Monday Night Bloodbowl

Monday night is Bloodbowl night!

In a bit of a change to the revent weeks, tonight saw a friendly game happen. I do find it’s nice to get the odd game in that isn’t a league game, as it does mean I get to use a team I don’t get to play often. So today I decided to bring back out; Top Dodge!

I first used this team a couple of seasons ago. I really enjoyed playing the Amazons. Especially in a league. Starting with army wide dodge and then gaining block as a first skill up really did wonders to have a team that stuck around.

Now for todays match up it will be Amazons vs Shambling undead.

it felt so good to play the amazons again after playing just my Khorne or Necromantic for the last few months. It felt like the team was faster, and the better agility helped them get out of some otherwise less favourable positions

This was the first time I had played against shambling undead. I had a general idea of what they could do from their similarity with necromantic, but man, those mummies do hit hard!

I managed to get a goal in at around turn 6 of the first half, opting not to stall so there’d be more action. I find for beginning games giving more opportunity to learn the opening moments of a game (the kick off, kickoff events and the set up to the drive) is far more beneficial.

my opponent did a great job of keeping my numbers low. With some good blocks and some cheeky fouls I seemed to always have at least 3 players off the pitch!

Second half saw me trying to maintain my lead only to burn through my rerolls a bit too quick due to double skulls showing its ugly face. This left me hoping for my dice bit to betray me and …they did

a couple of short turns due to turnovers gave a lonesome ghoul the chance to make a run for it. With only one jaguar warrior free to make the chase, a go for it for a block and….1. jaguar down, turn over. The ghoul carries on his quest to the touchdown line and he’s one away. The jaguar blitzes, getting up and trying again for redemption, and finally! Ghoul down

The ball goes off the pitch. Thrown back in to a decent pace in the centre of my half. A line woman swoops in to pick it up. And go for it! And again….1. I got greedy and she goes down, the ball falling right at the feet of an opportunistic wight who gets to just run it in for the equaliser.

1-1 on turn 15. Its a draw. We play out the last turns just going for blocks and wrap up the game. A very fun game overall and maybe if there were stakes at hand I wouldn’t have been so eager to throw away my rerolls or take the unnecessary go for it’s.

Next week back to league play!

until next time 🙂

Upcoming Project; Solo Wargaming

So one thing I have noticed when trying to fit as many gaming projects into my time as possible, is that as I get older, people tend to have less time to devote to a game which is going to take hours. Let alone playing it more than once in a month. This is great for games like bloodbowl, which are a fixed number of turns, and the painting and assembling of a team is a lot less than that of a full army based game.

Bad news for those looking for grand battle or epic stories. Like me.

Instead of being defeated at this prospect it has just fed my desire to look in to solo wargaming. Often times, I will be playing a grand battle of Old world, using my Bretonnians and my Tomb Kings to at least get a glimmer of the feel to get to play it, but it’s not quite the same as playing an opponent. I tend to find I’m always leaning towards one side, hoping that one will win the day so maybe making less than optimal choices for the other.

So how do I solve this? In comes games actually designed for solo play. There are a fair few games out there that have solo play options, with various itterations of “AI” that have been designed into them, regardless of how simple. Be it a “roll a dice and consult this list of actions” or a deck of action cards to simulate randomness. I plan to use my saturday uploads to delve into some of these games and see how the solo play holds up.

So where do I start? 5 Parsecs from home.

I had seen this one in passing a few times but didn’t think much of it. Generally miniature agnostic games tend to not grab me as much as others, I guess it’s just i get drawn in to the game by the miniatures. However, after watching a couple of battle report videos, I figured this one could be a narratively interesting opening to the solo wargaming effort. And it will give me plenty reason to break out some of the miniatures that sit and gather dust that I wasn’t otherwise getting to use….

Until next time 🙂

Way Back When’sday #5

For this way back when’sday we’re going to take a look at some Middle earth miniatures.

Back in the day I used to collect elves. It was the game played the most in our local library gaming group, and we had a campaign going on. It was incredibly fun, with some truly cinematic moments. When war of the ring came out and tried to turn the game into a unit based game, the interest died off a little and the models were shelved, and eventually sold.

A few years ago I decided, with a fresh gaming community after moving up to Edinburgh, and a new set of rules about since I last tried it that I would try get back in to the game. But then there was the question which army do I collect? Elves again? Rohan?

Rohan was always one I had considered. I did have a small collection of them once, collected from the di agostini magazines that I used to collect, but then it did seem that everyone had Rohan. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it’s less fun to just play mirror matches all the time.

After much deliberation I found the Mumakil on sale. Now, this model as always one I also had wanted. I mean who wouldn’t? It’s a beautiful model and a centrepiece in it’s own right. And while the kit is old, it still holds up. Well, mostly. It certainly is showing it’s age in some respects, and I would always love to see an updated kit. Here’s hoping eh?

Through the excitement of getting to dive into Middle earth again, I painted up a force fairly quickly and joined a league to play it in. I did have some take away from it though.

Most of the game played as i had remembered, which was great. It’s one of the most consistent sets of game rules GW has had. And it’s always been good ( I can’t speak for the since released newer rules though, as I haven’t played them) Downside however, it does seem there were some interractions between models that didn’t make much sense.

One hit killing the mumak? Sure why not. Crew can’t get off the mumak? Yeah okay then…. (I had one game with spearmen in the Howdah who were stuck, they couldn’t get off and they couldn’t attack cause theyre up on the howdah….)

Until next time! 🙂

Monday night Bloodbowl

Monday night is bloodbowl night.

This week it’s an outing for the First Khornetact team. Still relatively SPP light, I’m really hoping I can generate some this week!

For this weeks game it’s Khorne Vs Orcs

This team will be a tricky one for sure. I’m hoping with the team value difference will allow me to get something useful. I think it will be about 90k. So perhaps a bribe for a well-timed foul of a key piece…. I guess we will see.

So I elected to take the Bloodweiser keg, assistant coach and cheerleader. I find the latter two don’t usually come in to play all too often, but wouldn’t you know both did this game! Securing me an extra reroll in the second half (as two is really not enough and I found that out all too much today when I burned through them before even turn 4 of each half!) and also giving me a roll on the prayers to nuffle in the second half too.

I won kick off and was in fairly good spirits for the game. But even from this drive my sice weren’t wanting to play nice. An early turnover meant the orcs got to grab the upper hand.

And they kept it for the whole half, scoring two touchdowns and removing two of my khornegors as injuries; and one dead. Disaster.

I managed to hit back and remove his guard orc, but the momentum really didn’t pick up for me.

The second half saw another player dead for the Khorne and a third orc touchdown. And a couple instances of blitzes ending in double KO. Ouch.

A very well played and very precise game from the orcs really just showed how much the khorne team fumbled this one.

On the bright side, I bought my 3rd reroll. So at least I’ll have that for comfort when licking my wounds into the next match!

Until Next time 🙂

Way back When’s Day #4

Back to showing off some old miniatures! These ones aren’t so old but aren’t posted anywhere. I figured it’s time to show off my Old world Tomb Kings.

Tomb kings receive a thrashing at the hands of some wood elves

Tomb kings were the first army I picked up way back in 2003 and my first foray into wargaming proper. I remember the excitement of deciding which army I wanted to collect then seeing these incredible looking new egyptian themed skeletons. I immediately picked up an army box and got to work on building them.

Not much survives of these original models I had, having sold them on after warhammer fantasy was killed off but when I saw they intended to bring them back as the poster boys of The old world, it was a given that I needed to get back into it.

As much as I have heard that the new dragon is a love it or hate it model, I certainly think it works as an amazing centrepiece model for the army, and provides the otherwise fragile heirophant a decent spot.

I opted to go for the classic red weapons, to give the army that classic look. Something I was never too interested in doing first time around was the painting. This time however, I managed to get a lot of it batch painted, focusing on completing all the bone in one go before picking out the individual colours. Especially on the core skeletons. I think they came out okay.

I still have plenty to paint. There is always more skeletons. That will always be the problem with undead armies. Skeletons are never too expensive so you can always have a lot of them.

Until next time 🙂

Monday night Bloodbowl

Monday night is bloodbowl night. Has been for a few years now mostly due to this being the night the league all meets up to play.

For this season, I decided having too much time on my hands is clearly a problem, so I have opted to run two teams. We have my ever experienced but frequent losing team; The pocket Monsters (Necromantic) , and my brand new rage filled First Khornetact.

And from the image above you can see there’s a lot of Necromantic this season. Fortunately it’s all spread over 3 divisions, so not too much repetition of teams.

Pocket monsters was a team I’ve had through a couple of leagues. The name stems from a reach at some kind of pun to do with american football. It’s a real reach but it works enough!

The star of the team though, is my werewolf The black shuck. Named after a local legend from a town not faroff my hometown, he’s managed to not only survive this long, but also hoard all the skills. He is now just a running target and I’m more than sure his days are numbered….

First Khornetact was basically me trying to find a team that might be my playstyle. Necromantic were a tough start in keague play as they are so tough to play until they get skills under there belt. Khorne have one play; smash. Frenzy everywhere reduces decisions. It seemed like a perfect idea. And honestly from the couple of games I have had with them, they’ve been great fun!

I must say one thing I have learned from the last season and this season of the league is that, recurring leagues with teams returning are huge amounts of fun. They create such an interesting challenge as, sure your team is experienced and has skills, but your opponent is too. And they’re never the same. It makes choosing your own skills a real decision.

And now on to the important stuff; Today’s game…

Necromantic Horros Vs Dwarves.

That’s a lot of guard.

So the game started out poorly, we rolled rain. Amazing for the dwarves who aren’t relying on their agility, but for a team that was certainly hoping to lean on it, it wasn’t great.

It was a surprisingly close game. The first half saw us both burn through our re rolls before our respective turn 3, and both having a number of turnovers. I got the ball to the dwarf touchdown line, then fumbled a rush. And that was the first half.

Second half saw a very study cage appear around the dwarves. It got super close and i even managed to put enough pressure on the ball carrier to force him not to stall any longer and go for an earlier touchdown. He needed to rush to get it though and….he did. Of course.

It was my turn 7 on the second half and I was 1-0 down. I had a shot at the touchdown with the werewolves if I could just get the ghoul to get the ball to werewolf and he run for it. Some rushes and it’s a given.

Kick off table roll and….Moles. Great, rain and moles. I think this game was favouring the dwarves!

When the pass was fumbled, it was game.

Congrats to the dwarves!

Until next time 🙂

To start starting proper

It’s been a minute.

I keep meaning to get things going but then lose the inspiration to do so. So new goal is to try keep things consistent, keep the motivation to work on things.

And my solution lately has been to focus on games with solo gaming options.

Right now my attention is fully gripped with Black Seas.

Why? Well, there are solo scenarios! This certainly helps for sure but I do think the main reason lies in the fact that I have found boat games to be incredibly fun (Dystopian wars, Firestorm armada) there’s something about their mechanics that always grants a fun time.

Stay tuned, as I fully intend to get a fully painted fleet finished soon, and then it’s just a matter of recording a game!

New year, new start

So here we go, a new year, a new drive to get this working.

Throughtout the last few months I’ve found a lot of my downtime from work has been spent painting. Which is great, the pile of shame (which is unfortunately ever growing) is shrinking faster than it ever has been, The problem lies in finding the time, and the opponents, to get the models to table.

So what does this mean for the blog? Well, my new year’s resolution this year is to get the games I haven’t yet gotten to table, to table and for them to see their time in the sun.

So what needs to be played this year? let’s keep a list and see what hits the table;

The other side; I have played it, years ago, buit since then I got new factions so I think we need to see it played some more

Necromunda

Horus Heresy

Twisted miniates; I kickstarted this years ago, but never pushed to play it, let’s get it done

Bolt action; The Italians are all painted (future post?) let’s get them to table!

I think that’s them for now. I’ll update this as I find more.

Which me luck!

Way back When’sday #3

So this one is a more recent “way back when” I suppose. When I got full in to my age of sigmar swing, buying Fyreslayers, and then the Kharadron overlords; I began looking at various models that weren’t too costly that helped me plug the point gap to make a nice even 1000 point army. And I found one.

The Gyrocopter/Gyrobomber kit was just the right fit. Easy to build so that both options could be used, and only 80/90 points too! And considering I picked it up at a reasonable price too it was a win win situation all around.

Considering I never used to like dwarf models, I really have too many of them now…

Gyro bomber (Ill finish painting this variation one day…)

Monday’s Miniature #3 …But it’s Tuesday?

So I had planned for this to go up yesterday, but then I thought why rush this when I can add more content? So I did.

For today’s post, I decided to upload some of my collection of the Privateer Press Minicrate models ( https://www.mini-crate.com) that I have so far painted up. I’ve collected these from the first box, and boy are they good fun! Such variety with each model, and each one I’ve felt is generally an improvement on the original model it was based off of.