Splintered Shin - Orc Blood Bowl Team WIP

I now have all the miniatures for my new Orc Blood Bowl team, which I've named Splintered Shin. To get a good clear and bright finish I decided to undercoat these using white and skeletal bone primers. Then I applied a base coat of Ultramarines blue for their uniform and Orkhide shade for the base of the skin tone.

Splintered Shin: soon to be regularly terrorising stunties and pointy ears alike 

Last week I finally picked up a box of river trolls so that I could use one in this team. I've wanted some since they came out, but because I'm got a sizeable unit of stone trolls in my greenskins army, I couldn't really justify it. The one model that I have put together is absolutely fantastic. I've attached a rather comically small shoulder pad (as if this spiky fellow would need one) just so it has a splash of the team colour - I'll also out his squad number on it. I started painting him last night using a reverse shading technique. This basically goes against the common-sense for shading (where you build shades from darkest to lightest) and involves putting a block of the second lightest shade (Gretchin green in this case), which you then wash with two different darker shades in order to blend it in. It wouldn't work for all colours, but it's great for greens, especially when you want to achieve an aquatic or reptilian look.  

Blood Bowl Team Manager - Review

This evening my regular gaming group played our first game of Blood Bowl Team Manager. I've never really been taken by the idea of card based gaming, but this nifty little offering really hit the spot. 

Each player takes control of a Blood Bowl team for a season, which is represented by a series of gaming rounds. During these rounds players allocate bloodthirsty athletes from their team roster (drawn from a deck of cards) and uses their varying abilities and downright dirty tactics to win events - either match-ups between two teams or an all-in tournament. Teams progress through the rounds aiming to accumulate fan points while also taking the opportunity to boost their rosters with star players and hence improve their chances of claiming the Spike! magazine 'Manager of the Year' award. Coaching and various other upgrades help to spice things up and keep unpredictability at a premium. 

Overall this seems to be a top class game. It really captures the spirit and 'feel' of Blood Bowl, both in terms of the game mechanics and the characteristics of the different races and star players. If this is a good indication of the quality of Fantasy Flight Games products, then I'll certainly be taking a long look at their other games the next time I'm looking for something new, entertaining and with the possibility for broader appeal.

Blood Bowl Chaos Warriors - First Look

Although I initially planned to make my new Blood Bowl teams wholly from the current GW plastics, that was never really going to work with the Chaos Warriors because these models lack the style and poses suitable for the game. Luckily, I was able to get hold of some still-on-the-sprue older style of Chaos Warriors from eBay. I've just put four of these together - the maximum allowance for a Chaos team - and I'm rather pleased with the results.

I'm thinking of a red and bronze 'Khorne' colour scheme for this team, although that's possibly/probably going to change, and it'll depend on their name, which I haven't given much thought to yet.

Blood Bowl Orcs - First Look

Here are the first players for my Orc Blood Bowl team - four blitzers - all light conversions from the GW Orc Warriors boxed set. 

This was also my first use of the Citadel Liquid Green Stuff, which I found to be very easy to use. Looking forward to finally getting around to filling the gaps on my Giants of Albion from the old Dogs of War range so that they can have a paint job in the new year. 

Blood Bowl Challenge!

Word on the street is that Blood Bowl will get a re-release next year in a big box similar to Dreadfeet. Ok, so that's not actually the 'word on the street', but a rumour I heard the other day in a shop - still, it's nice to dream. It got me thinking as well, because Blood Bowl is the only game that I've played at least once a year since about 1986 - it's about time I really had some teams to be proud of.

Now, I realise that ANOTHER painting job is hardly what I need, but I've never been one to not get carried away. The good points about a Blood Bowl team, of course, is that they are only a limited number of miniatures and you can really get the best from them in a short period of time through carnage on the pitch. Also, Blood Bowl is kind of a board game, so it's possible to get non-gamers to play casual games every now and then - perfect for the weekly games night.

So... here is the challenge. Within SIX MONTHS I will create FIVE new Blood Bowl teams from scratch. All the models will be converted from the current GW plastic miniatures. Working from the 6th edition of the Living Rule Book (now referred to as the Competition Pack), these teams will be:

1. Norse

2. Orcs

3. Ogres

4. Skaven 

5. Chaos

Let the conversion carnage commence! Deadline for completion of all five teams... 11th April 2012...