enough dice to go around. With luck, we should be able to start the season in two weeks.
My skavens will be playing the dwarves in the first game. Hopefully I come out of it with enough players for game 2...
With our Frostgrave campaign concluded, FG, Adrian, and I decided to play a few boardgames in our last session for the year.
The first game we played was Ogre, which FG, Martin, and I last played two years ago. The last time we played the maths seemed a little off and the Ogres crushed everything in their paths. This time things seemed more balanced, but it seems like the best strategy is to target the Ogres' tracks. Perhaps one of these days we can play a large armour battle instead.
We then played Tiny Towns, which I really enjoy but which I am really bad at.
Finally, we played a few turns of Blood Bowl using the current Season 2 rules. The rules don't seem to have changed enough to make them totally foreign, but I am sure some of the new rules (like allowing players to jump over prone and stunned players) will be significant.
Our next game will probably in four weeks or so, and hopefully we will be able to play a non-league game for warm-up by then.
When the news of Blood Bowl 2020 hit and my group decided to plan a new league, I had to choose whether to field one of my existing teams, or start a new one. Since FG was ordering a Dwarf team from a third party manufacturer, I decided to tag on an order for 16 not-skavens.
When my friend Steve heard about this, he offered to send me his 2nd Edition team, which he painted many years ago. The team survived the long trip from the UK, and needed only the minimum of touching up. I out them on hexagonal bases, magnetised them, did the flocking, and now they are just waiting for a varnish.
The reason why I chose a hexagonal base was because I wanted to apply some sort of label or marking to the edge of the base, and figured a flat base edge would make it easier.
I named the team "Skavenholme Scallywags", after Steve's surname, and in homage to the fact that these lads came from the UK.
I wanted a dugout for the team, but instead of a showy but not-too-practical one like for my Egyptian or Greek teams, I wanted something that doubled as storage for the figures too. I was looking at various options, but the choice came in the form of a gift box for tea leaves that a relative gave to me. I pulled out the interior, lined the bottom of the box with a thin steel sheet, glued a print-out with the three divisions on top of it, then added the partitions with some back mounting board. The team name and tracks went on the lid.
These sculpts are old school and full of character, but unfortunately the types of players don't quite match those in the upcoming edition. The differences won't prevent me from using them though, and I am really looking forward to these guys' first game.
After a planned game of Federation Commander fail to materialise on Sunday, fg and I had to think of a game to play in the afternoon. We were both too lazy to set up a full miniatures game, and too lazy to learn a new boardgame, so we defaulted to Blood Bowl.
We managed to find our team rosters from some 20 months ago, and continued the series where we left off. The great thing about Blood Bowl is that the game can picked up at any point if the records are kept; this applies to both a campaign, as well as each individual game. It's a like a chess game, in a way.
It took us only a couple of turns to remember how the game goes, and we managed to play two games (well, sort of...) in one afternoon.
The first half of Game 5 was a scoreless one as my Chaos Dwarves failed to reach the end zone in time. In the second half fg's Orcs managed an easy touchdown in six turns, but a long pass followed by a Sure-footed, Sprinty bull centaur allowed me to draw the game.
Game 6 went really bad for me. A series of casualties left my team unable to put up a reasonable defence, or defend themselves for that matter. At the end of the first half I was down by two points (one score after an interception!) and had only seven players standing. I decided to concede the game.
The Orcs win the series.
With this series concluded, we are thinking of our next teams. Fg is thinking of a Skaven team, while I am looking for something better at passing... like a Wood Elf team, but less... elfy. I will probably end up using the Wood Elf stats, but again I will proxy with some other figures.
The apothecary attends to Achilles. In the background the Black Orcess feigns innocence.
First game of the year!
fg and I decided to play a weekday game of Blood Bowl.
The game was particularly bloody, and we each had one player brought back to life by our apothecaries, and at one point in the second half I was playing with 4 players down.
The orcs managed to score a touchdown in each half, while I barely managed to escape a scoreless game by passing to and then sprinting one of my Bull Centaurs to the endzone.
fg's team managed a few more advancements, while mine only managed one - this will make the next game harder for me, unless I can gain some inducement.
Here are two of the hordes of Night Goblins I have refurbished.
As with the skavens, I have bought them mostly painted off ebay and will be organising them into units. Night Goblins are probably one of the most uniformly painted Warhammer armies since they are always dressed in black and have, well, green skins (although I have seen pictures of them painted to look like Smurfs...), so it is rather easy to integrate figures painted by different painters into a single army; I am also lucky that the previous owners have used a similar scheme for their basing, so hopefully with uniform movement trays they will look like a cohesive force.
I have bought enough Night Goblin figures that, together with the ones Adrian owns, will allow me to field a 2000-point all-Night Goblin army, which I think looks pretty cool. I have more than a hundred of these little guys to go, which will probably keep me busy for the next few months.
fg came over for a game of Blood Bowl this afternoon. We played to a draw again - it seems our two teams are rather evenly matched.
After the game we finished watching the John Woo movie. It has a really hilarious ending, which I won't spoil for you - but if you are looking for a silly movie to watch over the year-end holiday season that is "so bad it is good", I once again recommend it.
fg and I decided to have a mid-week game and continue our Blood Bowl league. As it had been four months since our last game and we can't make out some of the notations we used in our notes, we decided to replay game 2.
Game 2 was a disappointment for the fans as both sides failed to score any touchdown. What's worse - neither team managed any advancement after the game. I did win enough money to buy another bull centaur player, so hopefully that will give me an edge the next game.
After the game wahj arrived and we broke bread (which he made) before fg and I tried out Arena Rex.
My brother had backed the kickstarter and I picked the package up at the post office for him and decided to give the rules a run.
The 32mm resin figures that came with the package are exquisite - perhaps too exquisite. The weapon shafts are thin and it looks like it will be difficult to assemble the figures or to transport and play with them without breaking - already there are complaints about the feathers on the helmets of one of the figures on their forum. There are also custom dice and fatigue counters which came in the set which I thought were redundant to the average wargamer since the dice were just regular d6s that came in different colours and a symbol instead of a number on the '1' face, and the tokens marked only two states, so any small token or chits or coin will do the job - omitting these or making them an optional add-on would have cut postage for the backers, but I suppose some people want a complete, ready-to-play package instead of the Cheapass Games approach.
That said, all the components are of high production quality; the rulebook looks like a promotion booklet of some big corporation, and the game cards are already sturdy.
The rules I am more ambivalent about. Arena Rex is a gladiator team game, which means that some gladiators have skills that are only useful in a team context - their skills are about assisting their team-mates. The characters are also "balanced", and there are no rules for advancement and ludus development.
Even though the game is not hex-based movement and engaement ranges are all given in 1" intervals, so we decided to use fg's Heroscape tiles and some 25mm gladiators I had painted ages ago for a test-drive.
Another feature of the rules is that "pushing" is a major part of the combat system. Arenas in Arena Rex feature obstacles and hazards, the latter being living hazards like chained beasts and inanimate ones like spikes or pits - which is why you see the pits in our set-up in the photo below. In practice this means that you should try to make sure your gladiators are not fighting with their backs against some hazards, as they can die from taking damage from weapons or being shoved into a pit '300'-style.
A strange landscape to fight over.
The two teams approach cautiously.
"This is ARENA REX!"
There are a lot more to the rules, of course: a system of Favours and a fatigue system that is quite clever, but somehow they don't give me the feel of gladiatorial combat.
During the game I put Youtube on my TV to watch clips of Gladiator, and it went on to play clips from Vikings and rather inexplicably Sudden Death. Eventually it played this rather hilarious John Woo movie with homoerotic overtones; do watch it if you have the time:
It's been more than two years since our last game, but fg and I decided to start a new season going.
I chose to field my fantasy Greek-themed Chaos Dwarf team, and fg fielded his female orc team which he used in our first league years ago.
The orcs are a rather versatile team which we have both used previously, but I found the Chaos Dwarf had no answer to the Black Orcs.
The teams face off for the first kick-off of the season.
A series of good dice-rolls on the part of fg saw several of my team go down, and the orcs were up by 2 touchdowns in the first game of the season. In the final turns I decided to run a passing play and managed to slip a hobgoblin down the side to score a point.
The depleted Spartans sneak a hobgoblin down the flank to score a touchdown.
With a bit of time left we decided to play the first half of the second game. This time the dice were a little more to my favour, and we both managed to score a touchdown each.
Line of scrimmage.
We used the pitch that fg bought from Impact!, which is really quite pretty.
As before fg has a more cautious style of play while I prefer the riskier style of play (hence my 4 re-rolls). The two teams seem well-matched, and I think the season will be a close-fought one.
OK, so I've been playing with my printer more than I have been painting, but it's all for gaming purposes, I swear...
I bought some card and printed out the Age of Blood Fate Cards made by Sean. Most of the events translate to Strandhogg mechanics easily - 30 out of the 36 are usable. Unfortunately the cards did not come with 'colour lock' technology. If I do this again I will probably just print them on paper and put them into sleeves.
I think I will let each player start with two cards, and each time your opponent uses a card, you may draw one from the deck.
I also printed out a gradient colour backdrop to photograph my minis with.
Since I haven't completed the bestman standard-bearer yet, I used Pumpkin Nagg, my Blood Bowl Star Player, as the model.
Another year has gone and looking back I suppose we did pretty good on the gaming front.
fg dropped by yesterday to play Game 4 of our Blood Bowl mini-league, which my Ra Team won, bringing the score to 3 wins for the Undead. We reckon the match-up negates most of the strengths of the Nurgle team, so in planning our next league we will probably be using my Fantasy Greek-themed Chaos Darf proxy team vs. his Shadowforge human team, which can of course be styled as an elven or Amazon team.
Meanwhile, Martin sent me a photo of the Gripping Beast Saxons he had been painting over the weekend, while wahj send feelers about a possible Dystopian War project...
My computer had a booting problem and as my keyboard was a wireless one I couldn't remedy the problem until I bought a cheap (S$11) 'corded' keyboard after today's game. I am a computer-idiot, but after some trial and error I managed to reboot it from an alternative drive or something... but all the desktop icons and files are gone and so are many of the programmes, including my usual picture editor, so I am only uploading two today... The first is from Game 3 of our Blood Bowl series. fg's Nurgle team scored their first touchdown of the series, but I managed to equalise in the second half and a lucky deviation on the kick-off dice placed the ball right on his end-zone, making it impossible for him to score in the remaining time. We drew the game, but three if his players gained new skills at the end of the game; none of mine did, plus my fans, disappointed by my performance, deserted me, leaving me with a lower Fan Factor. The second picture is from our first FUBAR game. Thomas fielded his Blood Angels in their first game ever. The scenario was designed around the crashed spacecraft from GW, the objective being to capture the pilot of that craft alive and bring her off one's table-edge. Martin and I took my green Marines (I really ought to give them a name...) and decided to set up firing positions to whittle down Thomas' Blood Angels as they approach. This worked to a certain extent - Thomas lost 2 squads trying to reach the pilot. However, just when we were going to grab the pilot ourselves his Dante figure leapt forward, seized her, and in the next activation leapt away. We had one chance to intercept him with our closest squad (my Assault Marines with jump-packs having spent most of the game in 'reserve', having failed most of their activations), but we failed the activation and lost our chance.
The game wasn't long enough for us to get a good appreciation of the rules, but the basics seem to be right - my Terminators got caught in the open and were decimated. We did forget the rule about squads with 50% strength left falling back on a failed activation, which would have extricated them though. We probably will need to house-rule some terrain penalties for movement, but I am keen to give them another try.
With two-and-a-half games of our planned seven-game league played, I reckon it's time to finish the job I started more than five years ago and complete my fantasy Greek-themed Blood Bowl team.
They are a proxy for a Chaos Dwarf team - I confess that my decision to put together this team was based mainly on the desire to field a minotaur, and of course the Chao Dwarf team also allowed a Bull Centaur... it was a no-brainer!
So the minotaur represents a minotaur, the Shadowforge Dark Temple centaurs Bull Centaurs, the Wargods Spartan Warriors Chaos Dwarf Blockers, and the Shadowforge Dark Temple warrioresses Hobgoblins. In addition, the RAFM centaur (the huge one) was meant to represent a Bull Centaur Star Player, although within the time-frame of the league we are likely to play I may in fact use it for my starting regular Bull Centaur. The Eureka Pan/satyr figure was meant to represent the Hobgoblin Star Player. The Chorrim figure I just bought because I was buying the centaur - what's a fantasy Greek collection without some sort of a giant?
They are all ready to go, except they lack a team name... so if you have a suggestion, do leave a comment.
FG received the stuff he traded with Dan during the week, so he came over this afternoon to pass me my share and also to play the thrid game in our play-offs. This time he brought his full team, including the Beast of Nurgle, who looks very the part. He had 110K in inducement, with which he bought an extra re-roll. We rolled 'Quick Snap!' on the kick-off table, which allowed his Pestigor to catch the kick and his other players to advance next to my players to tie them up or block them. He made a hole in my left and his ball-carrier advanced into a little cage. My right flank is tied (two of my skellies would spend the whole drive staring at two of his Rotters...) while his Beast tied up my mummies effectively. I sent the rest of my centre to reinforce my left.
Now FG had a chance to send his ball-carrier down the right side (from his view) of the pitch, but that would have required a 'Go for it' or placing the player on the outermost square, neither of which he was willing to risk. He decided to hold his ball-carrier in the cage for another turn, which gave my players a chance to organise a line and indeed get two players next to the ball-carrier.
But the Nurgle team showed their Chaos roots by putting two of my skellies in the KO box, and FG surprised me by running the ball towards the centre of the pitch.
Black Khnum, one of my two best players (Anubis being reserved for the offensive drive) dodged from a Rotter and knocked the ball loose with a one-die block.
But numbers were beginning to tell, and the other Pestigor picked the ball up...
... and ran the ball down - the Nurgle team scores their first touchdown of the playoff!
In our hurry to set up the next drive FG forgot to note down which Pestigor scored the point - thanks to this photo, we got the count right.
The remaining 3 turns of the half saw me fail my attempt to score after my mummy rolled a 'Both down' twice (despite a re-roll) trying to block a Rotter - he did score a Casualty though. FG picked up the loose ball after I tried to recover from that by passing and failing, and made a successful pass with his Pestigor, who gained enough SPPs to go up a level... if he survives the next half!
The Nurgle team seems more effective this game, with FG making effective use of his Warriors to make 2-dice blocks against my players and then assisting his Rotters to do the same. While I have two mummies (Strength 5), they were effectively tied up by the Beast and I found myself making crucial blocks with my Wights, rolling one block die and hoping to even the odds with their Block skill (none of the Nurgle players have that skill yet) and my re-rolls.
With two skellies in the KO box, my Undead team will face a bit of a challenge trying to equalise in the next half and then trying to prevent the Nurgle team from winning.
I made this dugout for my Fantasy Greek-themed Blood Bowl team a few years ago out of a wooden plinth, some Hirst Art blocks, miniature bases, and wooden spools and plastic numbers from a craft shop.
I actually completed the dugout and painted the support staff before painting the players - in fact, I am still in the process of painting the players; having hit a block with the Perry WOTR figures and started playing Blood Bowl again, I finally started working on them again.
The various sections of the dugout are not named, but are represented by the Apothercary, the water-boy (counts as Budweiser babe - you know how these Greeks are...), and the casualty figure.
The two statues represent Chronos and Tyche, and are mounted on plinths that rotate, acting as Turn and Re-roll markers respectively.
FG and I managed to play the second half of our first game and also complete the second game in the series this afternoon. The second half of the first game was quite hilarious. We rolled a Pitch Invasion on the Kick-off Table and a few players went down. FG made a hole in my line and one of his pestigors charged through. My Anubis ran back to try to head him off.
My players managed to block the pestigor, and Anubis successfully picked the ball up and made a run for the endzone...
only to be blocked in turn! The other pestigor picked the ball up...
And was quickly brought down. Anubis stood up and picked the ball up again...
only to fall over during a 'Go For It'!
Fortunately there weren't enough Nurgle players left to stop him getting up and picking the ball up again. He finally made the touchdown, but the MVP for the game was awarded to a skeleton!
None of the players gained a level in the first game, so we went on to the second one.
The second game was brutal for the Nugle team. Their lack of Rerolls and the fact that the Undead team is a bashy one means that their main advantages of having a Beast of Nurgle and their Disturbing Presence were negated. My Black Khnum (Wight) and Anubis (Ghoul) each managed to score two touchdowns, although there were several casualties inflicted by both sides.
By the final drive, I had 7 out of 12 players to start, while FG had 7 out of 11. The Nurgle coach is not too happy... perhaps they need more than one cheerleader?
Going into the third game in the series I have a Team Value of 1130 vs. 980 of the Nurgle Team, but that's before FG has bought player/s to fill the slot of one of his Rotters who will be missing the next game due to injury.
I've been getting a bit of a painter's block these past couple of weeks and just can't seem to get any more of my Perry plastics painted, so I thought I would take some photos of my fantasy Egyptian-themed Blood Bowl team instead.
The first shot is of the skeletons, the backbone of the team (pun intended). They are GW Tomb Kings plastics with their weapons snipped off and knuckle-dusters sculpted on their hands. I painted the Egyptian numerals for 1 to 6 on the back of their bases for identification.
These mummies count as zombies. The one on the left is from Eureka, and the one on the right is a Reaper miniature. The other two are Wargods figures. I have one in my starting line-up (we are using 5th Edition rules) - the others are spares for when I raise the players from the opposing team my team killed.
These guys count as wights. The Sobek figure is actually a statue from the Reaper range, since I didn't like any of the other Sobek figures from the other ranges. The two Khnum figures are from Wargods. I would have preferred one Khnum figure and one Apis figure, but I couldn't find any suitable bull-headed figure.
These two bird-headed fellows count as mummies. They are big - the Thoth figure towers over the rest of the team. He is a Reaper figure and one of the most beautiful figures I own; I painted him based on the Egyptian ibis. The Horus figure is from Wargods.
These guys count as ghouls, which are the fastest players in an Undead team. The heavily armoured figure on the left is actually a female gnoll figure from Hasslefree. The other figures are from Wargods. If the Elfball Anubis figures were available at the time I was putting this team together, I would have bought them too. I tried painting the Bast figures in the coat colour of the Mau cat, but decided I didn't have what it takes to pull it off.
The team support: the coach, the necromancer, and two cheerleaders. The necromancer (the skeleton, in case you are wondering, and I can't blame you) is a Reaper figure. I actually ordered this figure from the seller, but got this one instead. I decided to keep the staff and paint the team logo on it.
There are a ton of Reaper figures that will fit the team, but fortunately I still had some sense of control and didn't buy them all...
Finally, this is the team dugout which I made using Hirst Arts tiles and some stick-on number decals. The tortured mummy is from Wargods, as are the cat and Ark, which are used as Reroll and Turn markers. The central tile on each section has the heiroglyphs of a sarcophagus, a man fallen over, and a man sitting etched on them respectively, identifying the Casualty, KO, and Reserve sections.
Edit: Blogger is screwing up my layout and the photos don't enlarge when you click on them... Right click on them and open the file in another window to see the large size. Sorry about that.
Edit 2: I managed to remove the "improvement" Blogger made thansk to a helpful link on TMP.
