but thats not blood bowl...

but thats not blood bowl." thats what the guy said to me on the phone. what was he on about?
  i run a very successfull blood bowl league. i've been doing so since, oh, about 1990 or so. we play 2 leagues a year(most years, anyway), in my basement/rec room, fixed league style, like the NFL OR THE NHL. we avarge 20 players. the core of our group, the thursday night heros(we don't play on thursday nights. we are not hero's.) are mainly the same group of guys i grew up with, playing d&d and other role playing games way back in the late 1970's. we are all married with kids and besides blood bowl, we play miniature wargames and whatnot.
  its a good group of friends(the friend part is the number 1 rule with us.) who mainly play to have a good time and get away from the reality of everyday life. we are competitive, and we all want to win, but there are no big arguments, fits or "i'm gonna take my team and go home" bs. a few beers, a few laughs, thats the way we roll.
  at one time after bb 3rd ed was released, the owner of imagination workshop, our local FLGS, invited the stores GW rep to come to my house to check out our league. he said we had the biggest league on the eastern us that he knew of. he thought it was quite cool(at the time, i was still living with mom, ans we had 29 players and it was too loud and too crowded. also, too many fair weather choachs.)
those were the days...
 we are always on the look out for new players. and every year, we seem to get a handfull, and 1or 2 stick with the club. sometimes, however, we get some people who just don;t fit in with our "for fun and friendship" club.
 now, i'm sure i could make you lot LOL with some tales of these nuckleheads. we've all seen them: the guys who make their team roster and can't seem to count. the power gamers who have to win or they start to miss the saturday games(only to return at the beginning of the new season), the guys who stall constantly. i could go on, but it does'nt matter.
 i had a guy get my phone number from our game shop notice. he said he's played for quite awhile, and was looking for a league. he asked if we played the latest game ed(the one you can download from grannys site). i said no, and the guy tried to tell me we are "doing it wrong".
 i asked him how we should be doing it?
we play a highly modified 3rd ed. we have a bunch of house rules that we have taken from the net and from the old CJ. we still play with star players(we have a card file for about 150 star pplayers we have gotten from GW 2nd ed, the internet, and stars that started off as normal players, but got a bunch of spp's and are now star players, like KING TOUGH(a mummy), junior say ouch(a hobgoblin), to name just a few. in our league, players buy stars and they remain on their roster until the get killed, traded, etc. mean to say, we never liked the inducment rules. and besides, when our season ends, we don't play uber teams. we make new teams for each new season. none of the TV220 vs TV120. that may work somehow, but its no fun, and we don't do it. we use the "between game events". we use the events cards.
 and we have fun doing it, week after week. so i told the guy, "you can come by on saturday afternoon for the warm up games and see if you like what we do".
 he won't show up. and thats to bad. i could tell by the way he tried to convince me on the phone, that we were playing the game wrong, that he would'nt show. he just wanted something more(or less).
  i hope he can find it. because i'll take my friends and OUR GAME over 6minute turns and "inducing" a beer girl(for the life of me, i don't understand what the rule is. really) or a star player for one game(the idea of renting stars is goofy to me). i like secret weapons rolls. i like random events cards. i like spiky norman.
  and so do my friends.

Zombie vs Zombie: there can be only one (winner)!

One ball.

One pitch.

One match.

Two zombie coaches in the same final!

 

Later on today Tristan and Paulo (Abraxis) favourite teams are facing each other in the finals of UEFA Europa League (Link to UEFA official live coverage).
Best of luck to them both, and let the "less dead" team win!

Zombie Axtlinge for Axtlinge

The funniest thing of all, receiving a painted model of yourself as a zombie!  This is exactly what happened to Axtlinge (aka Axt) with the final figure of the fab four.  I chose to make Axt a rugby player because he loves the all blacks and the zombie pieces I had suited it.  First the legs weren't proper shorts and seemed to have some extra padding/protection which makes more sense for a proper contact sport.  Secondly the hand with the thumb pointing up reminded me of the Haka dance that his favourite rugby team the All Blacks perform.  I had a bit of help from Abraxis who sent me a couple photos of Axt so I could get him right without giving away the secret - thanks buddy!

zombie Alberto

As with the others, I built up the base with filler.  The flock is the same as used on my figure but underneath I gave it a coat of brown paint instead of green to try and show how rugby fields are usually more torn up than footy fields.  I used some bits of medical gauze twisted and glued to create the long beard and pony tail.  I also used a little water effects for the blood on the recently ripped off leg he's carrying around ;^)

Hope you enjoy them pal!

dual posted on GWpertinent

Zombie Man Cave Paul

Second to last, here is Paul - of The Man Cave fame.  This was actually the inspiration to do "us" as zombies.  You may not be aware, but Paul is a honest to goodness real life ships captain/commander in the Australian navy.  In fact he just shipped out on a new mission called SLIPPER.  Anyways as soon as I saw this body (it was the only one where legs/torso were attached) with the long coat all I could think of was a ships captain (obviously the ship this zombie was commanding was a bit different to the one Paul commands now!) so as soon as I thought "ship captain" I equally as quickly realized "MMN crew zombies"!

zombie Paul

As with the others I built up the base, and then instead of using flock I just attempted to paint a wooden deck using various browns.  One side has a line of tin paint to make it look like an edge or something like that.  I also used my now pretty common style of painting reddish/ginger/orange hair which involves starting with orange, and using washes of both a reddish/metallic colour as well as simple red wash.  The reason for the metallic choice is it gives a bit of sheen to the hair, without actually colouring it metal.

dual posted on GWpertinent

Zombie pt.2 - Abraxis

Next up on the dock is Paulo aka Abraxis, winner of the Zlurpcast Meatloaf Fan award.  As soon as I got the bare torso piece off the sprue I knew I had to have Paulo running with his jersey off after just scoring a goal.  I leveled the base with filler as on the other figures and I made a jersey out of a napkin with paint. After painting the zombie and jersey separately I superglued them together.  I also used an extra coat of painted varnish to try and give the jersey some strength before I gave the whole figure a spray coat of varnish.

zombie Paulo

In case you are unaware, Paulo's favourite football team is Benfica, so it's very appropriate I am posting this today, as both his team and mine are in the second leg of the Europa League semi-finals tonight.  Chelsea have a 2-1 lead and are playing at home, while Benfica are looking to reverse the tie (currently 1-0 for Fenerbahçe) and are also playing at home - the Stadium of Light.  Good luck to Benfica tonight, with any luck we will have a Benfica/Chelsea final in Amsterdam and we might all use skype to hang out while we watch the match!

dual posted on GWpertinent

Zombies pt.1 - Tristan

You may remember, long ago I received a couple harlequins painted for my spire brats gang from Abraxis and Axtlinge.  Well I think I covered myself with glory in recompense to Abraxis by running the "Give him a Goblin" contest, but I still owed Axt something - and he had requested a painted zombie.  Originally the plan had been to paint him a zombie fan of my undead blood bowl team - but clearly after such a long time that plan was not motivating me.

I finally decided to just bit the bullet and get some zombie figs (warlord games I think?), hoping that would motivate me - and it did!!  As I put them together a brilliant plan started to develop and I would paint fans of my undead blood bowl team - US!  Here is the first one, which is zombie me in Chelsea kit with a football.  I painted our names on the front of the base and used our online nicknames for the back of the jersey.

zombie Tristan

I built up around the base attached to their feet to fit the square base with filler.  Each base was painted/flocked slightly differently.  Probably the hardest thing was getting the design on the football right.  Also those shoes are painted like my actual cleats!  I found the detail on these miniatures was not the greatest but hardly surprising when they are about $0.50 each!  Up tomorrow is Abraxis :^)

dual posted on GWpertinent

Miniature Madness - Star Players Part 2

As promised here are some more of my Star Players:

Why is it all these Gobbos seem so happy in their work? Come to that why bother writing bomb on their bombs, I can't believe many of them can read it and anyone catching one thrown to them probably has a good idea what it is anyway and if they took the time to read it well..............

All right which smart ass threw the stick and shouted fetch?

He always appears to be grooving out to something only he can hear, maybe something by the Grateful Dead?

Okay he may not have made the cut for the CRP/ LRB 6 but ffs he's a ninja playing Blood Bowl, how cool is that!

Speaking of cool, as if two wardancers on the pitch isn't bad enough imagine three........no I thought you might not want to!

The idiot who served calamares as a half time snack was strangely never heard from again.......

Coming up in a few days big and small we love them all.