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.