My last painted mini of 2013

This year, much like it happens every year when we enter in Christmas season, all national TV's changed their program schedules and grid, in order to accommodate more thematic entertainment, including family shows and movies.

One of these movies really caught my attention because we've mentioned the book that inspired it, here in the blog more than once. In fact, not only we've mentioned the book but we've also showed a lovely set of miniatures, representing the main characters of that book (and movie).

By now you've probably guessed I'm talking about Carol & Max.

Well, after watching the movie (again), I felt inspired to get some painting done, and fortunately for me I had just the right pair of minis to get my brush work on.

 So here it is my version of Carol & Max painted minis, probably done in a record time since I enjoyed the minis so much that I couldn't bear myself to stop until I had it all done.
 Hope you like them too.


Thank you John (Bound For Glory) for making these meaningful lovely figures happen and get available for those of us lucky enough to get a set.

Carol and Max where commissioned by our friend John (aka Bound For Glory), and sculpted by Rykar for The Thursday Night Heros tournament, held in honour of his friend and cousin Mike (co-founder of the club), who was unfortunately killed in Afghanistan.

 

Merry Christmas!

May your Christmas be filled with warmth and good cheer!

Wishes from Merry Mayhem News staff to you all!

Merry Christmas!

Worst miniatures ever made?

Today I've stumbled on a link that lead me to a particular post from Chest of Colors blog, the 25 Worst miniatures ever made?

Truth be told, I haven't ever seen some of the figures in that list and while in my opinion some don't deserve to be in such list at all, there quite a few funny pieces right there for sure.

For what is worth within this "worst miniature" theme, the miniature making process has evolved hugely (sculpting, casting, etc.), and from amateurish easy going garage companies, the business has evolved to what we know today with highly professional production lines, miniature mass production and very big businesses with considerable amounts of money involved.

What I mean with all this rambling is that it might not be all that fair to compare the quality of some miniatures made with a completely different spirit (lets say in the eighties or early), to whatever is done nowadays.
With that out of the way, my vote on that list would go for those plastic GW "Minotaurs" (entry #14), followed very closely behind by Mantic "Darkon Riders" (#24).
What's the deal with dragons with rabbit teeth?


Feel free to share you view on the subject, or just add some link to a particular mini you think it should be on the list, and why!

NABBO Tea Cup 2013

Another year, another tourney...

Last weekend NABBO League crew gathered for their (so far) yearly tournament.
It's the third year in a row, and so far it has been a whole lot of fun!
As I mentioned in a post about it's first edition (here), while the core of the crew that attends to the tourney are the Blood Bowl League "regulars", every year we manage to have some old league mates to join us in the fun, and what a fantastic opportunity that is to remember old stories of legendary games and teams...


This year's tournament fluff was based on the global climate changes, and to reflect that into Blood Bowl game terms this would mean that despite whatever "Weather Table" result you'd roll during the match, in the beginning of each half, one (out of two) random weather phenomenon would take place and stay in for the rest of that same half.

This weather phenomenon were represented by a template (that stayed on the table), and it had a 'Zone of influence' of a square (center) plus three squares in every direction. The modifiers described below would apply if the action attempted was inside this 'Zone of Influence'.

The two different phenomenons were "Tornado warning!", and "Everything Frozen??".
The first one meant that all Pass, Catch, and Intercept actions were influenced by -1 modifier, and every time a ball was dropped or touched the pitch (for whatever reason), it would bounce one extra square directly away from the center of the Tornado template.
The second phenomenon, would influence the Go-For-It's, and Dodging attempts (by the same -1 modifier) as if the ground was completely frozen, inducing players to slip.

As in past events we had a thematic custom pitch and dice (pic above), which were a great success especially whenever the dice rolls were 'convenient'.
On all other occasions the dice were just 'pretty'... ;-)


The games

A total of eight different races (Amazon, Human, Elf, Dark Elf, High Elf, Norse, Vampire, and Undead), with almost as much different tactical approaches, granted a good challenge for every coach in the event.

Graveyard Diggers (Undead) vs Yokai Buntai (Dark Elves), one of the games from the first round, and the first tie of the tourney (2-2 TD, 1-1 Cas).

Frost's Frost Fangs (Norse) facing the Innsmouth Oceanics (Elf), in a game that proved to be rougher than what the Norse armour could stand, soon leaving them outnumbered and loosing the match unable to hold off the agile elves (0-3 TD, 1-4 Cas).

Garlic 'n Mirrors United (Vampire) overpowering The Buffs (High Elf), in a day that the odds didn't favoured these particular pointy ears (3-1 TD, 1-0 Cas).

The beautifully painted Pink Buccaneers (Amazons) in a tough match against the cyber-looking Mini Skull Crushers (Human), for a marginal win in the last few turns of the game (3-2 TD, 0-0 Cas).

In the end of the day, the Innsmouth Oceanics (Elf), ended up snatching the tournament "Champion" trophy with three wins, of which the last two where very close games: one against the vampires (2-1 TD, 2-4 Cas), and the last one against the amazons (2-1 TD, 1-2 Cas). 

Also congrats to the Garlic 'n Mirrors United vampire team for the "Most violent" trophy!

A blast of a day as usual.
Have fun!
A.

CACK Bowl Charity Pitches

I've been kind of busy lately and this obviously translates into very few time to keep up with forum and blog news. Today I've finally managed to spend a few minutes checking out "stuff", and found something I believe it's very worth to give a shout out to.


Quoting JT-Y, fellow TTF'er and Chairman of Coppull and Chorley Knights Wargames Club :

"(...) Final version of the CACK Bowl pitch below. 
The idea is that it plays on the club name; Coppull And Chorley Knights, and represents a jousting tilt being used as a football pitch with a nice, medieval look to the dugouts/ dungeons.

There will be a special one for the winner of CACK Bowl 2013, but we're also offering these to anyone who wants one. They'll have ''CACK Bowl 2013'' in the left hand endzone and will cost £50 for the hard jigsaw type. £45 to anyone attending the tourney. 
Very reasonable considering the standard pitches cost €45 from Comixininos.
All profits (we expect to make between £5 and £10 per pitch depending on numbers) will go in support of the charity, Help The Homeless.

If you are interested, say so below and I'll PM you with payment details.

If you are attending CACK Bowl you can collect your pitch from there, otherwise I'll post them after the event and we'll cover costs (within reason!) from club funds rather than charge more or donate less."

You can check the original in TFF forum here: link!

The pitch looks great, the price is quite reasonable, FF Fileds pitch quality needs no introduction, and if that wasn't enough, it's for a very worth and needy beneficence subject.
Give yourself an early Christmas treat and help those guys to help who needs the most!
Cheers!
A.

What to do with asshats?

As I've said here many times, I love the game of blood bowl and just about everything to do with it.
I belong to a very successful league, THE THURSDAY NIGHT HEROS, which is composed of guys I've known since I was a kid. Just a big bunch of friends that play 2 leagues twice a year. We mess around a bunch, but theres no cheating.

When ever we can, we get more people to join up. Sometimes it causes trouble. Like Chris...
Chris is a guy we've known since our D&D days. He's a bit of a pain. He has played in our league a few times in the past. He always quits when his team starts doing bad. He tries to cheat sometimes, and he is not above "miscalculating" his roster.
 Well, he talked me into allowing him back in our club, and after last night, I'd say his chances of rejoining us is nil. Here's what happened.


 My chaos team, the Deathvalley Destroyers, where playing his dark elf team, The Kill Machine. we had been forced to play extra time, due to a very close game, tied 1-1.
 My minotaur, Blight Headsmasher, had gotten very lucky, and grabed a loose ball and had to make a dodge to get past one of his lineman. I rolled a 6, and Blight barrelled on towards the goal line.
 It's now chris's turn, and he sends his blitzer after my mino.
I was nervously playing with a dice and just as he was going to roll for a 2nd go-for-it roll to catch my mino, I dropped the dice I was playing with. I bent down to retrieve the missing die, when he rolled his go for it roll. I then got up and his purple dice was showing "6". he said "success!". My wife was sitting there watching, and she said ,"It was a 1". I looked at him and said "What did you roll?" he just gave me a weird smile. I told him to reroll, and he picked up the die and he rolled a 1 again. He started to bitch...
 I then said, "I was gonna just win this game, but now I guess I will just destroy your team, which I proceeded to do. I lost the game, but his team is ruined.

I don't like being cheated. I play our game because I love the game.
I won't play with rules lawyers and I won't play with power gamers.
My wife does'nt lie. I gave him the chance to say "just kidding" or "you got me", but he tried to cheat.
That does'nt float in our friendly league, so what I'd like to do is give chris the giant foot in the ass, but I'd rather get him to stop cheating.

We have 18 players in our league, not counting Chris, everybody gets along well, and we've had to ask people not to come back. But what to do with a guy you've know for 15 years?
Guess I'll have to think on it...

Eurobowl 2013

Just a reminder to all Blood Bowlers out there that Eurobowl is taking place this weekend in Vienna, Austria.

Good luck to all the coaches out there!
Oh, and keep an eye on the blog 'cause we might end up with a report about it...

Thrud the Barbarian... Hardcover!

Most of you probably already know something about Thrud the Barbarian, either in the form of the comics character, of Thrudball (the BB tournament in aid of The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation), or it's miniature in a Blood Bowl pitch somewhere (see below)...
What some you of you might be missing is that he started as a comic strip, quite a few years ago (1981), in the pages of White Dwarf Magazine by the hands of Carl Critchlow.

 Image from The Stuff of Legends.

Here's how fellow TFF'er Giraffe told us about some very interesting news about it:

For those of you who've heard of charity bloodbowl tournament Thrudball , but are too young to recall White Dwarf Magazine back in the 80's, I wanted to share this news about Thrud The Barbarian.
Those of us 40something White Dwarf Readers will fondly recall the old black and white Thrud The Barbarian comic strips (in about 60 issues of White Dwarf, won several readers awards for best article)...but might NOT know of artist Carl Critchlow's Eagle "Small Press Award" winning Colour Graphic Novels ...

Titan Comics have released a Thrud the Barbarian hardback collection, containing all five of the colour Thrud stories, plus a few of the old monochrome strips from the 80's plus some NEW bonus Colour Strips never seen before...

I simply cannot recommend this enough to you, it's an absolute HOOT, if it doesn't make you laugh, then nothing ever will...
 

(...)

Thrudtacular!!!

Frank Hill, Club Leader, GCN Club BRGA

( You can read Frank's the original TFF post here: link).

  

Here's is the cover of the Thrud The Barbarian (Titan Edition - Hardcover) book, and you can find some more info about it's contents right here: yet another link.

:)

A sad comment on our community...

I'm old school. 

Well, maybe not so much old school, but certainly old.

I was told, when I was asked to write here, to write what I feel, and to be honest, to tell it like it is, I do that. Sometimes I get s**t from others for doing it, but sometimes the truth (as I see it) hurts.

  For those of you who run tourneys, you know how hard it is. 

Everything to do with it is hard. I have found that:

1) Finding a venue.

    As I'm in a small town, there is only one suitable place, besides trying to squeeze everybody into my basement. That’s the town rec hall. Its roomie, has plenty of nice tables and chairs, and very clean rest rooms.

 But the hall is pricy, and they just raised the price this year.

2) Advertisement

    Putting notice on line is free, and many very kind people I have met through blood bowl boards have offered to put the word out on sites I had not visited. But I also put notices in the local, and not so local, game/hobby/model shops by way of signup sheets, advertisements, etc. That’s also free, but driving there is not. I'm far from most of these shops, and since I broke my back I haven’t driven so my wife does the driving, and that’s on her time. And gas is only getting more expensive these days.

3) Having enough... of EVERYTHING! 

And this includes BLOCK DICE. I have 60+ block dice, which, not to call anyone a thief, I come up short a few after every tourney. I could use plain old 6 sided dice instead of block dice, but I want people to have the whole BB experience. Call me an idiot.

PITCHES

After looking at my Impact! green felt pitch, my wife got in her head to make pitches for our event. Without telling me, she went out one Saturday morning, got some yards of nice, blueish-green felt, a T-square, and a bunch of paint markers, and while I was up in bed sleeping in, she made the first of 30 hand made no frills pitches.

They are very nice and I'm very proud of her work.

TEMPLATES

This year, instead of having my club mates hand over their templates for the event, my wife and I are going to make a bunch of sets. I have to get on this, as its almost time...

DICE

I have this covered, considering I've been gaming since 1977 (I have about 100+ d6, about 40+ d8, and about 20+d16), and I have a bag of over 400+ dice of all kind. But again, many of these commons go missing at each event...

DRINKS/ SNACKS/ PIZZA.

Doms Pizza will be donating the pies again this year, so no cost there. But I pay for the soda and the snacks for the event. That puts me back about $50. I get some of the cost back from the $10 entry fee, but when the rec hall fee is factored in, not much.

AND ANYTHING ELSE I FORGOT...

What’s my point here?

Every year except this 2013 (I finally learned my lesson), I have emailed all the miniature fantasy football producers and asked for a donation of any size. I am not proud. I would be very grateful to receive one figure, if that’s all they could provide. Heck, I would gladly pay shipping costs for that one miniature.

  I’ve explained what our event is, size wise. I have told these producers about my cousin Mike, and how he was unfortunately killed in Afghanistan. How much Mike loved the game of blood bowl and how much mike was loved. How I pay, out of my own pocket, for most of the costs of the event.

  Count on your fingers how many bb/ff companies you can name. Don’t count games workshop, as they are a lost cause, LOL.

   

   Do you know, the only companies that help our event are GASPEZ ARTS, WILLY, and IMPACT!?

Every other company I contacted either refused outright, or ignored my emails. Some telling me our event was too small to support (they did not expect any business from their support), or because we are not NAF supported, they would not donate a prize.

  Most of the support we receive is from my friends: glowworm, East Coast Quake, all the guys from Spain. Friends!

  It saddens me that most of these companies would not even take a moment to email me and tell me no… what does that say about these companies? I understand the world economy is terrible. I get that, but how much does it cost to email me?

Or to put a figure in a envelope and do a good thing for a good cause?

  Are they too ashamed to say "I am too cheap to support your memorial event dedicated to a friend and cousin killed in a war”?

It’s a sad comment about these companies...

We need some help...

 

 As many here know, I've been running a tourney every October in honour of my cousin, who was killed in Afghanistan.
 I had gotten a pair of figures, Carol and Max (here), made for the event.
I'll be honest here. The figures have not been selling well, and even with very positive reviews, from the people on TFF, they haven't sold.
 I need to pay the balance of the rent on the hall, and I have this on my shoulders (as some of you might know, I broke my back in 2 places and I'm limited in what I can do).
 Please guys, buy some of my figures. the new price is $12 USD (plus shipping). I still have a bunch left (please check the thread in Talk Fantasy Football forum).

They are very nice figures, and its a good cause!
I do this event to honour my cousin Mike, and all the heroes in Afghanistan. I wish I could do more...

Donald Featherstone (1918-2013)

 

Donald Featherstone (1918-2013)

 

 Considered by many as one of the fathers of wargaming (and possibly the creator of the "Saving Throw"), Donald F. Featherstone wrote more than 40 books on wargaming and military history.

Born in London in 1918 ( joined the Royal Armoured Corps. in the Second World War), Featherstone was first introduced to wargaming by reading HG Wells "Little Wars", and in 1960, together with Tony Bath, began editiong the UK version of War Game Digest (wargaming newsletter).
Featherstone apeared in the BBC to promote the hobby.
In 1966 organized the first UK wargames convention.

 War Game Campaigns (1970), reprinted in 2009.

Solo Wargaming (1972), reprinted in 2009.

Featherstone's Complete Wargaming
(David & Charles, 1989)

 Weapons and Equipment of the Victorian Soldier (1996)

 Font: Donald Featherston (Wikipedia).

Laughing Ferret and the 200.000 Hit mark!

When there's a special day for a fellow wargaming blog, is a special day for us!

Congratulations to Laughing Ferret Lab blog for it's 200.000 Hit mark!

If you're in the Blood Bowl world for some time, by now you surely know Laughing Ferret Lab blog. There's always tons of fantastic stuff going on there, from new wargaming projects (Jovian Leviathans), to battle reports (Pan-galatic Confederation of Planets), humorous articles (Wars vs. Thrones), ...
Last but not least, Laughing Ferret blog is an HUGE source of inspiration for any Blood Bowl player, not only with plenty of advice and ideas for building your own teams, but it also has a gallery with more then 45 beautifully converted and/or painted teams. Truly a "must see"! (Link for plenty of beautifully converted and/or painted BB teams - Blood Bowl Teams Hall of Fame).

Go check all those goodies yourself, and while you're at it, go take a peek at the Step Right Up! The Cure For What Ails You Contest.
It's been going on since 21st of August, and the dead line is today (1st September), so don't waste your precious seconds if you want to have a chance to win some free goodies...

Passing it on

I live in a small town in the coal hills of eastern PA. It’s nice looking if you like mountains, but it’s hard to get used to. My town is also very, very poor. We bought our house here, because our home state of New Jersey is very expensive, and housing costs are high. We have a bigger home here in PA than that we could afford in the garden state.
  For the first 4 years we lived here, there were no hobby stores in our area. That’s just recently changed. A new gaming store just opened up about 7 miles up the road.
  I did a blood bowl demo there a week ago, and just did a second demo. I had a good turnout, with about 15 kids/young adults each time. I set up 4 pitches, and a few of my friends helped with the rules. We had a blast, and I hope some of these new people will come to out tourney.
 There was a kid of about 14 who was at both demos. He didn’t play, but he watched the games with intense interest. After the first game, he asked me and my friends quite a few questions about BB, and he really seemed to grasp the mechanics of our game.
  I asked him, after the 2nd demo, if he'd like to join our league, and he said he'd love to, but he had no ride from his town, about 8 miles away. I told him I could give him a ride, if he was serious about playing.

I told the boy to contact me via email and I’d sort him out. He had no computer. It’s just him and his mother. At the end of the day, his mom came in and said how the boy talked about the game. All he could talk about.
 Well, I decided to make the kid welcome. I asked what team he liked, and he said orcs. Seems he's played D&D a few times. As I have about 12 complete orc teams, I asked my wife to paint one of the plastic GW orc teams I have, and I’m gonna give it to the kid, along with a printout of the rules and I’ll give him a set of dice (do I really need 60 block dice?)
  Why am I doing this for a kid who may play only a few times? Just for the good will of the act. The kid comes from a poor family. He may not have the money to buy all that’s needed for BB, but I can help with that. I need the good karma...

Bloodbowl By The Pool

One advantage of teaching Alexander Bloodbowl is that I now have someone to play Bloodbowl with on family holidays! Yesterday I added Spain (Majorca) to my list of countries in which I have played Bloodbowl, it's not a long list; the UK, Germany and Kuwait completing the roll call, but one I hope to steadily add to.  It was also the first time I'd played by the poolside.

We brought Humans and Orcs with us and Alexander elected to try Orcs out so I played with the Humans.  We worked out rosters for TR110 but didn't add any extra skills.  19,000 fans came to watch with slightly more supporting the Humans, suprisingly the weather wasn't sweltering heat although that would have fitted nicely!  Alexander won the kick off roll and elected to receive.

This was his first experience of playing with a 'bash' team but he had soon flattened my front row and having caught a High Kick secured the ball behind a cage in the middle of the pitch.  I moved to contain the cage and slow it down and blitzed one of his blitzers, represented on the pitch by Varag Ghoul Chewer, going straight through the armour and injuring him.  A great start for the humans but not so good for the Orcs who seemed to find the Human's armour just too tough to break.  In the next turn Alexander overstretched himself attempting to move his cage too far, and, having already had to use a reroll blocking, his second GFI with his thrower ended in failure and the thrower fell to the floor and the ball slipped out of the Orcs grasp.  It wasn't going to be easy to grab it for the humans though as there were still plenty of green skins between them and the ball.

Some blitzing, pushing on to the ball type action ensued but the ball just wouldn't bounce nicely (from a human perspective) and the turn ended when a human catcher attempting to get the ball failed his first dodge roll of a 'death or glory' move fortunately for him Death or Glory wasn't the limitation of his actual choices and he just tripped over and sat there looking a bit foolish. 'Sit there looking a bit foolish or glory' doesn't have quite the same ring to it though!  Still that handed the initiative back to the Orcs and they took full advantage knocking over plenty of humans and flooding the pitch quadrant with even more ugly green fellows. The Gobbo burst through and made a break towards the line but the thrower hadn't read the script (probably can't read anyway) and failed to pick the ball up despite having supposedly sure hands.  All was not yet lost however as the humans just couldn't break the green wall in their turn and in the next turn the Orc Thrower remembered something about a Goblin in the team briefing and having grabbed the ball handed it off to the little fellow who insouciantly strolled over the line, not having yet learnt that it's obligatory to fall over when needing a GFI to score.  This was a fairly early score giving the humans 3 full turns to equalise but a touchdown is a touchdown and the orcs didn't want to risk losing it by stalling out in broken play.  The Orc fans despite being in the minority still made their presence felt and gifted their team an extra reroll at the restart but the Orc defensive line was a little high up the pitch and the humans having blitzed a hole soon had several scoring options.

A bit of pushing and shoving left both teams with a KO'd player. Before in the final turn of the half I was left with the sort of move that human teams should pull off, needing only three three plusses with all of them re-rollable. On this occasion a quick pass was caught, the ball run to a catcher within easy reach of the endzone who smoothly took the hand-off and strolled over for an equalizing touchdown.  Neither team had yet seemed to realize that simply doing what the odds said that they should be able to do and scoring touchdowns according to their coach's plan was just not the done thing in Bloodbowl!

The second half started with the Human fans realising they needed to step up their game if they were to keep up with the riotous orcs and the noise in the stadium became so loud that neither team could make out a word being said so both happily assumed the cheering was for them. The Ogre decided he wanted to flatten the Black Orc in front of him so badly that he was prepared to go to ground with him, despite the coach screaming at him that this was a bad idea.  He either didn't hear or didn't understand though and collapsed in a sweaty heap of green and pink blubber which didn't seem to bother either of them unduly but left the ball unsecured and vulnerable.  The orc blitz made light work of the flimsy defensive screen and a blitzer was able to secure the ball after straining his sinews to the max to get there.  Having got there however he had time to look up and realise just how lonely he was, a single word sounding a bit like 'help' may of escaped his lips at this point. 

The troll realising he couldn't get there himself decided to helpfully throw a goblin in the general direction.  Unfortunately the gobbo was still reliving his moment of glory from the first half and wasn't really concentrating.  He landed nicely on his head and soon joined the blitzer in the Dead and Injured box!

The humans turned as one to stare at the orc Blitzer who was busily trying to hide the ball behind his back and act nonchalant but to no avail. A quick blitz, a stroll over to pick up the ball and the humans were once again in control of their own destiny, well the ball anyway.  The orcs then charged forward on mass and the game got quite violent with several players getting Knocked Out on both sides and the first human injury being inflicted.  However the humans had sneakily focussed on the ball and were able to make a decisive break down the pitch.

At this point the orcs decided to forget about the ball completely and focussed entirely on removing opponents from the contest.  Using all means both fair and foul to get what they wanted out of the game although a brave referee did decide to send off a Black Orc for a particularly obvious stomp in the fat boys 'gentlemens area'.

Having stalled out at one end, the half of the human team that was still breathing managed to score the winning touchdown.  The coach shrugging his shoulders as he chalked one up in the win column and planned his trip to Club Journeyman for the following day.

A fun game with some twists and turns in it, followed by a dip in the pool, perhaps tournament organisers should take note!

As a footnote Alexander has decided, that he currently prefers Elf Agility to Orc Violence so I think something strange may happen to the human team for our next game, I have it on good authority the Ogre is already feeling a little wooden and may be planning to branch out!

As my boy would say... "FAIL!"

As my boy would say... "FAIL!"
 My Wild Thing figures, Carol and Max, are pretty much sitting in the big box rykar sent me.
I sold about 9 (9 out of 50).
  We get about 20 players in our tourney. Everyone will get a set, but I'm starting to think my idea of having the wild things on the pitch isn't very popular with the BB community.
  When I told my mother about my idea, she smiled and said "thats cool".
She was always there when we had painting nights. My mom painted ceramics, and had fun doing it.
I remember her going to Saturday morning classes for painting ceramics. One Saturday, I stopped over and had my own paints, brushes and a primed blood bowl figure (a mino).
In minutes, the women were ohing and ahing over my miniature!

  My mother died on march 26th, 2013. She never got to see Carol and Max, from the book my mom and dad read me about a million times, from the book I read to my son about a million times, the book with the monsters that me and my beloved cousin, Mike , thought would be great BB players.

  Mike died in a small village in Afghanistan. He never got to see carol and max.
I'm not trying to be negative here, but its tough for me to know where these ideas came from, and the people who helped me through some tough times who would have been tickled pink to see Carol and Max on the pitch, are gone.
  No matter what, I will continue with the wild things, and if no one buys them, I don't mind.
At the end of the day, the figures give me good memories of some people I loved: my mom, my dad and Mike. I wish you could have come home to us, Mike. I miss you.

Chaos Cup 2013

"There is still a really cool giveaway I'm working on for this year that hopefully I can give info on within the next couple weeks.

So you get the coin, the dice, the patch (coming soon), the Chaos All Star Apothecary...and who knows what other surprises!


Do not miss CHAOS CUP 2013! These giveaways are exclusive to attendees and I cannot promise I'll have any extras leftover after the event."

Limited edition Max and Carol!

Remember Max and Carol from Where Wild Things Are book and movie?

Well, almost a month ago our blog mate BFG shared with us a picture of the greens of Max and Carol, and told us how they where to be used promoting a Blood Bowl tourney, the "Mike Krieger memorial Cup" (check it in this LINK).

Both miniatures painted by Misses BFG.

With a limited cast of 50 of each (sold together), the figures are made from pewter (37 and 17mm respectively), and are sculpted by Rykar, who will also be sculpting a new 'monster' from the book every year.
Each set (with both figures) costs 25USD plus shipping, and aside from helping funding their tourney, a donation will be given to the pa's fallen soldier fund.


Either because you loved the book/movie, want to help out their BB community runing the tourney, want to give a hand at the fallen soldiers fund (and while at it grab a pretty cool prize), or just love those fine looking miniatures, give those guys a hand and get a set of those for your self!


You can pm directly BFG for this, or for any other details (such as combined postage or so), via Talk Fantasy Football forum, in this thread, or just leave a comment with a contact adress and I'm sure he'll be more than happy to contact you personaly!
And hurry up, 50 copies where made...

NAF site new look!

 For those out there who don't get the NAF newsletter (and why don't you?), or have been too busy to check all the Blood Bowl news in there, we'll just let you know that the NAF site has changed!

With this changes, even if you're not a member (just yet), you can still check all the news in the front page (including tournament announcements, and lots of other interesting BB related stuff)!

Also, you can catch up with all Blood Bowl fan based variants (BB Sevens, Street Bowl, ...), or even take a peek at the long list of resources (suppliers, forums, playbooks, ...), were you'll probably find everything you might ever need to put you team together, get them a "pro" side line crew, and learn the tactics to turn you into a successful coach!

Why don't you check it for your self in this link right here!

Of course 'old timers' (aka members), still get their private lounge, in the appropriately named "members area", to mingle and politely - most of the times at least - discuss members stuff !

Want to get in there too? Here's how to... Join the NAF!

Thumbs up to the NAF crew involved in this change for a very nice job!

Swag or Stuff either way it's gooood!

Some of you may have read here on the blog how I got lucky at Narrenball earlier this year with my Undead team.  Well aside from a massive trophy (which I don't get to keep) and a NAF Trophy (which I do!) I also received an Impact voucher for 70 euros as tournament Champion and another for 20 euros for Most Touchdowns (an astonishingly low winning total of 8 from 4 games!).

Well I thought I'd share just what I bought with it so here goes:

First up dice, as most of you know I'm a total dice addict.  These Impact dice are dual purpose as they can be used as block dice or d6,  A clever idea but somehow I am not convinced.  Still they are a nice addition to my collection.

Then Star Player Cards.  Now I think these came from Australia originally (or should that be aboriginally?) and I picked them because I liked the look of them rather than with any actual usage in mind.  After all, the star players are listed in the rule book right?  However, since I've had them I've found them to be very useful, whether in league play or at tournaments as soon as you are facing one of these titans of the turf get the card out and sit it next to the pitch.  It saves constantly looking up what skills Morg has (what doesn't he have!) or constantly having to ask your opponent 'What Agility is Jordell again?', 'Oh, I thought that was what you said!' or forgetting that extraordinary skill 'She can do what!?!'.

I got four packs of fluorescent skill rings, the 'hard' variety.  I've got a few sets of the rubber rings, which I generally prefer, but I thought these might be useful too particularly when used in conjunction with the rubber ones.  I have a lot of converted miniatures and although I am a big fan of this part of the hobby I prefer not to leave myself open to the accusation of gaining an unfair advantage 'The one with the ball isn't a thrower then, it's a blitzer?' that sort of thing. So I thought by using the rubber rings to denote positionals in heavily converted teams with the see through harder rings to show different skills this might alleviate the problem.  It doesn't quite work as I intended because the rubber ring is very difficult to see underneath the fluorescent one and the hard rings are such a tight fit they don't really sit on top of the rubber ones too well.  Still variety is the spice of life, as they say.

 But what about figures I hear you say, well since Impact have just launched their range of certain teams recast in resin for $35 (excellent value) it was too good an opportunity to miss and I ordered a Scotling team.  They are very characterful especially the caber tossing 'Treemen'.  Someday I'll find the time to sit down and paint them up......someday!

I have a lot of balls (snigger) already, one for each team plus some, but I thought I'd add these to the collection as they could save time during the game.  You know the drill constantly trying to squeeze the ball back on to the modelled and flocked base only to have the next dice cup delivery dislodge it again. These should help alleviate the issue as they can be applied in many ways apparently.  I say apparently because I have yet to paint them up and without painting them there is no way they are coming on to my pitch(es)!

So I've talked already about converted miniatures, and (just) about balls so I added a few packs of conversion arms and hands as these are often the bits you need to make your conversions look more 'bloodbowly' and less 'weapon snippy'.  I also couldn't resist a football (soccer ball if you must!).  These are bought more with vague long term intentions than any immediate plans but I'm sure will come in useful eventually.

And that as they say is that, I think a pretty impressive haul for 90 euros (including the postage!) and a selection that addresses many of the facets of the game.  When you think about it I'm a very lucky man, 4 good games of Blood Bowl with like minded friends, a shiny new NAF Trophy to use as 'Intimidatory Reroll Counter' and all this stuff to boot!

I wanna get something off my chest

My friend Jonas got me into gaming. One June afternoon we were sitting around his house wondering what to do, when Jonas said "we could try to figure out my dungeons and dragons game". He had the early book, and I grabbed it and I was hooked.

  That was a Friday, iirc. Jonas let me take his D&D book home to learn the rules so we could play.
I waited for my father to get home at 5pm. when he got home, I said "Dad, there’s this new game, and they have the stuff over at Hobby Hangout. They close at 6, can we go?", as he was still very proud of the fact that I got 4 A's and 2 B's, he said "OK, we can go over as long as we're back before dinner".
  And we went. Hobby Hangout was right across the river and within 5 miles. My dad bought me a bunch of stuff that night; dice, the rule books, but no lead figures!!! He said I should see if I like the game first. If I liked it, he'd bring me back the next Friday for some figures.
  We loved D&D. When my dad took me the next Friday, I bought a load of figures. That was the start of my figure collecting. I remember sitting at our kitchen table with my friends Jonas, Jason and Shawn. We used the testors paint that used turpentine to clean brushes. It didn’t matter. We were bad painters but by the fall, we had gotten better and neater.
  We went to Hobby Hangout for all our gaming needs, they were very much on top of the role playing hill; they had it all. The owners, Phil and Dianne, were old hippies but they were nice to us they would ask what we were painting, and ask us to bring in some painted figures. They were interested and looking back, they were cool people.
  In 1982, they moved their store about 10 miles from my house. We couldn’t ride our bikes or walk to hobby hangout anymore.
  My grandmother gave us the idea to take the bus, this was better than bugging our moms and dads when they got home from work.

  One rainy fall Saturday, me and Jason got the bus and went to Hobby Hangout. I had picked up a few blister packs of, iirc, goblins and bugbears and as I was paying for my monsters, Dianne said "PHIL! CALL THE POLICE! THIS KID IS STEALING!" I looked around, and she had my friend Jason by the arm, oh s@$t.
   Phil, the owner, was more laid back about things. he said "put it back and leave", but his wife wasn’t having it. She demanded Phil call the police so he did...
   The police came and took Jason and me to the police headquarters. I didn’t take anything, but the cop took me because I was with my friend. When we got to the HQ, the chief of police said to me "did you take anything?" I said no. I suppose he believed me, as he didn’t ask me again, or search me.
   Turns out, Jason attempted to steal a 20 sided dice. That was it.
The chief called Jason’s mom, and she came and took us home. Jason told all who were interested that I had nothing to do with the "theft".
  I stopped going to Hobby Hangout after that. I guess I was too embarrassed. In fact, I didn’t go back there until 1992. Of course I was driving by then. I remember going in and Phil would just kinda look at me in a strange way. Not watching me like a hawk, not watching like he expected me to steal something. It was weird.
  At that point in time (1991-1995), I was painting historicals, bloodbowl figures, early 40k stuff, etc. Hobby Hangout didn’t sell figures at this point in time but they did sell POLY-S paints, which I loved. If they were still made, I’d be using them, so I stopped by every so often for paint.
  And Phil ALWAYS gave me that weird look and he never made small talk with me.

After about 1995, I stopped going to Hobby Hangout. A pretty good hobby shop opened in my town, with friendly people and great gaming. Hobby Hangout and Phil and Dianne were forgotten.
   Two years ago, I got word that Hobby Hangout was going out of business everything must go.
I planned on going. Not for anything they had (all the gaming stuff was sold off years before. they still had poly-s paint, but I really didn’t need paint (I had about 120+ paints ). but I wanted to get something off my chest.
  I wanted to thank Phil. Thank him? Yes.
I wanted to tell him I had nothing to do with my friends attempted theft of that dice. I wanted to say thanks for keeping me away from drugs by introducing me to the world of Dungeons and Dragons.
I would play that game and others every Friday and Saturday, all night, 6pm to 5am every weekend. I wanted to say how sorry I was that his shop was closing after all those years. I wanted to tell Phil I had good memories of my father and I going to his store and buying the D&D figures that I loved painting!

  My wife and I went down to Hobby Hangout  on a rainy Saturday morning. The rainy weather was very much like the day Jason and I were taken to the Palmer Police headquarters on the way, I told my wife the story.
  We got there and I walked around looking for Phil, but I didn’t see him or Dianne. I asked a young lady about Phil. she told me Phil had passed away 4 months before.