Blood Bowl OFL Kicks Off

Blood Bowl is a bit of an oddity for me - I've been reliably playing a league at the start of each year since I first turned up at a club, about 10 years ago now. This looked destined to come to an end after the breakup of the last club I was a regular at, Wargamers FC, in April last year.

However, I was approached a while back by JP, one of the elite group of "people I should really try to see and play games against more often" (PISRTTSAPGAMO for short) who had been planning a league of just this group of people, as a way to bring us back together and make sure we don't lose touch.

It's such a nice idea, I didn't even mind JP's not-at-all-subtle method of getting me to be league commissioner, and so the Old Friends League was born.

The league was kicked off on Wednesday night as my goblin team, the Squig Fuelled Stabbers, faced off against Trev's Khemri, The Mummy's Curse. The game was played on Trev's attractive and only slightly confusing custom pitch from Fantasy Fields.

The game kicks off

Having won the toss, I chose to kick off first, as against the low agility undead players this was an easy way to move the ball downfield without having to carry it there myself.

I played my fanatic in the first drive, and watched him spin around cheerfully for several turns without achieving much other than worrying everyone near him on either team.

One of my trolls was much more effective though, and racked up a couple of casualties early on. The gobbos took advantage of the gaps and general milling about and ran towards the ball. Trev then started as he meant to go on, and managed to bring down his own blitz-ra in the process of tackling a goblin. The greenskins pressed their advantage and managed to get the ball away and run in a scrappy touchdown.

With a blitz-ra down, the goblins snatch the ball and run away

As there were only a few turns left in the half, I kept my loony off the pitch in reserve, and so lined up to kick off again with no secret weapons. I was lucky this time and rolled blitz on the kick off table, and was able to push some goblins forward before play started.

Once more, the middle of the pitch descended into an ugly brawl. Goblins were knocked out or injured left and right, but the greenskins didn't manage much in response.

However, once more, Trev's luck failed him and he downed his own players a couple of times in succession. The goblins managed to pry the ball free and ran in another touchdown right at the end of the half, going into the break 2-0 up.

A goblin sneaks out of the melee with the ball

In the second half, more goblins got battered by skeletons and mummies, including the loony, who as usual had failed to achieve anything with his one attack and was quickly punished for his insolence.

The throw-ra, lurking at the back of the field, managed to collect the ball, and a clattering skeleton cage formed up and began to drift down the pitch at a glacial pace.

The same troll that had caused trouble earlier took exception to this, and over two turns smashed his way into the cage and concussed the throw-ra.

The pogoer grabbed the loose ball and was immediately mobbed, but proved his worth by bouncing free and throwing the ball to a teammate waiting patiently in the end zone, taking the score to 3-0.

Bouncy-bouncy-throw-catch-huzzah!

The Khemri team had now lost interest in scoring as the outcome of the game was beyond doubt, and so lined up their entire team to simply attack goblins when the game restarted. This plan was thrown into confusion as the kick went high and was caught by a well placed skeleton.

A few lurching moves later, the Mummy's Curse had the ball and were deep in Stabbers territory.

Surely they must score?

More undead players shambled over and caged the ball right at the end of the pitch, and in desperation a lone goblin ran over to at least distract the ball carrier. He was knocked down for his trouble, and then fouled...

... right under the nose of the referee, who sent off the mummy responsible and ended the game before the ball could be run in!

Oh.

So, a 3-0 win in my first game of the league then! Not at all bad. Can I keep this up? Watch this space to find out...

Empress Chinese PLA here at last!

What's this? Another blog post? Less than a fortnight after the last one? That's right, I'm inspired at the moment, after spending Sunday at Vapnartak in York.

I picked up some dice for Force on Force, and the USS Excelsior for Star Trek Attack Wing, but much more interesting than that, I was able to collect my Kickstarter pledge from Empress Miniatures!

In the end, I picked up a full squad of People's Liberation Army, plus a Chinese Mortar and Anti-tank weapon. I also got a fireteam of Painting Chinese type 07US Navy SEAL Frogmen, which will go nicely with the US Army squad that I got as part of Empress' sale for Kickstarter backers last year.

So far I haven't been brave enough to paint any of the Americans - the Empress models are so nice that I'm afraid to sully them with my painting!

However, I am plucking up the courage to tackle the Chinese. These are posing a bit of a conundrum though as I'm not entirely sure what colours to go for.

It looks like this is the standard camouflage:

And it is possible to find a few images dotted around the internet:

So, I'll have a bit of work to figure out the exact colours to use to get as close as possible to this. Also, since it's a digital camo pattern, I'll have to figure out a way to paint that without going mad, blind, or both...

My intended use for these will be a "Red Dawn" style scenario as China invades the US. This is (hopefully) entirely unfeasible in the real world, but allows for some modern combat between major powers and will allow me to use my existing collection of urban terrain.

Since I'm intending to use Force on Force for this, both the US and Chinese forces will be based around fireteams of four men. My plan is to paint a couple of Chinese fireteams first, followed by a couple of US fireteams. If I keep things up in this way I'm hoping to start with some small games to learn the system, and then build up to more interesting scenarios as I get more painting done.

So, watch this space, I might even get something painted to share with you all...

I seem to be running a little behind schedule...

Err, hello? Is anyone still there? Yes?

So, this is my New Year post, and I'd... wait, what? What do you mean, "a month late"? It's only the 26th, we're fine...

Yes, I've been somewhat held up in posting here and getting any painting done. Which is to say, I haven't done either since early December. I'm mainly blaming this:

Advanced weaponry goes hand in hand with poor lighting

You see, I don't get a lot of free time for hobby stuff, with both a toddler and a heavily pregnant wife hanging about the place, so the latest version of XCOM is the ideal video game for me - it's turn based, so I can play it for half an hour at a time without having to find sensible places to save. This does however mean that I'm squandering a fair bit of time on zapping alien invaders, rather than on sensible worthwhile things like painting toy soldiers!

So, with the traditional excuses dealt with, let's see how I did in 2013.

Straight away, we can see that I failed to keep up my promise to keep a track of how I doing against my targets! Whoops.

Still, here we go.

1) Get the Squig-fuelled Stabbers ready for the 3rd of February
Done! That's a good start!

2) Play a four player game of Flashbang at the club
Not sure I can blame myself too much for failing this one as the club closed. However, I did manage some work on Flashbang and a couple of games, and I'm planning to do more with that this year.

3) Paint a unit of my 28mm Napoleonics
Done, but admittedly in the least impressive way possible! I got my 8-man riflemen unit painted, and did a few infantrymen too.

4) Paint all my terrain!
Done, if you're prepared to substitute the word "all" for "some of"!

5) Paint enough Germans to give me two effective Flames of War forces  
Well, I had to fail at one of these eventually. I didn't really do anything with Germans, so that one still needs some work.

6) Sort out a force using the Nuts! book for Flames of War
Yep, did this! It's a nice book for the Americans, and I've been able to use Easy Company to good effect in a couple of our Lorraine campaign games.    

So, not too bad overall, if still far from a clean sweep. What should I plan for 2014 then?

Well, since I'm expecting the imminent arrival of my second child to further dampen my progress with paintbrushes, I'm making two resolutions this year.

1) Keep Painting and Blogging!
This one might actually be the hardest to keep up. As we've prepared for another new arrival, the spare room has ceased to be a man cave and is now my daughter's bedroom. Most of my models are stashed in the loft where they can't be accessed quickly, with only a few readily available for the ham-fisted caress of my paintbrush. Plus, with two little people to keep tabs on, I expect to have even less time and energy this year. So, I'm just going to try to keep up some momentum, however I'm able to do it. There are a few things I'd like to get painted, so I'll just have to do my best with those. Hopefully I can also find time to tell you fine people what I'm up to!

2) Play some of the games I've neglected
Possibly an easier one, but then, possibly not. Like all wargamers I've tended to gather up more rulesets and models than I can possibly do anything with in the spare time I actually have, so I've got a collection of games that rarely see the light, and a few that I've actually never played at all. So, my second resolution is to play at least two of the following:

• The Hobbit - I used some GW vouchers (alright, yes, it's the evil empire, try not to get too angry) that I got for Christmas to pick up the Escape from Goblin Town box, so I want to start playing that.

• Force on Force - this was a birthday present (just had a birthday! Yay me!) and I'm really keen to get to grips with it and use my Empress US Army and Chinese PLA (when the latter turn up via Kickstarter).

• Empire of the Dead - I'm less sure about this one, although it does look interesting. I went in for £10 on the Kickstarter, and got the rules and a frankly disappointing model that went straight on eBay. The concept is nice and it doesn't need many models, so I'd like to have a go.

• All Things Zombie - I was introduced to this by Kieron, but still haven't done anything with it, despite my painting achievements in Zomtober!

• Warpath - I like this game but haven't played it for some time, and still have only really scratched its surface. It's a reason to not sell all my 40k stuff, but that's about it at the moment!

• Kings of War - see above, but replace "40k" with "WFB".

• Gorkamorka - Alright, a man can dream, can't he? I really like Gorkamorka, even if no one else cares about it... 

So, that's what I want to do in 2014! I'll be posting here (assuming I stick to resolution 1) about what happens, so watch this space...

Napvember Post 4 - Slow and Steady

Not as quick as I was in the second week, but I've still got some painting done!

Volley fire is more effective if they all aim the same way, though

Here we go, another 3 infantrymen. I actually painted these last week, but again real life has been getting in the way of the blogging. As you can tell, the basing on these needs to be finished off, but that should be fairly straightforward!

As it's now the 1st of December, I suppose Napvember is now complete. I've got 12 models finished altogether, which is better than the 5 I was aiming for, but is still a long way from a complete army. I think I'll aim to get the line infantry regiment up to 24 men as soon as I can, but of course the butterfly effect is starting for me now, so there's a danger I'll wander off and start something else before I get that far...

Napvember Post 3 - Back on Track!

After the trials and tribulations I posted about a few days ago, I've managed a bit of a turnaround! 

I now have a unit of painted riflemen...

Alright, it will count as a "tiny" unit for Black Powder, but it is a unit, and it's my first ever for the napoleonic era. Since painting at least one napoleonic unit was one of my New Year's resolutions I'm happy with that!

The real meat of my British army is obviously going to be the line infantry, so I've moved onto that with a test model.

The idea here was to find a way to paint these quickly, and I'm happy with the result - this was about 2 hours work in total and now I know what I'm doing I think I can speed that up with a little production line. I think I'll aim to get a few more done for next week. 

Napvember Post 2 - Best Laid Plans

Argh.

As dedicated followers of this blog (I'm sure you're wearing your Paintbrush and Superglue t-shirt even as you read this), you'll know that I was meant to post my second Napoleonic model at the weekend, but have failed to do so.

The following is a spirited attempt to explain that this is not my fault.

Things were going reasonably well up until the weekend. I'd decided to carry on with my rifles and get those all done as it would give me a unit and might even allow for some sort of skirmish gaming.

Then, my one year old daughter got ill. Not hugely ill, but enough that she wasn't sleeping very well and I didn't get time in the evenings for an hour's painting as I had been doing.

Not to fret, I thought. I'll catch up on Monday night, and I can at least post "in progress" pictures if nothing else.

Unfortunately, a minicab driver had other ideas, and decided to drive into the back of my car as I was on my way home on Monday. He then tried to convince me that letting him "deal with it" would be a better option than claiming against his insurance, and it took me ten minutes at the side of the road to get his details (I think the fact that I was ostentatiously writing down all the taxi numbers on his car might have swayed him a bit). That's not relevant, but it wound me up so I've been ranting it at anyone who stands still long enough. The bodywork got pushed onto the wheel so I had to pry it back to be able to drive home, and the exhaust started rattling, which was nice.

Doesn't look like much, but has turned out to be a right pain

That dealt with my painting time for the next couple of nights, as I spent it on the phone to insurers, garages, car hire people, etc. I do at least have a very nice Peugeot as a courtesy car until mine gets fixed. I don't want mine back now.

Then, daughter got more ill, and barely slept at all for a night. She's now been prescribed antibiotics and is looking a lot happier, but it was last night before I got back to the brushes.

So here we are then - nearly Saturday again, and I don't yet have more finished models to show. I'm on the way though, so I'm promising riflemen for this weekend, and I'm going to try to get another model as well so I'm back on track...

At least I can show a WIP picture and prove that I got somewhere with the rifles!

They have actually moved on a bit since this picture. I'll finish 'em!

Napvember Post One - Rifleman

If anyone is keeping track, they may well have noticed that I promised a painted model for Saturday, and then haven't posted until Monday.

Real life got in the way I'm afraid! I spent most of Saturday on a succession of DIY jobs, so my painting had to take a back seat. Anyway, enough excuses, here is the first painted model!

One model painted! We're off!

As you know doubt guessed it would be from the title of this post, the model is a rifleman, specifically one of the Perry plastics.

Start telling me the buttons are the wrong colour now!

I've decided not to try to match any particular division with my collection at this stage. I did toy with the idea, but quickly realised that worrying about this stuff too much was going to cause even more paralysis in my painting than I had already, so changed my mind and will now go for whatever units I most like the look of until I have something approximating an army. If anyone points out that the resulting force doesn't match anything that actually fought, I'll deal with that by running away and hiding somewhere.

This slightly different angle is extremely worthwhile.

So, with that in mind, I chose to paint my rifles as the 95th, probably the most famous British napoleonic unit, with a fighting strength of something like twelve million men if you go by the number that wargamers have painted.

I even painted the back!

So what's next? Well, this was kind of a test model, so I'm hoping I can get the rest of my rifles painted quite quickly and then move onto something else. I only have eight in total at the moment, so it's a bit less impressive that you might think, but better than nothing. Watch this space, with bated breath, to find out whether I manage it!