Project 2:Size

As size does matter, here is a comparison picture for Simon.

Shout Out! Unite All Action

At the birth of this blog one of my aims was to create a blood bowl set for around £30. It has fallen by the wast side of late, but I came across this post on uniteallaction.blogspot.com which detailed putting together a team for my favourite team the Skaven at a bargain price!

Project 2: Flesh Golem

The second miniature is done, a flesh golem from Franarcilla. I did not want the skin to be the same colour and thought two of the heads had a Frankenstein look so tried to blend in a green skin.

Project 2: Werewolf

This is the first painted miniature for the jail break themed Necromantic team. It is the werewolf from Willy Miniatures. This is a great model and was a pleasure to paint. Hope I can make the prison stripe work through the rest of the models.

Project 1: Dark Elf Runner

Dark Elf Runner, a photo by pressie74 on Flickr.

This is a little update on Project 1, the Dark Elf team. The picture is the miniture for the runner position. It is the Mandrake Games Workshop miniature. I will use 2 for runners and 2 for assassins, if I ever include an assassin in the team.
I have trimmed the weapon and replaced it with a green stuff football. So he fits in with the rest of the team he has arm plates. I am not the best at green stuff sculpting, so they are made with card board from a cereal box. I cut the piece's out then dampened with a little water so the card board bends without creasing. Then glued and added a light wash of PVA to hopefully seal the card board and make it easier to paint.

Back view

Three Projects Part 3: Human

Human Copper, a set on Flickr.

This team just has GW miniatures and no converting. Just an idea to create a human team called the Copper Catches with a theme of copper, brown's and orange colours.

Dark Elf Blitzer

Dark Elf Blitzer, a photo by pressie74 on Flickr.

The first Dark Elf Blitzer is almost done. She just needs basing, numbering and varnishing. This team will be my first attempt at skin tones so I will follow this guide closely.

Three Projects Part 2: Necromantic

The second team I am putting together is a Necromantic team. I do not have all the miniatures yet, as I still need to decide on what zombies to get. I have the Werewolf’s and Wrights from Willy Miniatures. The Wights come in one piece but the Werewolf’s need to be assembled. They come with arm’s jaw and tail separately and most parts need to be pinned. The flesh golems are from Franarcilla, I loved that a head on each miniature had a football helmet and I am looking forward to painting these.

Both companies don’t have order forms or have check out functionality. But I just sent an email with my order and delivery address and asked for a total cost then sent the paypal payment. Both orders came in around a week and I was impressed with the response and speed of mail from each company. More pictures can be found here.

Three Projects Part 1: Dark Elves

I am putting 3 blood bowl teams together. This is the first. A dark elf team made up from 40k miniatures. The main-stay are Dark Eldar Wyches and my two witch huntes are Lelith Hesperax miniatures. So she wouldn't look too out of place, one is mounted on a willy miniature blood bowl ball, and the other on the head of a black orc. To get the ball and head to stand up enough so Lelith wasn't leaning I have pinned them to the base. I am not very good with green stuff, so the black orc's neck is made of some orc arm so you get to see the muscle.

I have not come up with a name yet but I think the main colour for the team will be a dark navy blue. I'll post more when I am further along painting them.

Human Team War time theme

Here are a few pictures from a human team a friend of mine wanted painting, there are no shoulder pads or helmets. But the positional's are all clearly distinguishable.

Willy miniatures Troll

While at the NAF Championship I bought some miniatures from the guy's from Willy miniature's. I needed the troll for my orc team as the previous troll I was using was to go with my goblin team 'Catchagoogoo'. I thought the previous troll was a little small to go with the orc's. I also bought a werewolf and just ordered some more from them to bulid a necro team (post to come).

NAF Championship

This entry is a little late, as I went to the the NAF Championship Blood Bowl tournament a few weeks ago. I have plenty of pictures (see link).I took my new lizard-men team the Lava Island Zipper's and even wore a straw hat to go with the volcano island theme. I bought the Games Workshop miniatures team. You only get 4 Saurus and after reading some threads on www.talkfantasyfootball.org the general builds use 6. I ordered two more but didn't get time to finish them before the event.

Only having 4 Saurus and no practice before the tournament meant I did't do very well. The Skinks didn't have enough cover and I was constantly getting out bashed. You can see how well I did here at the NAF website.

All my opponents over the two day's were great and I didn't have a bad match. My two highlights was a game against Andy who brought Orcs. I was 1 touch down up and 4 squares away from my opponents end zone. I had Skinks surrounding the ball and all I had to do was pick the ball up and run for the touch down. Obviously the Skink fumbled the pick-up, it bounced to two other Skinks who failed each catch then bounced out of bounds. The throw-in went back down the field just passed a line of orcs.

The second was a great game against a goblin coach Glowworm. The score ended in a 2 -2 draw. I'll remember it for the death of my Crox by a goblin no less and the charismatic coach.

The tournament of 190+ players was excellently organised. The setting GW world was great and even the food each day was good. I met loads of great people and even got to pick up some miniatures from the guys at willy-miniatures.blogspot.com

On the second day I met up with Simon of starblayde.blogspot.com who has a great write up of the event. He was organizing a chat with Jonny P of zlurpcast.com.

I could not recommend these tournaments enough, they are a lot of fun and you get to meet great people who love Blood Bowl.

Preparation for the NAF Championship

So we have just over a month to wait for the NAF Championship in May. But I am still undecided what Blood Bowl team to take. With two teams still unpainted I need to pick one and crack on with finishing them. Do I take a human or lizard men team?

I started to paint my lizard man team in the style of Everblight (see below). But the end colour's were a bit bland for my taste and my skill with the brush has not yet got to that level. I still like the brown blending to black scheme. Which I thought looked a bit rock like and maybe even volcanic. With the lizard theme being tribal, this seemed to fit in with those tiny volcano islands. With that in mind I have gone for yellow to red blending. The miniature's below are not finished but you get to see the the gist of what I am going for.

Mantic Elves

In an effort to create the second team for the challenge I bought two boxes of the Mantic elves. I also bought some green stuff and instant mold. The later two are excellent and I'll make a post soon on them. But the Mantic elves are the wrong size. See picture. I have included a few other models in the picture so you get a feeling of size. The dwarfs from Mantic were perfect.

I am also working on a human team called the 'Copper Catchers'. Not sure of I am taking humans or lizard men to the NAF championship.

Waterbowl

The past weekend I went to the Waterbowl a two day Blood Bowl tournament held in Stockport. If you still have never been to a tournament I would really recommend it. The coaches who play are very welcoming and are willing to help you with rules and give you tips. The Swiss system of play is good for new players. Your first round is draw is against a random coach then all you games reflect how you are doing in the tournament. So win matches and your playing the best players. Loose matches and you play coaches more akin to your level of play for that day. With this even as a newer coach has a chance at winning the odd match.

Here are my results:

Game	CR	TD+	TD-	Opponent	Opponent's Race	CR	CR Adjust
1	150	2	1	Shaniepoo1	Orc	150	5.5
2	150	0	3	Leipziger	Skaven	150	-5.5
3	150	1	2	NippyLongskar	Dwarves	150	-5.5
4	150	2	2	Gingadom	Norse	150	0
5	150	3	1	lauth81	Ogres	150	5.5
6	150	3	3	littlejonnyfrostbite	Skaven	150	0

I enjoyed all of my matches and met a lot of great people. Another great point in going to these tournaments as a new player is the range of teams and skill of coaches you meet. I had never played a Skaven on Skaven match and played two in the Waterbowl. Both were great games and I learnt a lot to take into future matches. My two favourtie matches were on day 2. The first against a Norse team and the second an almost mirror match against a Skaven team.

Orc 1999 Part 2

This is the second orc team I have painted made from Warhammer fantasy and 40k miniatures.

The Challenge: Blood Bowl Pitch

As part of the challenge we need a pitch to play on. There are a few mat's on the market but our budget doesn't stretch that far. So the remaining option is to make one.

There are already a number of good jpeg's out there to download. 'Adam Souza', Wood Elf pitch is one of my favourites. But I wanted to create a pitch you could downloaded and modify easily. The excel file is available here. The pitch includes items for dugouts and a scatter marker. If you want to change any parts you can just open the document in excel and copy and paste parts to move dug outs or turn markers.

If you would like to change the background you just need to go into page setup and add you own tile set to repeat. By changing the image in the header. Also just incase you did not know *.xlsx can be renames to a *.zip and you can explore what is inside the excel file. Look under 'renamedfile.zip\xl\media\' and you will find the image jpeg you should be able to swap out.

'Doctor Fink' Skaven Ogre

I have just finished my rat ogre using the Warhammer fantasy model Maulerblades. I looked at
the fantasy football miniatures and didn’t really like any of them. He is to fill in on my Skaven team ‘Purple Drain’ a Prince themed Blood Bowl team. I thought Maulerblades being covered in bandages fitted with his name on the team. Doctor Fink was a keyboard player in Prince’s band.

I have played a few games in my last tournament and a few with friends, and found my Skaven team lacked punch. I know you are meant to be able to play around the opposition with the Skaven’s speed. But found it difficult to break cages and punch through the line. Having the rat ogre has alleviated those short comings in my play. At the very least, now I can frenzy a corner off the cage and leave the opposing team with a huge, prehensile tale beast in their midst’s. Or break the opposition defense line and still have my 2 blitzer’s to provide protection.

I will be taking the Skaven team to the Water Bowl Weekender a two day blood bowl tournament on the 19th February.

The Challenge: Let the Elf Decide

The 10 Wyches have been assembled. Which was quite fiddly with my old stubby fingers as the models are very thin and you have to be extra careful not to bend or snap them when removing them from the sprue. The plastic which holds them to the frame is thicker than the flimsy spiky pads on their shoulders..

The models have had all their guns trimmed but I have left weapons like daggers and swords as they still seem to fit the Dark Elf theme of cheating and stabbing their way to victory. The box only comes with 10 miniatures, but like with most Games Workshop models you get a range of body parts so you are only a pair of legs and body to get to your 11th or 12th man.

That is where this excellent site comes in www.letthedicedecide.co.uk. They sell bits of sprue's so all I need are legs and body to complete the team. This meant it only cost me an extra £1 to complete the team. Bringing the team to £15 ($24).

The Challenge: Second purchase Dark Eldar

So this is the second team. It takes the budget to £30.50 (damn you VAT increase) but I bought them just wanting to assemble, paint and make them into a team. I may yet see if I can buy cheaper miniatures and show a few different options to make up the Blood Bowl set. I am thinking the final challenge posts could be made up of a few different sets to show a range of budgets.

Anyway on to the miniature overview. This set of figures is £6 more expensive than the Mantic dwarfs. You don't get the plastic box for transporting the miniatures or the extra theme pieces.

The miniatures just come in the standard cardboard box and a basic assembly manual. What is better than the dwarfs is the amount of detail in the plastic and the greater range of optional arms, heads, bodies etc... The models themselves are also in more pieces. This allows for a greater range of posers which is good for making them into a Blood Bowl team. There are more pictures here if you want to see what comes in the box.

The Challenge: Dark Elf Team

One of Games Workshop recent releases have been updates to the Dark Eldar. In particular the set we are looking at as a possible 2nd team are the Dark Eldar Wyches. These could look like dark elves with their own version of Blood Bowl armour, lots of padding and spikes.

My local game store www.wargamestore.com does the set for £14.00. It was cheaper but with the VAT increases in the UK it has gone up in price. You get 10 models with this set so we are 1 away from a full team. Buying this team will take us over budget to £30.50, so we have a dilemma. Buy a Mantic set for £8.00 to stay under budget or blame it all on the VAT increase :)

The Challenge: Possible team 2?

When I looked at purchasing the first team my primary goal was price. I came up with 2 possible teams the dwarf team which are now painted and an undead team. We could go with the undead team or purchase the Elves from Mantic. Which could look like a Pro Elf team with a little trimming. But for the second team I'd like to buy a team, which I would like to play and from a different manufacturer.

My first look will be an orc team. I like the way orc's can play as an attrition (a team which relies on brute force to win a match) team but still move the ball quickly. A good set are the Ork Boyz from Games Workshop.

I started to put together an Orc team before I started the blog so I already have the set. They cost £15.50 from Games Workshop. But I managed to pick them up from my local game store for £14.00 as they do a 10% discount on all Games Workshop stock. The www.wargamestore.com has to be one of my favourite stores around, you can always pop in there for a chat and buy some miniatures. Like I said I have already bought these miniatures but thought I would post to give you more options when buying your second team.

I have not yet finished painting them but here is what they look like at the moment. The set comes with 11 miniatures so you could use them as a complete second team.

Linemen...

Blitzers...

Throwers...