What's on my Painting Table - Blood Angels Kill Team

This weekend I managed to finish painting half of my Blood Angels Kill Team, specifically the 5-man tactical squad (Squad Letalis).

As with all my Blood Angels this squad is from the 5^th company and contains a Veteran Sergeant with Stormbolter, 1 Marine with a Flamer (Who is a Gorilla specialist with Scout), 1 Marine with Boltgun (Who is a Weapon Specialist with Eagle-Eye) and 2 Marines with Boltguns.  I wanted this squad to look like a specialist unit so when I was assembling them I made each one have their own unique look and feel.  I also wanted this to come across in their paint scheme.  Here are the end results.  

Squad Letalis, ready for action

I tried a weathering effect on this unit (using a guide in White Dwarf) as i wanted to show that the unit is often out in the field for a long time. 

Using parts from the new Devasator Squad I gave these two Marines helmets with addtional targetting equipment. 

Tales from the Touchline - The InGen Interceptors

As I mentioned in my last post I’ve been working on a new Blood Bowl team, specifically a Lizardmen one which I have named the InGen Interceptors (bonus points go to anyone who gets the geeky reference!).

I decided I wanted to try out another race as I currently only play with a Necromantic Undead team, who are The Death Stars and an Orc team called the Axe-Grinder Chiefs.   I’ve had varying degrees of luck with both of these teams but after playing them for so long I really fancied trying out something new and one on the beauties with Blood bowl is that there is a great choice of races that you can use to put together a team. 

I finally settled on Lizardmen after weighing up a few options.  Originally I was going to go for a human team (As I was thinking of converting up some Cadians).  They make a good all round team with plenty of starting skills and I had some human players from the boxset lying around that I could also use, however after careful consideration I decided that it was going to be too tricky to convert up a whole team.  I also wanted a race that didn’t come in the core starter set, so I decided to leave the humans for another time.  I then considered the Chaos team as a possible choice.  Like the Lizardmen they are a hard hitting strength team (which plays to my style) who have a lot of strength 4/5 players but lack starting skills (they are definitely league team).  I almost went for them but several players at my club also have Chaos teams and as I play chaos on 40K I wanted to try out something new.  

The Lizardmen drew me for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, as mentioned before they are similar to Chaos having a large bulk of strength 4 players (and a Strength 5 Kroxigor!) as well as some fast players in the Skinks.  They do lack starting skills that could be handy in a game (such as block or sure hands) but with a good combination of strength and speed they could be a good team to develop over a league.  Secondly let’s not ignore the fact that they are basically dinosaurs and everyone loves dinosaurs’ right? 

Having decided on my race I now had to get the miniatures.  I managed t pick up a box of plastic Sauruses in a local comic book shop (They were in the sale as they owner was getting rid of all his Games Workshop stock).  I assembled 6 of them (the maximum you can have in your team) kept a couple for spares and sold the rest on eBay.  I was fortunate to purchase a metal Kroxigor miniature from someone at my local gaming club, and the Skinks I got from eBay.  With some small conversions (mainly cutting weapons off) I had my new team.

My starting team roster is going to be…

• 1 x Kroxigor
• 5 x Saurus
• 5 x Skinks

2 Re-Rolls, Fan Factor of 4

My plan is that after my first league game I will purchase an apothecary and then later down the line (one I have some more gold) get a few more Skinks.  After that any gold I earn will go towards some more re-rolls (and eventually another Saurus).

Now all I need to do is get the team painted and start playing some Blood Bowl.  Until then though, here’s a sneak peek of them.

The InGen Interceptors (And an Orc, though ignore him as he's being painted for Silver Tower)

The Death Stars do Exe-Bowl 3

This weekend I was given the opportunity to take part in Exe-bowl 3, our local Blood Bowl tournament held in Exeter (Someone dropped out a few days before the tournament and I was asked by the TD if I wanted to have the place).

Now it had been a while since I had last played any Blood Bowl and after my disastrous season during this year’s Rygas Cup I wasn’t going into the tournament particularly optimistic about my chances.  For those of you who don’t know during this year’s Rygas Cup season I had lost all but one of my games and the one I didn’t lose ended up as a draw.  My dice rolls had not been with me and over the whole of the season I had only scored 1 touchdown and caused a handful of injuries.  It was not a good year!   Since then I had played no further Blood Bowl games, this wasn’t by choice (although it is always good to take a small break from a game) but more through necessity as shortly after the Blood Bowl season had ended I was asked to take part in the 40K Crusade of Fire campaign which meant more of my time was being focused towards getting my Blood Angels army assembled and painted.  I was also keeping my hand in X-Wing as there were a few tournaments which I entered and it’s also a popular game at the club.  

When I was asked if I wanted to take part I only had a few days to sort out my team.  I decided to use my Necromantic team the Death Stars as they are the team I am most familiar with (In an ideal world I would have liked to have tried out my new Lizardmen team but as it stands I don’t have any Skinks for them yet and also I haven’t actually played any Blood Bowl games with them).  With a bit of consideration I choose my team and filled in my roster.  However I would have no time to test them out in a practice game.

On the day of the tournament I was a little apprehensive, This was only the second Blood Bowl tournament I had entered  and there were a lot of very experienced and very seasoned coaches at this one.  Luckily there were also a lot of new tournament players as well, so we ha d a good mixture of coaches.  After renewing my NAF membership (and getting a new free gift!) I was ready for my first game.

My NAF membership free gift :)

My first match was against Tom, who was a fellow club member who would be using a Skaven team. This was good as it helped calm my nerves a bit and it it was a very fun and well spirited game.  The match ended 4-1 to Tom (Good work dude)

Match two was against a Human team (I can’t remember the name of the coach) but it was his first tournament.  This turned out to be the most well balanced game I played during the tournament which ended in a 1-1 draw.  Again it was well spirited and a lot of fun. 

My third and final game was against Dane who was using a Slaan team.  I knew this game was going to be fun as before we even started the he offered to share a bottle of Doombar with me.  I’d never played against Slaan before so had no idea what they were like (turns out there pretty agile!).  The match turned into a very even comedy of errors for both of us.  His thrower constantly failed to pass anything and my Dauntless Flesh Golem failed to be dauntless.  The phrase “What the worse that can happen?” came to be a hilarious premonition of things not going to plan (For example I almost rolled 2 double skulls in a row!).  The game ended 3-1 (or possibly 4-1) to Dane.   Again a very fun and well spirited game. 

I’m not sure where I placed in the end (I’m guessing somewhere towards the bottom of the table) but I don’t really care as the tournament was a lot of fun and it definitely re-energized me into wanting to play some more Blood Bowl (and with the new version of the game coming out from GW soon we have entered a whole new level of excitement!).  Thanks to TD Pete for organising such a great tournament (and for letting me enter in the zero hour).  

Now to finish my Lizardmen team!

Coming soon to the 2017 Blood Bowl season!