Blood Bowl painting: Akhorne

The Warhammer World is not a nice place. It's full of terrifying creatures like greenskins, beastmen, the undead, daemons, and elves. But even in such a horrific setting, there is one being whose reputation puts it on a level above all others. A creature from before the age of men, dwarfs, and elves, when the world was young and untamed.

To paint such a being required an awful lot of paint:

There were four more used on top of this, including the blood...

But even with all of those colours, it came together rather quickly for me, and a primordial terror was ready for the gridiron.

P.S. This is the first Blood Bowl model I've painted since October 2019 :¬o

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The finished team!

Orcsenal are finally finished, and just in time for Orctober!

The best photo of the front row

Here the back row are in focus

I love painting orcs / orks in this scheme (it's an update of the scheme I used for the small force of 40k orks I've painted), but I have only painted Blood Bowl models for the last year or so, which has lead to two full teams with spares. Therefore I need my palette* to be fully cleansed before I paint anything else Blood Bowl-related. So expect the next models to appear on here to be a little out of left field**.

* Pun not intended, but I'm leaving it in anyway
** Ditto

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: Final Lineorc

The title speaks for itself!

Left has no flash, right has flash

So now I just need to add their numbers and varnish them, and then this team is done! :¬D

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: Goblin #2

My initial intention had been to only paint one Goblin for my Orc team, but the model I chose is the least interesting of those in the kit, and for a 'full' roster I might eventually need two. So I decided to suck it up and paint a second one, who will probably become the one I will field because he looks awesome!

One Orc Lineman to go, then it's just a case of sticking on numbers and varnishing them and this team is done!

Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. My Little Warband half 2

So, over two months after this happened, we finally got to play the second half. In that time summer happened, democracies descended into anarchy, empires rose and fell, and I got married.

Previously, on the Imperial Cabal Network...

Things weren't looking good for our plucky Goblin 'heroes':

• They were down 1:0 at halftime
• Due to referees who followed the rules there would only be 10 players starting the half, none of those being non-Troll positionals
• The Chaos Chosen team were receiving

And now for the conclusion...

I deployed pretty conservatively, with my two Sidestep Gobbos on either flank and the meat in the centre. His deployment was asymmetric, although I'm not sure why.

The ball scattered back onto the dead centre of his half, after he got brilliant coaching (so we were now both on 4 re-rolls), and the half began...

His turn 9 saw him push some of my players around, but no one went down. In my turn I came up with some plans, but then this happened very early on in my turn:

Stunned Troll, fine goat :¬(

He then capitalised on this and pushed forward some more, bringing his ball carrier up as well. However he didn't spot that I could get a 1-die blitz on his ball carrier with my #14, Tokey Mokey. But unfortunately I rolled a push, and I was too scared to re-roll so left it at that.

It's starting to look like a mess

But Tokey Mokey got to blitz again next turn, again getting a push, and again I chickened out. Meanwhile my opponent was starting to get very annoyed with my #9, Gobo da Gobbo, who was using Sidestep to keep a tackle zone on the ball carrier.

At this point my opponent gloated that he'd surrounded my Trolls. But I pointed out that it was actually his team who were surrounded by my Goblins!

By the end of his turn 12, this is where we had gotten to.

What happened next completely made the game for me.

Tokey Mokey made his third blitz on the carrier, and "third time's the charm" proved to be true as he knocked the Beastman down and got a KO!

Sprokkit, the green Troll, then CASed the Beastman in front of him, smashing his collar bone (-1 strength). The silver lining for my opponent's team is that at least there'd be steak on the menu after the match!

How things looked, post The Smashening

After this the match descended into an exercise in how many tackle zones could be put on the ball at once.

Gobo da Gobbo, he of the infuriating Sidestep fame, carefully explaining to the Blocker what his Troll mate will do to him

The next couple of turns maintained the violence: on turn 13 a Goblin was badly hurt and Fish Stikz (the blue Troll) blitzed and KO'd a Blocker, and then in my turn 14 Sprokkit managed to get his second CAS of the match (this time only a badly hurt).

I regret nothing!

After that nothing much happened other than a bit of jostling, leaving us like this at the end of the match:

Post-match interview

Given how badly the first half went, that was pretty good! OK, yes, I lost, shut up. But after getting no removals in the first half I managed four this half (to my opponent's one), didn't concede another touchdown, and nobody died. And I got my first two casualties!

My opponent played well, but was hurt by the lack of Block and facing a Dodgy opponent. He also spent too much time focusing on my Trolls (which he noticed independently), rather than going after my soft, green, gooey centre. In other news: he learnt to hate Sidestep :¬D

Admin

My MVP went to the Fanatic, as for the third time (out of three games) my MVP didn't go to either of the two Trolls, even though I always nominate both of them :¬( That's a 1/27 chance...

My opponent got 60k from the gate and gained one Fan Factor, whilst I got 70k and lost one Fan Factor. That leaves me with 150k to either spend or hoard in my private vault. Decisions, decisions...

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The Troll

'e's done! Here is the Troll for my Orc team, who shall be named: Goona.

A lot of people really don't like this model, and whilst it's not my favourite in the Blood Bowl range it was actually a lot of fun to paint due to all the little details. But they in turn meant it took me ages to paint him ;¬)

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The final two Black Orc Blockers

After painting up my first two Black Orc Blockers, I've now done the last two!

This means that, once I add the numbers to their kit, I'll have a decent starting Orc team to go a-krumpin'!

 

Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. My Little Warband half 1

With my fiancée off on the first of her two hen dos, my best man's 6-year-old son invited me to a second stag do of my own. So on Saturday I made the trek to Guildford to see what he had in store for me: it was playing on the Wii, two games of chess, about 10 minutes of painting before he got bored, and "the fighting game" (a.k.a. "Uncle Ross getting jumped on"). I brought a couple of beers with me to numb the pain.

Pre-match

Once the two kiddiwinks were in bed we started the game of Blood Bowl we'd planned. My opponent had nearly finished painting up his Chaos Chosen team (one Beastman was still grey plastic), dubbed My Little Warband (motto: "Violence is magic!"). For my Goblins I'd hired a new Looney to replace Kutta Monsta and a Fanatic named Waaagh!-nimal. This left me 30TV higher than him, so he induced a Specialist Assistant Coach.

Was me starting the game with no inducements (such as BRIBES) a good idea? Maybe not. But compared to playing Goblins at all it was relatively sane.

He had 10,000 fans in attendance, and even though it was an away game for me I had 12,001 (the extra due to his eldest thinking my models had the better colours, a.k.a. a moral victory).

Given I was playing Goblins I expected to lose, but I saw two things in my favour:

1. His models were all freshly painted, and so destined to fail horribly.
2. One of his models was unpainted, and so would only be able to roll 1s.

Evidence for both of these universal laws can be found in point #5 in this link.

Drive 1

I won the toss and so elected to receive, but then we rolled a riot so I was down a turn already :¬(

I set up ready to cause as much damage as possible

The opposition were staring down some scary (mostly) greenskins!

The Fanatic went first, blowing a re-roll on his first block, but managed to cause a mess and knock down his first target and base another one. One troll blocked, another blitzed, and the Looney fouled, and so I had one prone and two stunned Beastmen. But then a bad thing happened: my Goblin who went to pick up the ball failed, giving my opponent a turnover, and I realised I'd left a one-square opening in the centre of my line. Oh bugger!

Can you spot the hole on the left of centre?

My opponent duly exploited this, and before he knew it ol' butterfingaz had two Beastmen and a Chosen running at him. I worked out this probably wasn't good, so decided to make my first dice roll of my third (although really second) turn the pick-up, so I could use a team re-roll if needs be and amscray out of there. Fail. Re-roll. Fail. Turnover. 1/27 chance of failing all three pick-ups. One sad Goblin.

At the end of my opponent's third turn things weren't looking great for me

Things hadn't changed much by the end of my fifth turn

It was my opponent's fifth turn when he eventually scored, and I won't provide a blow-by-blow account of the journey there, but here are the key points:

• By this stage I had broken armour a lot, but hadn't getten one single KO or CAS, which was crippling given I needed these to stay in the game after this drive.
• My opponent had trouble finding the Pows! on his dice, even when rolling 3 or 2 with a re-roll. The Goblin who failed the pick-ups must have been positively smeared in butter as he never went down.
• The Beastman who eventually scored was Beefy Blond, the unpainted one!

Convinced I'd done something to upset Nuffle, we went into the second drive on my turn 6 with no Goblins in reserve and a full Chosen team in front of me.

Drive 2

Even though I was disappointed in my heavy-hitters, the fans must have enjoyed the violence as their cheering brought my re-rolls back up to 3. And then I had some good luck: the ball landed in the paws of the Goblin on the far right of the LoS!

My set-up for the second drive

Hmm, how could I use this to my advantage...

My play was executed as follows:

1. Goblin in the left of the picture above dodged in to provide an assist against the Beastman in the centre of the LoS.
2. Green Troll passed Really Stupid.
3. Green Troll 3-dice blocked the Beastman to push him back.
4. Blue Troll declared a pass.
5. My opponent looked at me as if I was crazy.
6. Blue Troll passed Really Stupid.
7. Blue Troll moved next to the ball-carrying Goblin.
8. Blue Troll was not hungry.
9. Blue Troll fumbled the throw on a 2.
10. I looked at my re-rolls, and had three to use in three turns: "Re-roll!".
11. Blue Troll failed Loner on a 3.
12. I was sad.

How the pitch looked after my failed TTM

My opponent moved in to threaten me and made the TTM landing harder, but avoided basing my trolls

I tried to TTM again on my seventh turn, again failing with a fumble and rolling a 3 on the Loner roll

And on my turn eight? I yet again failed the TTM with a fumble and rolling a 3 on the Loner roll

My opponent ended the half with a traditional gang foul

Half-time punditry
That did not go well. I messed up at the end of my first real turn by leaving an opening, but other than that I don't think I did anything really wrong. Things just didn't go my way, Nuffle-wise:

• Failing three 3+ pick-ups in a row.
• I must have broken armour through blocks and fouls at least 6 or 7 times, and didn't get a single KO or CAS.
• I failed three TTMs on a fumble and rolling a 3 for Loner.

We called it there as we needed to sleep, so we'll play the second half another day. But being 1:0 down with only 8 Goblins (stupid not-blind ref!) and 2 Trolls versus a full Chosen team does not bode well...

My Little Warband: 1
Da Fragile Rokkaz: 0
Nuffle: 1 broken heart

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: Goblin

This is just a small update (geddit!?) to show off the Goblin for my Orc team.

I may eventually add a second one, but for now one will be enough.

So now I've painted 11 players for this team, but it's not a good starting roster. To get that I need to paint the two remaining Black Orcs. Then to have a 'full' team I will paint up the Troll, and a third, just-in-case, Lineorc.

It's so close to being done!

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The first Black Orc Blockers

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm using the actual Black Orc Blocker models as Blitzers. The role of my BOBs has instead fallen to the rather sexy Orruk Brutes from Age of Sigmar, the first two of which are complete.

These photos really are awful!

These are lovely models to paint, with lots of nice detail to pick out.

The only issue is they're about the same size as the official BOB model - if anything they're smaller - which means that they may not be distinctive enough. I'll see how they look when all four of them are done, but if needs be what I can do is add the trophy pieces that come with the kit to their shoulders. I originally didn't want to do this as it's not very Blood Bowl, but it is the simplest way to mark them out as different, plus that little bit more brutal (pun intended).

Blood Bowl Underworld: Conversions!

Once my Orc team is finished I have a choice to make: Boring Humans or Underworld next.

...
...
...

Of course I'm choosing Underworld!

So for the last week I've been building my players, and as mutations are a large part of the fun of the team I've decided to do some converting. And this is actual converting. I'm a pro at kitbashing, but for the first time in my life I've been using greenstuff of the non-liquid variety.

So what have I done?

A horned Linerat, with horns kindly donated by my previously-Necromantic, now Chaos-playing opponent

A Blitzer with a claw from the old Chaos mutations sprue

A Thrower with an extra arm. But where did that come from?

My conversion to represent Glart Smashrip (Jr.)!

Now that the disgusting Skaven are out of the way, it's on to the real stars of the team...

This one's not mutated, but I gave him the spare punch dagger from the Blitzer to differentiate him from the other player with the same body

This guy is growing some spikes / tentacles (TBD) from his neck

This is the mutation that they'll actually get on levelling up: Two Heads! Most people convert both of these looking forward, but that's too hard for my first go and this means he can see in all directions

And finally: Horns! My opponent doesn't know yet that he's donated another set of horns ;¬)

So that's what I've been up to, alongside painting my Black Orc Blockers (the first two of which I'll share when they're done). The non-BOB Orcs are all painted now, I just forgot to post them when I finished them.

Blood Bowl Orcs painting: The first batch

With my Goblin team finished and most definitely blooded (RIP Kutta Monsta 😭) I'm moving on to my Orc team from the main game's box.

So in relatively record time (for me) here are the first batch, all of which look a little better in person than in these pictures (where the armour looks a little too pink). They're not 100% finished as I'll add the numbers at the end once they're all painted, but they're otherwise complete for now!

A Lineork

A Thrower

A Blitzer

A Black Orc Blocker (which I will use as a Blitzer)

Comments and criticism are appreciated!

Blood Bowl match report: Da Fragile Rokkaz vs. The Infected away leg

Last weekend my fiancée and me went to the inhospitable wilds of "Guild Ford" for a friend's (he of the Necromantic Horrors team) birthday. On the Saturday evening we played a fun game of Dominion followed by Zombicide. Now I really like Zombicide, and cooperative miniatures games in general, but as is often the case with this one it devolved into arguments about who should do what and complaints about the mechanics of the car pieces (no pun intended).

We played the original series

Whatever, I chainsawed a lot of zombies to death out of the window of my stolen police car, and drove off into the distance hoping my Looney would manage to do the same thing the next morning.

Spoiler alert!: He didn't.

Pre-match

We set up our game in Unplug + Play, a new board game café in Guildford. I was very impressed, as although they're new they have a very broad selection of games, and the staff were very helpful and made great recommendations. These kept two young kids distracted whilst me and my opponent spent many hours on the Blood Bowl pitch.

Before the match began Da Kaptin, my coach, had to be extricated from a pile of his own vomit and half-eaten mushrooms. Da git had spent 20k of my treasury on a night of fungal excess!

Our teams were unchanged since last time, other than me gaining one Fan Factor and him losing one. That meant I had to spend 30k to induce Szczepan (a.k.a. Fungus the Loon) this time. I won +2 FAME(!) but nothing else of great note happened before the match began.

First half

My opponent won the toss and elected to receive. This left me with a tough choice: play Szczepan from the start and risk losing him to a quick score, or hold him off and risk losing him to a stall. I opted to play him from the start in the hope he'd take something out like he'd managed to do in the first half of the last game.

Kick-off!

Unfortunately the ball didn't scatter far enough and the Ghoul managed to grab it and head towards my right flank. The Werewolf headed that way too and surfed one of my poor Gobbos (who got Badly Hurt in the process). D'oh, I'd forgotten they could do that! I think I suffered an early turnover in my turn, and things weren't looking good.

Google helpfully animated the first turn

After their second turn they'd kinda-sorta caged up on my right (with the Ghoul on the sideline), and it was looking like an early score. But I had an idea...

The Necro team are pushing down my right

Szczepan spun off to try and hit things, but ended up not touching anything. This would be his only activation of the whole match, which is not 80k well spent :¬(

But more importantly my Looney, Kutta Monsta, spotted the Werewolf in prime blitz position, and went for him. He got there, rolled 13(!) on the armour roll, and then failed to do any more than stun him. Crap!

The Werewolf is down but so is my Troll, I think from a failed block on a Zombie

Bad things then happened. The Wight who was starting the turn basing my Looney decided to do what is only natural, and promptly killed him! I don't have a photo of this but there is a video, and I'm not sharing that because it's hard to tell what's going on with all the waterworks and rending of garments. The Ghoul then made it to within scoring range, and this was only the start of turn three :¬/

I had one shot and I went for it: a 2-dice uphill blitz from one of my Goblins against the Ghoul. I got a POW! and a Defender Stumbles, but due to its stupid Dodge *cough* hypocrite *cough* I only succeeded in forcing it to need a dodge next turn.

The Ghoul (bottom right) is so close, but my stout-hearted Gobbo is holding the line! Note the Troll is still down :¬/

But then a Wight came in and blitzed the way clear, and the Ghoul scored.

Strength 3 should be banned!

I set up to try and do some damage (albeit with no Looney nor Szczepan), but found it hard to find a way through.

How things looked at the end of my turn 4

Not much had changed by the end of the Necro turn 6, but some readers may spot what I'm up to

So it was my turn 6, and I felt running it in was looking unlikely. My opponent had left a gap on my right, where I could hand off to the Goblin by Fish Stikz (the blue Troll) and make a run for it. But with Zombies, a Flesh Golem, and a Werewolf ready to go after him that seemed too risky.

And so instead I decided to do my first ever throw teammate in the tabletop game!

My opponent's face

Let's see what it took to succeed:

1. The Zombie basing Sprokkit (the green Troll) had to be knocked over, which a Goblin somehow managed to do: 5/9
2. A hand-off from the ball carrier to the 'lucky' projectile: 4/6
3. Really Stupid: 5/6
4. Always Hungry: 5/6
5. Throw: 4/6, which he fumbled, leading to a 4+ Loner roll and a subsequent success.
6. Three scatters, which moved him back and into a tackle zone (damnit!).
7. Landing in one tackle zone: 2/6
8. Dodge out of a tackle zone with Dodge: 8/9
9. Go For It! to score: 5/6

Ignoring the effect of the re-roll on the throw (which makes the probability hellishly complex to calculate), that makes my odds something like 4%. But it worked, and my opponent looked rather pissed off!

Gobo da Gobbo did me proud!

The rest of the half wasn't that exciting, and that was a good thing as I was physically shaking after that equaliser, as were the fans!

Second half

I started the second half hoping to preserve the 1-1 scoreline, but I thought those odds weren't good. And that seemed to be the case, as the ball scattered into my end zone and the Gobbo I sent back to pick it up fumbled it, even with a re-roll. Then the Wight on my left CASed one of my Goblins  (another Badly Hurt), letting the Werewolf run at the ball.

Matt da Travella (foreground) is currently thinking only in expletives

Luckily he managed to pick up the ball this time, and a friend came to help him out

The undead were slowly enveloping my central players, leaving some of the Zombies and a Wight free to run at my ball carrier giving the Werewolf a 2-dice block against him. Surely a Necromantic TD was in sight?

:¬D

Down and Both Down! This would obviously free up the ball, but with a turnover there was a risk of me running off with the ball with my other player. So my opponent did the only sensible thing: he re-rolled, saying "I didn't even use one last half, so I might as well use them".

I was laughing; he certainly wasn't

I don't know what I'd done to please Nuffle so, but with that amazing piece of luck I did what all good Gobbos would do: I ran like the zoggin' wind!

Cue Dr Zoidberg: "Woop woop woop woop woop woop woop woop!"

The rest of the half became a story of me trying to screen as best I could, as the ball slowly made its way forward on my left flank.

"'scuse me, miss"

Screening and stalling like a boss on turn 17

After scoring a TD on my turn 18, I offered three sacrifices to Nuffle to thank Him for His divine intervention.

"Please accept these offerings as a sign of my devotion, oh Nuffle"

 And with the hope of getting some more SPP for his players, the beatings began...

No injuries!

Post-match interview

I should not have won that game. I scored a TTM TD with a 5-10% success rate and only managed to score in the second half due to a failed block with re-roll. Yes I'd been unlucky on armour breaks (I think I only got one the entire match) but this was something else.

I also screwed up by putting Szczepan on from the start. Against such a fast team I'd have been better waiting until after they'd scored. I accept that I probably have a lot to learn with Goblins, but even against a brand new player they are really difficult to play with.

My opponent was much improved. He was holding back his Werewolf as a safety, making it scary for me to try and run past his line, and he only made 3 Illegal procedures this match :¬p

My opponent said next time he plays he'd like to play against a different coach, or at least against me when I'm coaching a different team. The good news is he ordered some Chaos Chosen for his birthday, and two friends said they'd create a Skaven team they'd share. Although thinking about it, Skaven are never good news...

Admin

We each had two level-ups. His Ghoul rolled doubles but he went for Block, and his Werewolf got the same on a normal roll. Unfortunately my MVP missed BOTH Trolls AGAIN, so I added Side Step to two Goblins.

I got 90k from the match, so with 190k in my treasury I hired a new Looney, and am now mulling over what to do next. I feel like getting a Fanatic is a good idea, but then my TV will be higher than his (and any starting team) meaning I'm no longer getting inducements. But if I don't spend it, Da Kaptin will just snort it straight up his nose again...