Blood Bowl Elf Test Piece

Posted on 03/10/2012 by sho3box

Well, strictly speaking its not a “Blood Bowl” elf per se, but the figure is painted for use in my Blood Bowl games.

The miniature is from Shadowforge and a very nice figure it is too.  Some of the Shadowforge sculpts are a bit overly sexualised for my tastes, with high heels, chainmail bikinis, S&M accoutrements and ensembles etc, but these figures dont suffer too badly from that.

Obviously long flowing hair isnt very practical in a contact sport and the “belly top” (are they still even called that?) seems more of a fashion statement than a sporting decision, but in the context of the vaguely WWE panto that is Blood Bowl, I am ok with this look.

I found this photo while confirming that common or garden humans do still use the phrase (and indeed occasionally wear) “belly tops”.  I can confirm that “belly top” is still in use as a term and also a garment, as this mildly amusing photo shows.

The sculpting, detail and general design of the figure combine to give a simple and somehow vintage look.  There are few extraneous bits and pieces hanging off the figure but it still has lots of character.  I like this approach to miniature design.  The figure looks more iconic than the overburdened designs often seen from GW and the like.  Extra detail does not automatically make a figure better.

The model was very nicely sculpted and cast too.  It was genuinely a pleasure to paint, largely because of the clearly defined sculpting.

I considered painting the gems blue rather than the amethyst that they ended up, but I wanted to use some of my new purple paints.

I also couldnt decide on a suitable area to paint the player number on, which is a bit of a failing for a miniature designed for use in a football game.  I may resort to simply painting the number on the base, but that somehow feels like cheating.

The yellow and orange were painted in ways that I hope will be fast and simple to replicate (I do have about twenty more BB elves to paint after all), whenever I get the Blood Bowl urge next.  The pale flesh (of which there is a fair amount) was a bit time consuming to paint, but painting any significant area of flesh to any sort of decent standard always takes a while really.

As a test piece for my long awaited (since the 1980s) Blood Bowl elf team I am reasonably pleased with it.

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Close Up Photos of my Tiny Balls

Posted on 19/09/2012 by sho3box

L to R: Blood Bowl 3rd ed, Blood Bowl 3rd ed, Blood Bowl 3rd ed with added base, Blood Bowl 2nd ed with added base.

I turn thirty-seven next week.  Perhaps I should have outgrown amusing myself with headings like the one above by now.  I remain entertained nonetheless.

The balls in question are for use with Blood Bowl, in case that isnt obvious.

L to R: Dungeonbowl spiked ball, Blood Bowl 2nd ed ball with base (green for unclear reasons), a scratch built bomb, a “Ball Squig” (originally a RT ork squig), Blood Bowl 2nd ed ball (painted blue because its “Enchanted”) and an Iron Ball made from a metal recast of the 3rd ed ball, distributed at the 2003 Blood Bowl.

Over the years Blood Bowl has had various rules for playing the game with alternatives to footballs.  Largely those rules were not great in my opinion.

My regular opponents didnt really want to add the sort of extra random factor that those… ball-ternatives brought to the game.  That changed after I had played a lot of Dungeonbowl with SOS/theottovonbismark and MT, so I made up a few of these little models.

We used the bomb in a few games and the Ball Squig too.  I think that we also used the spiked ball on at least one occasion.

All of the balls have a magnet inserted into the base that corresponds with magnets under the bases of my Blood Bowl teams, as modeled by the skaven mutant above.

The odd-balls may make a reappearance in some Dungeonbowl games soon.  Maybe.

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Blood Bowl Dark Elves from 2002

Posted on 11/09/2012 by sho3box

Continuing my Blood Bowl retrospective on from my halflings and skaven its the Munnig Marauders up today.  Tuern Redvenom (centre below) models the 2002 Marauders strip.

The metal second edition Blood Bowl Dark Elf team was one the first GW 28mm purchases that I made, back in about 1990 I think.  They sat unpainted in a box for years.  I even ended up adding the third edition team (I cant remember for sure but it was probably to get my hands on BB witch models) and some star players to the box at various points, but the lot remained unassembled.

I found myself time rich and cash poor in 2002  and at that time there was some enthusiasm in my gaming group for Blood Bowl.  I decided to be less precious about the big pile of BB figures that had been sitting around for an age and churned out a few teams quickly to a tabletop standard lower than my usual painting level.  The Marauders were part of that process.

The paint job is simple and a little uninspired, but functional.  The figures are a mix of second and third edition figures, with the odd very small conversion or two for reasons that I dont remember now (like the second edition blitzer with the head swap in the middle above.  He had probably lost his head for some reason back in the early nineties).

I could never decide whether I liked the Blood Bowl thrower/quarterback type figures to be posed with or without the ball in hand, as it often leads to teams holding several balls, which looks a little daft.  Still, when the result of leaving them out is that the player seems to miming carrying a ball (like the thrower on the right above) then I tend to come down on the side of the sculpted on ball.

This team got a small bit of play, but the skaven were my go-to team around the same time, so the dark elves didnt get to the pitch/dungeon very often.  They did however acquire a number of irritating chips to the paint for reasons unknown.  This was doubly annoying as I didnt record the colours used on the armour which meant that covering  the chips was going to be very difficult.  So I decided to add some blood stains.

Funnily enough, the figures with the bloodstains look a little more finished than the others now: the red made them pop a little, even if that may not be immediately apparent from the not so great photos.

Horkon Heartripper (centre above) has to be one of the weakest Blood Bowl sculpts ever.

The candy floss pink hair on the witches turned out well.  I have always enjoyed painting pink for some reason.  The witch herself is a bit goofy, doing star jumps with that Einstein hairdo.

The witch on the left is an old and redundant second edition dark elf catcher given a new lease of life by the addition of a Marauder witch elf head and a pair of green stuff breasts.  A third witch was needed in case I ever decided to field Roxanna Darknail or some other dark elf star player.  I never did, but I tend to be completist with these things.

The witch in the shot above is the better of the two third ed BB witch figures.  Initially I wasnt too fond of the third edition team at all really, with their large noses and features, but they grew on me a little bit.  The witch here looks so eighties rock that I started to like the model while painting.  Now that I think of it that seems to be a common theme for me…

Uniquely amongst my Blood Bowl teams, the Marauders played in the official, honest-to-Nuffle, accept no substitutes, actual Blood Bowl in Nottingham in 2003 (note lineman #6 modelling the commemorative coin given to contestants).  I wasnt even there though.  This team had been borrowed by another player who didnt have a team of his own.  The Marauders didnt place in the competition unfortunately 🙂

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Blood Bowl Skaven from 2002

Posted on 29/08/2012 by sho3box

Continuing the Blood Bowl retrospective that started last week with my Goleen Gladiators halfling team, today its the turn of the Roughnecks.

I painted this team in 2002.  I was very short of cash at the time (a regularly recurring theme throughout my life unfortunately), but I was time rich.  As a result I decided to go through my big box of old Blood Bowl figures (some of which had been sitting there since 1989) and attempt to get through painting as many of them as possible, as fast as possible.   Appropriately this speedy Blood Bowl push began with a skaven team, the fastest team in Blood Bowl.


The team is a mix of second edition BB figures, third edition BB figures and a couple of old WHFB rat-ogres.  As is often the case, I overdid it a little by painting up maximum numbers of most of the positions.  Still, its better than only painting twelve guys and ending up always fielding a couple of half finished players later I suppose.

The colour scheme was decided upon for speed of application more than anything else.  The chosen uniform colours were applied as a couple of washes over a black through grey to white drybrush.  The fleshier tones were layered on in a slightly less down and dirty fashion, but it is very much a “tabletop quality” paint job.

I added some metallic scuffs and dents to the figures, but it was a bit crudely done.  Most of the marks look like genuine real life damage to the miniature paint job rather than scaled down wear and tear from a Blood Bowl pitch, which isnt ideal.

The grubby greenish yellow worked well I think.  It was easy and rapid to apply and still gives an interesting and slightly unpleasant pestilential look appropriate for rat/man hybrids.

I enjoyed playing skaven probably more than any of the other teams that I have played Blood Bowl with.  Elves are fun to play for sure, but the cost per player involved makes the first few league games knife edge stuff, plus starting teams tend to have few position players, which can make them a little bland.

Neither of these issues affect rat-dudes as the skaven lineman is arguably the best in the game: fast and cheap and easily replaceable.  While just as fragile as wood elves, skaven teams have a safety net of reserve players that makes coaching them slightly less stressful.  Skaven dont have AG4 across the board of course, but they have it where it counts.

The Roughnecks (who have had their name prefixed with a variety of local area names that begin with “R” over the years.  Its currently the “Reenascreena Roughnecks” simply because its a funny sounding local place) have played most of their games in familiar, sewer like, underground confines of dungeons.

This happened back in 2004-2005 or so when MT, SOS (AKA theottvonbismark) and I played a very large number of three way, five-a-side dungeonbowl games on a variety of dungeon maps.

Our Dungeonbowl variant made a small number of rules changes to the 3rd edition Dungeonbowl rules as written, but nothing very radical (other than turning the game into a three player affair, which while not too crunchy in rules terms, was a big change in play terms).

During that time the three of us leveled up a large number of teams in that rather absurd, potentially maybe a little bit too random but consistently hilarious environment.  It counts as my best Blood Bowl experience bar none.

Three disease-ridden mutant rat people get the party started.

I recently found a document containing a list of the house rules that we used for our Dungeonbowl games.  MT still has all of the old team rosters too, which I am sure make for an amusing and nostalgic read.  A return to the dungeon may well occur at some point in the future.

I coached the Roughnecks through a large part of this Dungeonbowl period, making them probably my favourite team, although its a close call between these squeaky little guys and one other team, of which more at a later date.

I am not sure at what point it seemed like a good idea to end up with three Blood Bowl rat-ogres, but it happened.  Funnily enough I think that the old hairy rat-ogres look a little more like Blood Bowl players than Headsplitter (centre) does.

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Blood Bowl Halflings from 1995

Posted on 22/08/2012 by sho3box

I am doing some work on Blood Bowl miniatures at the moment, while also playing BB games on the Xbox.  I have my first  “real life” game of Blood Bowl for years coming up any day now, so its safe to say that game is the passion du jour.

That said, I wont have any new miniatures to show for a while yet, for a number of not terribly exciting reasons.  So I am planning to do a little retrospective on the BB teams that I have painted to varying standards in the past, starting today with the Goleen Gladiators halfing team.

These funny little guys have never seen very much action on the pitch (I mean, who wants to play halflings?).  They were a fun,  fast to finish project, full of characterful models: ideal.  Puggy Baconbreath (visible centre above) is an all time favourite figure of mine.  His determination is palpable: he is as focused as a halfling can get.

The paint job was straightforward and quickly applied.  Its a simple, bold and bright scheme that is well suited to both hobbits and Blood Bowl.

The miniatures are a mix of second and third edition Blood Bowl figures.  The third edition guys are easy to spot I think: they are the four largest figures.

There was a painted treeman with the team at one stage, but he fell into his component parts at some point and was subsequently stripped of paint.  Its possible that I will get around to painting him up in the gladiators scheme again some time.  Unlikely, but possible.

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Project Pandora: Grim Cargo Review

Posted on 08/05/2012 by sho3box

Project Pandora: Grim Cargo is the first sci-fi dungeoncrawl boardgame from Mantic Games. The mechanics of the game are very similar to those for the Dwarf Kings Hold series from the same manufacturer.

Continue reading →

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Veer-Myn

Posted on 01/05/2012 by sho3box

One of my Salute purchases was Project Pandora: Grim Cargo.  This sci-fi dungeoncrawl game  is supplied with twenty Mantic miniatures, ten of which are veer-myn (space rat-men).

In order to have painted miniatures to play the game with I started work on these guys last week and finished them today. Continue reading →

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Alien Queen Basing

Posted on 23/06/2010 by sho3box

Uncharacteristically good weather plus an even more uncharacteristic busy social life has meant that my hobby time has been curtailed of late.  As a result todays post is a bit half-assed.  It does show that at least I am making some progress with my Aliens re-theme of Space Hulk.

Alien Queen Basing

Mikko at Dawn of the Lead has been making a lot more progress on his identical project here.  His latest addition of a very nice looking Alien Queen that came from a gashapon toy is in need of a base.  As I recently made a basic but functional base for getting my large Horrorclix Queen on the Space Hulk board, I decided to put up a quick photo.

Grid Markings

After removing the model from its clix base I stuck some styrene with a treadplate pattern on it to a 60mm plywood base.  I then added some styrene strips in a sort of tic-tac-toe pattern that matches the size of the squares in a game of Space Hulk.

While obviously using such a large figure will make some parts of the game feel a little cramped, the grid marked on the base should make it apparent where the Queen is standing in rules terms.  Adjacent figures will have to stand on small parts of the queens base but I dont foresee that being a big problem.

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Mostly Space Hulk to Aliens Rules Conversion Ideas Mostly

Posted on 01/06/2010 by sho3box

WALL OF TEXT WARNING

I am finally making some progress on the miniatures side of the Space Hulk to Aliens project, of which more will follow.  Funnily enough, in one of those weird internet-ty ways it seems that lots of other people are dusting off their Colonial Marines, Aliens and Predators to tackle the same or very similar projects on both Lead Adventure Forum and Frothers.  Mikko at Dawn of the Lead has been doing some very solid work too, elements of which I intend to rip off use to inspire me.

To go along with the miniatures I want to hammer out the basic rules conversions required.  I mostly intend to game with these figures in Space Hulk (mostly), simply because it is such a tight and satisfying system.  Ideas for many these rules have been going around in my head for years while others have been as a result of talking to similarly interested Aliens and Space Hulk nerds and and I want to write them down somewhere.  That somewhere might as well be here.

The intention is to translate existing rules for various elements in Space Hulk into their Aliens equivalent and not to write new rules unless absolutely necessary.  Eventually I plan to write up a simple Force List in the style of the Force List in Deathwing that allows players to pick a simple Colonial Marine force for playing any Space Hulk scenario.

Finally, while I like the idea of Predators I have never really enjoyed the movies that much.  I really think that they are pretty shitty to be honest, even though even suggesting that to most of my colleagues tends to send them into a fit of nerd rage, complete with bad Schwarzenegger impersonations.  So, while I have a pile of Predators waiting to be painted they are not a priority for me in terms of rules conversion.  It will happen eventually but not for a while as I dont really care that much about them and they will be harder to legislate for anyway due to their stealth and all that.

So here goes.  Everything is as in 3rd Ed rules unless otherwise specified:

M41A Pulse Rifle armed Colonial Marine = Storm Bolter Terminator Marine (ignore the Grenade Launcher part of the M41A.  It is considered to be intrinsic to the weapons standard effect in the game.  Consider it represented by the sustained fire bonus if that floats your boat).

M41A Pulse Rifle armed Sergeant= Power Sword and Storm Bolter armed Terminator Sergeant (+1 in assault is fine for a veteran NonCom.  Parry from the sword can be seen as whatever you like, kung-fu grip, sixth sense, Riddick levels of badass-ness: whatever.  Regardless, Sergeants have it.  Just like they allow the CP redraw).

Shotgun armed Corporal (Hicks) = Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield Armed Terminator Sergeant (this one is a bit of a fudge.  Assuming that the shotgun is only effective at point blank range is pushing it, but it does make the shotgun very deadly at that range, just like in video games.  The Block given by the shield is explained away just like the Parry for the other Sarge.  It also makes Apone and Hicks different, but similar which is cool.  The utter absence of Hicks Pulse Rifle (Storm Bolter) is a bit counter intuiticve, but as it will then slot in cleanly to all of the 3rd Ed missions I think that that has to be way to do it.  Finally, this ties in with one of the few extra rules that I intend to use, Acid Splash.  If it works out then having the Shotgun guy run the risk of acid burn will feel just like the movie 🙂 ).

M56 Smart Gun armed Colonial Marine = Assault Cannon Terminator

M240 Flamethrower armed Colonial Marine = Heavy Flamer Terminator

M41A Pulse Rifle armed Colonial Marine with Welder and Electrical Equipment (Hudson) = Storm Bolter and Chainfist Terminator (both troopers open doors/bulkheads that are otherwise difficult to open. Simple and accurate conversion).

Caterpillar P-5000 Powerloader = Lightning Claw armed Terminator (I was initially hesitant about this but the more that I thought about it the more that I liked it.  The LC Terminator has no ranged capability and will shred most opposition, most of the time.  It will also have a decent chance to best the dangerous Alien Queen (Patriarch/Broodlord) in hand to hand, which is reasonable.  It is a neat solution I think).

Company Man Burke, Newt and Jones the cat= C.A.T., Relic or other scenario objectives (I might try to come up with rules for Burke at a later date but having to rescue his sorry ass seems just as appropriate I think).

Synthetic/Artificial Person = Terminator Librarian (I know, I know but bear with me for a second.

Having watched Alien 4 last weekend, the idea of a synthetic with potent, situation based powers like Prescience (some sort of CCTV based thing) and Force Barrier (overriding a blast door or similar) seems fine to me. Psychic Storm might be pushing it a bit but whatever: maybe Bishop/Cole/Ash has overridden the Liquid Nitrogen spraying thing or activated the sprinklers after causing a short or switching on sentry guns in that area or something else just as Deus Ex Machina.

The Librarians close combat prowess is a bit at odds with Bishops performance but not so much with that of Ash (super-strong, but not super-tough). Considering that Bishop is three laws compliant, the idea of the synthetic going to extraordinary lengths to beat up potentially harmful Xenomorphs is ok with me.  Apparently the comics had combat synths that used to get stuck in quite regularly too, although the three laws tell me that Bishop would be compelled to help whether he was built for it or not.

Funnily enough the thing that doesnt sit well with me is that the Librarian has a Storm Bolter.  It doesnt seem right that Bishop should have a rifle (and the figure that I have to represent the synthetic has a piece of technical equipment in place of a weapon too.  Does Cole use a gun at any point in the 4th film?  I dont think so.

Reluctant Badass Lieutenant Ellen Ripley = Space Hulk First Edition Captain (another fudge.  The Captain in 1st Ed is very potent: he adds +2 to the CP total every turn, adds +2 to combat rolls and has a Power Sword, Grenade Launcher and Storm Bolter.  I have found that the Captain is roughly equivalent to the 3rd Ed Librarian in potency and I have swapped the characters when playing 3rd Ed quite successfully.

I suppose that Ripley is shown to have leadership qualities in the movie so ok to the CP bonus. The Storm Bolter/Pulse Rifle is perfect and the Captains GL can simply be seen as an alternative way of using the Incinerator that Ripley carries.  Thats OK with me.  The +2 combat plus Parry is harder to explain away but in the interests of keeping the rules standard I think that I can live with it.  I will justify it to myself as Fate or Hero points: the things that make the Hero, the Hero.

So, thats the Humans dealt with.   Bugs now:

Xenomorph = Purestrain Genestealer

Alien Queen = Broodlord

Face-hugger or Chest-burster = First Edition Unarmed Hybrid (these guys will get wiped out by fire very easily.  Once converted from Blip to model they move more slowly too.  They will be a fun, straightforward way to add some variety to the Alien players forces without much additional complexity and the rules are already written.  As I will use the 1st Ed blip sets, including the Hybrid blips it will be easy to throw in a few small aliens.  I havent decided on a way to incorporate it into the standard 3rd Ed blips yet.  It will probably be something similar to how the Patriarch can be brought into play, except that a “1” Blip can be exchanged for 3 Face-huggers twice a game or something like that.)

Lastly, Acid Splash.  Some players have added rules for this.  In many ways I think that it is an unneccesary complication for little gain.  Still, after mulling it over I had an idea: rather than roll to hit any/all adjacent models when an Alien dies (which would be tedious and could easily spoil the rapid flow of the game) I want to try out an idea based on the Scatter rule from Blood Bowl.

See Mikkos comments below.

Acid Splash: Acid Splash occurs when an Alien is hit from a shooting attack and that attack rolls at least two “1”‘s rolls at least two “6”‘s. If the target Alien is adjacent to one or more non-Alien figures then one of the non-Alien figures is chosen by the shooting player.  The chosen figure is removed from play.

As noted below this gives only a 1/36 chance of damage and is incorporated into the existing rolls and game mechanics.  It also makes point blank shooting a tiny bit risky which is both thematic and entertaining.  It also means that a blast from an Assault Cannon/Smart Gun is more likely to cause Acid Splash while the Heavy Flamer cannot ever.  Quite satisfyingly accurate to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the weapons as I see them.  Nice one Mikko.

Phew, that was a long one.  Congrats if you endured it this far.  Comments and thoughts on that much are welcome.

EDIT 02/06/10: replaced Acid Splash idea with Mikkos version from comments below.

EDIT 02/06/10: replaced Acid Splash “1” with “6”.

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Clogheen Cannibals Pt 2

Posted on 23/12/2009 by sho3box
The Cannibals Goblin Contingent

The Cannibals Goblin Contingent

More of my orc Blood Bowl team continued from last week.  Note the pogo stick and chainsaw guys above.  On the other hand please do not note the chipped paint on the middle goblins spikey helmet.  Thanks.

Lineman and Blitzer

Lineman and Blitzer

Another Lineman and Blitzer

Another Lineman and Blitzer

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