Hobby update – Dwarves and Blood Bowl league games

You’ll all be pleased to know* that I’m not dead yet. I’ve just been really poorly motivated around the blog recently. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t done anything on the hobby front though.

Dwarven Miners

In terms of painting, I finally managed to finish off the horde of dwarf miners that have jammed up the painting board for a good few months.

I deliberately went with a more subdued scheme, the base of which was Sotek ‘green’, as they are miners. No one in their right mind would wear bright colours if they were up to their neck in dirt all day (the exception being the Disney Dwarves of Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful, Pervy etc.).

A couple of shots of the horde were taken before I did any basing as I ran out of PVA. There’s then one shot of the rough and ready basing applied.

I also actually knuckled down and redesigned the Karak Silvertop motif, and settled with a dual peak design with silver peak. This was the first banner done with it and I’ll look to roll it out to each of the other units. It’s simple but I’m happy with it (and importantly it’s within my ability to do!).

*massive assumption there, I’m sure there are one or two people out there who are ambivalent or wouldn’t care less one way or another 😂.

Bloodbowl

Game 2 vs Tryoutrunmysaurus Rex

The club league continues to trundle on. After my opening 3-0 win against Si’s Dark Elves, I faced off against Pete’s Lizardmen. I know Pete well as he is one of my regular D&D group and he’s also the reigning club Bloodbowl champion. I took great fun trying to bait him in the league messenger group 😉.

Like myself and Si, Pete had entered a new rookie team this year. After he had lost his opening game to Si, he went on a 5 game run of friendlies to try and get some skills under his belt before playing myself and Mike (the final player in our group). As such he went into our game with a profusion of high strength players, many of whom had at least one skill. I was a little apprehensive!

As it went, my vampires murdered his Saurus, killing one outright, forcing one to miss the next game and badly hurting two others. it was a thoroughly enjoyable 1-1 draw (though Pete didn’t seem to share my amusement!).

In fairness he was unlucky not to get the winning touchdown in his final turn. He just miscounted how far he could move by a single square. I of course found that most amusing but made sure I kept that in check, not!*. 😂🤣🤣.

*That may sound a bit goit-ish of me but like I said we know each other well and it was payback for the numerous ‘birds’ flipped my way during the game 😁.

The Skink makes a break for the end zone!

Early casualties. The team had a great paint job, I really liked it.

Game 3 vs The Grudgebearers

The final game in my group was vs Mikes Dwarves. This was the only team in our group that had carried over from last season and incidentally was the one that knocked me out in the quarter finals. Being an existing team, it meant that it had quite a few skilled up players. So much so, that I ended up with 680k of additional gold to spend on inducements for the game (inducements being the balancing mechanic).

After some deliberation, I choose to spend 100k on 2 bloodweiser kegs (so any player knocked out would return to the field on a 2+ rather than the normal 4+). As anyone who has played me knows, this is my go to choice and I cannot countenance taking any other option at first instance.

The other 580k was a more difficult choice. With plenty of guard on his team and naturally high armour, I knew I should struggle to hurt his team (though I thought that of Pete’s Lizards and look what happened there!). As such I needed an equaliser and I just so happened to have received an option in the recent Greebo Kickstarter Blood Bowl team I received.

This mini was painted in an evening in record time. The reason? It was my first use of contrast paints. I hadn’t appreciated how easy they made things. Now I’ve only picked up two (fleshtearer red and talisar blue) but between them, they are going to make painting my Lizardmen rank and file a dream and just with the small tester done, I’ll definitely be picking up a few more. Watch this space.

Helmet Wulf wearing the Blood Roses livery

The Vampires are limited in the availability of star players but one they do have available is Helmet Wulf. He is a basic human that comes equipped with a chainsaw. As such he doesn’t block as normal, he basically just rolls against their armour and adds +3 to the result. My thought was that this should help mitigate the dwarf armour and is suitably underhanded as befits the game (I’ll ignore the fact that if he gets knocked down the +3 goes against his armour as ‘thems the breaks’). He’s also reasonably cheap at 110k.

I also choose to employ another Star player in the form of Wilhelm Chaney. A Werewolf who adds speed and a few other options not available to the team. He was definitely selected to help offset the team weaknesses and to hopefully help the chance of scoring. At 240k he was a mid range cost for a star player.

That left 230k left and with that, I decided to build on the chainsaw wielding nutter spirit of the game and take 4 special play cards, from the dirty trick deck. These are cheap low down plays worthy of a goblin. What’s not to like!

The Game

To cut a long story short, I was brutalised in the game. Mikes new Deathroller signing, Snorri ‘fair play’ Smith, ran rampage through my team.

In the first half, despite having not a single member of the team left on the field by my turn 8 (3 casualties, 7 KO’s) I managed to prevent him scoring by using every trick in the book and a healthy dose of those not! The highlight of the half being the trampoline trap that sent his runner into the crowd, scattering the ball back to his end and preventing the score.

Going to move a player in my final turn and realising I didn’t have anyone left caused gales of merriment for us both.

First half, turn 4 saw over half the team off the pitch

With the bloodweiser kegs doing wonders at half time, I started the second half only one player down, though two of my three vampires were injured and off the field, and the chainsaw wielding star player had also been sent off. This meant I was reduced to fielding an almost total line up of unskilled, low armoured thralls. To make matters worse, Mike had successfully argued against the Deathroller being sent off (I couldn’t believe he rolled a 6!), so I still had to contend with that monstrosity…

The second half started worse than I could have imagined, with a flurry of casualties against me. I’m sure Pete and Si would call it karma. By the halfway point, I was down to 4 players on the field with a vampire ball carrier taking a deep holding action.

With my team rapidly reduced to 3 (2 permanently on the floor), a net of dwarf players closing in and not having the speed to avoid them, I was reduced to throwing a long bomb down the field to precisely no-one. The aim was to try and delay enough to hold out for the draw, as that would guarantee qualification.

Sadly it wasn’t to be and Mike was able to score in turn 7. To add insult to injury, he managed to again argue the call so the Deathroller would remain on the field.

The game ended 0-1 to Mike and although I hadn’t ever threaten to score with my butchered team, it had been an immensely funny and enjoyable game and I had played my socks off to stall and prevent Mike from racking up multiple touchdowns.

It did however leave my team a little under strength for the next game. One Vampire would miss the next game, one thrall was killed and another I fired as it not only would miss the next game but had lost a pop of strength (making him totally useless). I used my cash to purchase an apothecary but it would mean that I’d have to hire a journeyman to reach 11 players next game.

Mike is confirmed as top of the group with 6 points from 2 games. Si is out with 3 points from 3 games. I’m currently sitting on 4 points after 3 games.

Pete has 1 point after 2 games, so goes into his final game vs Mike not only needing a win but also needing to either: score 4 touchdowns or score 3 touchdowns and cause 7 casualties to go above me.

So whether I qualify will depend very much on their game.

Feeling somewhat outnumbered

Many casualties were inflicted on my team!