Come on, you elves! You wanna live forever?

These games just keep getting harder!  Round 3 and my Undead team were facing my buddy Shane and his Wood Elf team "Project XIII".  Shane is a Blood Bowl veteran known as Rodders in the BB community; he's a NAF Regional Tournament Organiser, ran the excellent Carrot Crunch BB tournaments and is probably the best coach I play against regularly - so I knew I had my work cut out with this one.

"This is my game face.  Be very afraid."

He'd lost his first game vs Chaos Dwarves and won his second game vs Lizardmen and his players had a few more skills than mine already.  He had a MV9 Wardancer and Catcher, another Wardancer with Strip Ball and a Catcher with Block.  My only hope was to just keep swinging and pray that I could outnumber him enough to outscore him.

The Lords of Midnight - Undead

2 x Mummies (one with Guard)

2 x Wights

3 x Ghouls

5 x Zombies

3 x Rerolls

Project XIII - Wood Elf

2 x Wardancers (one with MV9, one with Strip Ball)
2 x Catchers (one with MV9, one with Block)
1 x Thrower
4 x Linemen
2 x Journeymen
1 x Reroll

We both rolled the same amount of fans so neither of us got FAME. Shane won the toss and elected to kick first which would give me a chance to start swinging straight away.  Unfortunately Shane then managed to roll a Blitz which gave him a perfect opportunity to swarm into my backfield and crowd the ball.  He even managed to catch the ball that was kicked!  All I could do was get back and try a desperate one dice blitz on the Wardancer with the ball - which knocked him down and a Ghoul managed to collect the ball.  In the next turn, Rodders dodged out some players and hit the Ghoul with his Strip Ball Wardancer which sent the ball flying.  Whilst he was trying to clear a way for him to get to pick up the ball, he pushed a zombie onto the ball which made it scatter - which duly landed in the lap of the Ghoul who had taken it off the Wardancer!  Rodders later splatted the Ghoul and got the ball away to score.

All this time, my Mummys were doing there best to smash up his team - something that carried on throughout the game!  Despite their best efforts they couldn't do anything other than cause a MNG on a Journeyman - they just kept Badly Hurting players.  Shane was down to nine players when he kicked off again but this time he rolled a High Kick and one of my Ghouls caught the ball as it landed.   Lots more smashing occurred and I was lucky to knock out both Wardancers in the same turn.  The Ghoul scored at the end of turn 8 to make it 1-1.  Rodders set up to receive with just four players in his final turn of the half - which ended up with a Catcher failing a dodge and knocking himself out.

In the second half, I was kicking to Shane and he still only had four players!  Despite this, he managed to run a catcher deep into my half after giving him the ball.  I surround the Catcher with my own players and blitzed him - and after a reroll I was still only able to push him.  It was all too easy for the Catcher to score in the next turn after my dice fail.  2-1 to Rodders!  He set up again, still with just four players left although one was the Strip Ball Wardancer.  I started moving the ball upfield after the kick and Shane did some razzle dazzle to blitz the ball carrier with two dice against - but both were POWs!  Down went the Ghoul and the ball scattered into two tackle zones.  Still not enough to worry a Catcher though as he waltzed though tackle zones like they weren't there and then picked up the ball!  My dice started working here as one of my Ghouls knocked out the cursed Wardancer, then a Wight blitzed the Catcher to take him down and release the ball.  It was then I started fouling the Catcher as much as I could as he was just so annoying!  A Ghoul retrieved the ball and headed upfield - and despite Rodders best efforts I scored in the final turn to make it 2-2.  Rodders was left with just one player on the field but had escaped any injuries apart from a MNG on a Journeyman.

Despite causing five casualties, only one of my players had done well enough to warrant gaining a skill - one of my Zombies who had caused a casualty and gotten MVP.  I have given him the Dirty Player skill so he can be more effective at fouling.

My Undead are on a bye for Round four so the next time I use them they will be taking on Chaos Dwarves.  Until then, it will be the Goblins playing who will be facing Ogres!

WIP Goblin

I need to get this goblin team painted ASAP as I really don't like using unpainted miniatures when I game.  I also want to use them in a tournament in October so I need to get cracking for that if nothing else.  So the goblins are now back onto the paint station and I've done some test minis to work out how I'm going to paint them and what colours will go where.  Here's a WIP of one of them.

"I'm open!  I'm open!"

Now I kinda know what I'm doing, I'll crack on with the rest!

An Evening With Nuffle

I had two games lined up for yesterday evening which was a little ambitious of me.  The first was my initial Championship game for my Fouling Griffons goblin team vs a human team and the second was a Round 2 game for my undead against a Nurgle team.

"ST7 ball & chain you say?"

My goblins were facing my mate Dave's human team, The Marvellous Avengers.  His team is really nice - they've been painted so that the models look like Marvel Avengers members.  Unfortunately I had to field my WIP goblins who've only had a basecoat on the skin.  I will endeavour to get some more done on them before their next game!

Our rosters were as below :

Fouling Griffons - Goblin

2 x Trolls
1 x Pogoer
1 x Fanatic
1 x Looney
1 x Bombardier
8 x Goblins
4 x Rerolls

The Marvellous Avengers - Human

1 x Ogre
4 x Blitzers
1 x Thrower
1 x Catcher
4 x Linemen
2 x Rerolls

We drew on the FAME roll but I won the toss so I elected to receive the kick-off.  Dave obligingly lined three linemen up on the LOS and, upon my setup, I placed the Fanatic in front of them.  I left the Looney and Bombardier off the pitch to save them for the 2nd half.  The Bombardier did some pushy shovey stuff as he did but, as this was my first tabletop game using goblins, I made a mistake on how the ball and & chain works as I was throwing block dice to see what happened to already prone players (something I will remember in future!).  At one point he managed to throw a triple skulls so he wasted one of my rerolls fairly early on.  Dave's team took a bit of a smacking to start with but he managed to work out a blitz on my Pogoer who went KO and also managed to cause a MNG on a troll by fouling him.  It was all downhill from there!  Dave turned me over and managed to score on turn 6 which meant I had to bring on my remaining secret weapons - disaster!  On the last two turns I sent my Looney after Dave's Catcher and Thrower but just managed to stun them.  The Bombardier only threw one bomb in a desperate effort to stop Dave scoring again - and it was laser guided causing his ogre to fall over and to knock out a blitzer.  For the second half, I just had one troll and six goblins on the field so there wasn't a lot I could do to stop Dave scoring again.  In the end, the game did finish 2-0 which was probably a fair result.  I will miss the troll for the next game for sure!

After that tough game I was rewarded by yet another tough game!  I put the goblins away and got out my undead to play Sherwin's Nurgle team, Gorerotted.

"Are you sure you don't just want to concede now?"

Sherwin is a very good Blood Bowl coach despite ignoring the game and playing Warmachine solidly all last year.  He's won the league a couple of times so I was expecting a tough match.  Not as tough as it ended up being though...

Our rosters were as below :

The Lords of Midnight - Undead

2 x Mummies (one with Guard)

2 x Wights

3 x Ghouls

4 x Zombies

3 x Rerolls

Gorerotted - Nurgle

1 x Beast of Nurgle
4 x Nurgle Warrior
1 x Pestigor (Block)
5 x Rotters
2 x Rerolls

I received the ball to start with and the ball bounced into the hands of a ghoul which was rather handy.  I had to work to make a hole through his rather whiffy defence (Sherwin had to spend the whole game reminding me to roll for disturbing presence by saying "UGLY! each time I forgot") and managed to get a ghoul through to go 1-0 up.  It was at this point that Sherwin's dice went on fire!  POW!  Badly hurt ghoul.  POW!  Serious injury on a wight (thankfully regen'd), etc.  His team smashed me apart.  I managed to stop him equalising in the first half but I couldn't do a lot to stop him in the 2nd half apart from keeping him to a 1-1 draw.  Miraculously, none of my players were seriously hurt so I still have a full team for the next game.  I was going to buy a ghoul but after two games I only have 60k winnings so I think I will buy another zombie so I have a spare man for fouling purposes.

Two really hard games - I think the rest of the season is going to be exactly the same for both my teams!

Let's Get Ready To RUMBLE!!!

It's go time!  As I said in my last post, my first game of the season for my Undead team was a game against my mate Andrew and his Orc team.  Andrew is as much of a Blood Bowl addict as I am; of all the people in the Chelmsford Bunker, it's he who goes to most of the local tournaments with me.  He won the league last season so it was a good way to get things started.  Our team lineups were :

Lords of Midnight - Undead

2 x Mummies

2 x Wights

3 x Ghouls

4 x Zombies

3 x Rerolls

Da New Ork Giants - Orcs

4 x Blitzers
4 x Black Orc Blockers

1 x Thrower

1 x Troll

1 x Lineman

2 x Rerolls

"Nuffle's blessing upon this game!"

Andrew won the FAME roll but I won the toss so I elected to receive the ball.  I kept my three Ghouls in the backfield to collect the ball and started trying to punch a hole through the solid wall of Orcs but it was pretty ineffective.  Most of the half was spent trying to make a clear way through them but Andrew was canny and kept some players back.  As the turns ticked over, I had to force a break through his lines which results on my ball carrier getting knocked over.  Andrew surrounded the ball and I was left trying to silly tactics in the last turns to try to recover but those, rather expectedly, failed.  We ended the half 0-0 and with me having a knocked out Zombie.

For the 2nd half, I lined up three Zombies to take the punches at the LOS and kept the other players back a couple of squares ready to adapt to what Andrew threw at me - which was a shitload of orc fists!  One of his Black Orcs caused a Badly Hurt casualty on one of the Zombies which was regenerated to put me down to nine players whilst his Thrower recovered the ball and hid in a cage.  I threw some blocks and tried my best to defend as well as I could which was tricky being men down.  I did manage to push his Troll away from the cage though which meant he would be less inclined to move him in case he went Really Stupid.  It was around this time that Andrew ran out of rerolls - just at the point when one of his Black Orcs tried a two-die block against one of my Mummys.  The skull and both down result saw my Mummy on the floor and his Black Orc receiving a Niggling Injury. Andrew responded in the next turn by causing another casualty, this time one of my Wights who was badly hurt but who also Regenerated.  As the turns got closer to the end of the game, Andrew was under pressure to push forward but a one-die blitz on one of my Ghouls saw another skull result and I had my chance to block some players out of the way and hit the Thrower with a one-dice blitz which knocked him down and sent the ball flying.  Unfortunately for me the scatter saw the ball land in the middle of his players so there was no chance I would be able to get a player away to score so I just aimed to cause him problems with scoring himself.  The game ended a rather hard fought 0-0 draw!

Both of us had our fan factor go up and I earned 40K winnings whilst Andrew only got 20K even after adding the 10K for getting the FAME.  I got very lucky with my MVP roll though as it went to the Mummy who had caused the casualty on the Black Orc!  He rolled a normal skill so I have given him Guard for the next game.

For my next game for the Undead will be taking on the Nurgle team being coached by Sherwin the club President, but my next game will be the first outing for my Goblin team against some Humans in the Championship division.  I suspect that will be an entirely different type of game!

"The orc pain train is coming!  Choo-choo!"

CBBBL VIII starts this week!

The waiting is over - the division draws have been made and the matches start this week!

The Lords of Midnight have been drawn first against my buddy Andrew's Orc team - Da New Ork Giants.  I'll be playing that game tomorrow evening so I'll post up some pictures and do a match report.  I have made a change to my roster for the start of the season - I will be using :

2 x Mummies

2 x Wights

3 x Ghouls

4x Zombies

3 x Rerolls

My Goblin team is still sitting on my paint station so I have a bit of work to do on those before they are ready for their first game.  They have been drawn against a Human team called The Marvellous Avengers.  I'm aiming to play that next week.

It's all kicking off!