Project 2: The Reiksfang Penitentiary Racketeers

The Necromantic Racketeers are finished and are now my league team for the Victory Doughnut Cup 2013. I also took them to the NAF Championship 2013 in Nottingham, I had a great time but did awful.

Most of the miniatures from this team are from Willy Miniatures. The werewolves and golems painted themselves but the wights and zombie were difficult to get right.

On another note does anyone have any strategy tips for facing Norse when using bash light teams like Necromantic and Dark Elves especially in tournaments. Both teams do something similar with regards to frenzy and using the side lines to surf the opposing team. But the Norse come with a lot of extra block and frenzy with a sprinkling of might blow. The best I can seem to muster is a sprinkling of wrestle to try and negate the block.

Project 1: Naggaroth Side Skates

I finally got round to finishing my dark elf team the Naggaroth Side Skates. I am quite please with how they turned out and took them to the Waterbowl 2013 tournament in February.

The running game coupled with screening fitted my play style and I did quite well.

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.

Orc 1999 Part 2

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

'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.

Skaven Team: Purple Drain

Here are a few pictures of my main team of Skaven called ‘Purple Drain’. They are a Prince themed team with yellow and purple colours.

I took this to to my second tournament the Ironmanj One-dayer II. Here is my team sheet and I came a respectable 8th position. I put this down to the Skaven being very forgiving when I made mistakes and also tips on team selection from a fellow long time Blood Bowl player. If you just play Blood Bowl online or in a private league I would recommend trying a tournament. The tournaments have been a pleasant surprise. All players attending are very relaxed and willing to help you out. The whole atmosphere is welcoming and it’s good to meet fellow Blood Bowl players.

Dwarf Team

Here is another team I painted for a friend. He wanted Polish flag colours and 1 of the dwarfs has the emblem on his helmet. Not sure where the actually miniatures are from.

Human Team

Here is my second team I painted for friend the humans from the Blood Bowl box game. It is a simple colour scheme but still one of my favourites. The full set is here.

Orc 1999

This is my first effort at painting a team. 'Orc 1999' based on the orange of 'Space 1999' with player names all from the show. They were used in my first local blood bowl season.

Here is a link to all the pictures.