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!

Tales from the touchline - Exebowl 2014 report



Well I'm back from Exebowl and as promised here's my report on how it all went.  Now Exebowl was the first ever NAF Blood Bowl tournament that I have entered so I wasn't really sure how it would all go down.  I knew that the out of the 32 teams that had entered around 50% of them were what I would call "Pro Blood Bowl" players, that is to say that they are fellow gamers who regularly take part in these tournaments with the aim to do well in them and boost their NAF ranking.  The remaining 50%  were rookie players, people like myself who either had no previous tournament experience or had only been to one or two of them. 


It turned out that I was the only Necromantic team entered.  There were several Undead teams, A few Elves, some Dwarfs, a lot of Skaven and a lot of Vampires.  There was an array of pitches and an equally impressive array of Club shirts on display (From clubs from across England and Wales).


My first game was against an Undead team, which I lost 2 - 0.  After a quick lunch break my second match (Which was also my favourite of the day) was against a Skaven team which ended in a 2 all draw (but more about that in a bit).   The final match of the day saw me face off against a Dwarf team, which I  lost (due in part to the worse dice rolling luck in my life!). Needless to say the final result ended 4 - 0, which also ways a lot about my tactics :) In the end I finished 28th in the tournament, which I'm happy with.  It's also put me on the NAF World Rankings and apparently I'm currently ranked as the 138th best Necromantic team in the world (Though there may be only 138 Necromantic teams in NAF). 


I have to admit that my lasting impression of the day was just how well spirited the pro players were. In both my first and second games I was up against Pros (The person I played in my first pool game actually went on to win the tournament!) and they were just great opponents.  They knew I was a rookie and they offered me tactical advice, guidance and a lot of allowance to help me improve my game play and help me to learn some neat plays.  A good example of this was in my second game where my opponent went into a 2 - 1 lead during the second half of our game.  I only had 1 turn left to play, which would also be the last turn on the match and my opponent showed me how I could pull off a 1 turn touchdown that would draw the game for me.  What was even more surprising was that I managed to roll all the dice results I needed and it actually worked!  I mean how well spirited is that.  I'd struggle to see that happening in any other competitive environment. 


Although I didn't win anything I did come away with a lot of new experience and tactical advice to take with me into my next tournament or league.  I also picked up some ideas for conversions and modelling ideas for future Blood Bowl projects, oh and of course I got two new Exebowl dice.  I'm also hoping to go to another NAF tournament sometime in the future, hopefully another 1 day event, fairly local to Exeter (I hear there is a  1 day event in Bristol in June). 


Here's a few photos that I took from the day, If you head over to Exebowl.co.uk you can see some more that Pete (the TD and organiser of Exebowl) took. 



This is a ball marker I made which is base don one that I saw at Exebowl.  It's a really good idea as you can but it under the base of the player who was the ball, making it really easy to move it around and see who has it. 

My teams casualties during my first game. 

Round 2 draw...

...and the Rround 3 draw

This Troll Slayer had a good day during my final game. 



Here's my finished marker, with added pitch line and blood!

Tales from the touchline - The Road to Exebowl



Tomorrow I'll be entering my Necromantic Team, the Al 'A' Merry-Kan Death Stars into Exebowl, Exeter's first NAF approved Blood Bowl tournament.

I was a bit of a late entry into the tournament having only signed up to it on Monday morning (and taking the last slot) so I had  a bit of a panic that evening to get my team together and do some last minute paint jobs on the miniatures to make sure that they were correctly numbered and their skills were displayed.

This is the first Blood Bowl tournament I have entered so I am slightly nervous but also excited.  Luckily it's being held  at my local gaming club, so I don't have too far to go, and I'll know some people there. 

Some of my team.



I have to admit I have no battle plan for the tournament.  I'm just going to play each game as a bit of fun and see what happens, which is pretty much my philosophy for all the games I play,  but you never know I could end up getting the Spoon!

I'm not sure if there will be any other necromantic teams.  I know there are no "Stunties" entered and there will at least be some Elves to face (I hate Elves!).

Anyway I'll let you know how the tournament went, and how I end up.

Tales from the Touchline - Back to the Blood Bowl



Tales from the Touchline is my new Blood Bowl column that will focus on (as you may have guessed) all things Blood Bowl from match reports to team modelling projects. 

As some of you may know I've currently got an Orc team named Da Axe-Grinda Chiefs (A play on the name of are local Rugby team the Exeter Chiefs) entered in the Blood Bowl tournament currently running at my local games club.  Due to work I've had to forfeit a few games recently but tonight I managed to play one of my league games as part of World Tabletop Day. 

Overall it was a good game.  Everything that could have gone wrong on the kick off table did, from sweltering heat being rolled as a change of weather to "Throw a rock" KO'ing a Khaos player for the duration of the whole game.  We even had a riot break out in the last turns of the 2nd half.

I rolled what seemed to be at least 10 skull results during the game, which cost me dearly and the dreaded "Don't roll a 1" curse struck its head for both players.  Overall the game ended as a 1 all draw, which was probably the best result to come out on World Tabletop Day as we were both winners and losers.

My stand out player during the match has to be Iggs Boson, my lone Goblin who not only scored my touchdown for the game but also caused my only injury for result.  He got a skill upgrade for his troubles. 



The pre-game photo in honour of World Tabletop Day 2014

My next game will be in a few weeks but it felt good getting back into the swing of things.   I'm not looking at placing that high in the league but I'm having fun playing it (When I can).


Looking to the future I'm thinking of playing a human team next (I already play Necromantic and Orcs, so fancy something a little less evil).  I'm thinking of making a team by converting some of the 40K Cadian miniatures.  Anyway I'll be sure to post any future Blood Bowl projects as and when they happen.  Until them remember "Keep calm and re-roll"