Monday 22 June 2015

Pro Elves vs Amazons // Re-Roll Tokens // First Lineman Painted



Had my first full game of Blood Bowl on Friday night and loved it.

Previously had only been able to get in half matches and I've played a few half matches now against Humans, Orks, then Amazons.

Went round to a friends house Friday though hoping to get a full game in and although it took us a while (4 hours - but some chatting in between) it was great fun and we got it finished.

Random dice rolls were had all round, at one point I failed a re-rollable 2+ twice in two turns! but at the end of it, I had failed dice rolls that weren't critical (although one did lead to my Thrower getting whacked and dropping the ball), while my opponents failures included a 4+ re-rollable catch 3 squares from the end zone with a free run in, then a couple of turns later, a GFI into the end zone.

A few pics of the game:

Well that was a good start, we kick off and the eager crowed invade the pitch, knocking down half the players!


Dave's dice rolling is not doing him any favours...
Whereas mine is fine a minute later!

Dave's luck not improving, even with a 3D block on the catcher...
The casualties start to mount up though...




The game ended with a 3-0 victory to the Pointy Eared Potters although one of the Linemen died, and my thrower got a smashed hip so will miss a match and has -1 MA. Nerves of Steel really came into it's own on a couple of occasions, picking up the ball in 3 tackle zones and running in for the score at one point, and later in the game got my catcher surrounded by no less than 5 players with no way out in sight... only to lob it over to another catcher who waltzed in for the score.

Overall a great fun game and I look forward to a rematch soon!


Re-Rolls

Also I spent an hour yesterday evening making some re-roll counters for my Pro Elves and Norse teams, these are really easy to do but a few people have complimented them so I thought it'd be worth sharing how.

I found a logo on-line and then pasted them into a bottlecap .psd template (Did a quick Google search and it's something like this), printed them off onto light card and cut them out (With a 1" Stamp) then stuck an epoxy bubble on top. Really easy and cheap way to make tokens for anything.

Here's the end results, nothing amazing, but for a cheap and easy option I'm pretty happy with them.



Finally, I managed to get my first team member painted to a basic level, it's not great but it'll do for now and once I've got the whole team painted I'll go back and touch them all up.



Thursday 18 June 2015

Pointy Eared Potters get their first Home Games in (Blood Bowl)

Well had two half games on the new pitch last night and I was really happy.

The new pitch had loads of people commenting on it and went down very well, I'm really happy with it and although it wasn't cheap (although Alex gave me a great deal) I feel I'm going to get great value out of it.

For those that are interested I got the pitch from here: http://www.ff-fields.com/

I played two half games with my Pro Elves, first against Orcs and then against Amazons, winning the first game 1-0 and drawing the second 1-1.

Overall I'm really enjoying Blood Bowl and it seems very tactical now I'm starting to learn some of the intricacies. I think it'll take me a while to be able to challenge any of the more seasoned players at the club but there are 5-6 of us just picking up the game so will be good to climb the learning curve together.

New Pitch:



Action Shot of the First Game:


Tuesday 16 June 2015

Display Case for Blood Bowl

Spent a little time the last couple of evenings getting my Pro Elves primed and based and thought I'd share what I've done with the bases and the display case.

I had the display case lying around from ages ago, I think at the time I was thinking of using it for Infinity, but I thought I'd throw some static grass on it and use it for Blood Bowl with that being my current focus.




I'm really happy with how it came out in the end, all the players have magnets in the bases and there are magnets under the display case so they are held really securely and I am sure I could throw it around if I wanted and they'd still be in place.

At some point I'll get round to taking a better picture but I figured a poor picture was better than no picture for now.

Also, I played an Infinity tournament a while back with a chap who'd drilled and painted holes to mark Line of Sight and I thought it looked really effective so I thought I'd steal the idea but use it with various colours to differentiate between the positions on my team.



One of the things I noticed last week playing against the Black Scorpion Orc team was that they were all easily identifiable by silhouette and although my Elves are different enough to be able to tell them apart, it's not particularly easy and I felt that it'd be easier on my opponent if I could say - Yellow Base is a thrower, Red is Blitzers, Blue Catchers and Green for Linemen.


Within that I've further differentiated the positionals with Red 1 and 2, and Blue 1 and 2, so that I can easily tell which is which. It didn's seem viable for me to do this for the Linemen as I'd have up to 7 holes in a base for each one, so I may need to wait until I've painted them and done numbers for those unless anyone has any ideas... ?


Overall for 2 evenings work priming/basing the models and then sorting out the display I'm really happy with how they look.

Hopefully be able to get started on a test paintjob this evening (Red and White) and then I'll do the rest of them in batches.

Also I got a package at work today, I'll take some better pictures when we get a game on it on Wednesday but here's a sneak preview! :)




Thursday 11 June 2015

First Match of Blood Bowl

So I've been busy assembling my new Pro Elf team since receiving it a week or so ago from www.mk1881.com



I'm really happy with the quality and think they're going to look great once I've thrown on a basic paint job. 

I'm not 100% sure on the connectors on some of the raised legs but when I cut one of these off the remaining foot on the base wasn't enough to hold it and I ended up having to pin and green stuff the figure to support it by why time I might as well have left it how it was.

I'm hopeful that when they're painted they won't stand out so much, interested to hear if anyone has any thoughts on whether I should paint the bits black (eye will generally skip over these bits naturally then) or put scatter on them similarly to the base to try and blend them in so they're not as noticeable.

One benefit of Blood Bowl is it's so easy to carry my stuff around, everything I need other than the throwing template will fit into my smallest KR case: (Dice and Ball will fit into one of the slots, not pictured here though)


I took them down to the local club last night for their first outing and played them as Humans for a Humans vs Orcs game against a friend who is also just getting into the game. 



Both really enjoyed the game and the Humans ended up winning 3-1 although we only played 2 turns of the second half and things got a little silly as we started throwing in rules like you have to go for it with every player, to the extent that my opponent was moving forward one and back one with a player he didn't want to move any further than his standard movement XD

A more accurate reflection would be the half time score which was 2-1 to the Humans and my first victory!

We're looking to play another game next week where I'll use them as Elves and we'll use a 1,100,000 credit roster with a few skills and things so we can have a bit more of a play.

Overall though, I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to having my pitch arrive and getting my team painted up. My pitch looks awesome from the pictures I've seen but I don't want to spoil the surprise so won't say anymore!

Friday 5 June 2015

A little Painting Progress // And some Blood Bowl!

Haven't had much time to pick up a brush lately as I've either been playing and/or too tired in the evenings to pick up the brush.



Did a little more work on my Autarch though and finished off the armour before laying the first couple of coats down on his cloak (Troll Slayer Orange)

I quite like the contrast with the armour but I'm not convinced on how it'll look with my Purple / Black / Blue Dark Eldar and then Blue / White / Orange Eldar.

I managed to christen my new table last Friday with a 1k doubles game (2k per side total) of Tau/Dark Eldar/Eldar against Marines and Grey Knights which was good fun, ending on T5 with the Imperials 1 VP up. None of our lists were optimised and it was a friendly game but good fun and although we got smashed turn 1-2 we came back strong and only just lost it in the end.

I also got a demo game of Blood Bowl in on Wednesday evening at the club after playing it a lot on my tablet recently. I really enjoyed the game and I'm looking forward to getting a Pro Elf team painted up for the "Exe Bowl" tournament in October. 

I'm sure I'll get smashed but hopefully I'll have some fun too!