How about some Dungeonbowl?

Yes, how about?
 
As I've had the chance to mention a few times in past posts, we at NABBO League enjoy playing a bunch of other games between our official league competitions.
It's a nice way to get to know other games, put to use some of the non-bloodbowl related miniatures we all have, and have a good time amongst friends.
All while scheming and plotting for the next NABBO league competition of course!

One of those games we play, is a home version of Dungeonbowl - a very short version of it where several coaches may play at the same time, each controlling a big guy, and as in other DB type games, each has the herculean task of finding the ball hidden in the chest, and carry it safely to his end zone, all this while the opposition tries to stop it anyway they can - including throwing chests at each other...

Anyway, I did a post a few years back, with a WIP photo report of the building of the dungeon, and in that report I mention a couple of fellow Talk Fantasy Football mates, over their own forum threads on Dungeon Bowl.
One of them - yggdrasil,  has recently put together most of the info he had in that really long thread in TFF, joined a ton of other photos and info about the game, and made a fantastic web site with it: 


DUNGEONBOWL : ASTROGRANITE EDITION

 In there you can find and download several rules pdfs (from the 1989 original ones, to his own adaptation to them), read fluff and game reports, and last but by no means least see photos of his beautifully converted and painted teams for many colleges of magic, along with quite a few extra stars, monsters, and a ton of other stuff that crawls in Dungeonbowl dungeons!
Awesome.

Miss it at your own peril, that's all I have to add to it!

Have fun,
Axtklinge

Dungeonbowl XI (2014) photo report

One of the Major (and coolest) Blood Bowl Tournaments out there has got to be the Dungeonbowl! It's held in Germany, and it went on in the past 15th and 16th of March.

You can check the rules used this year in this TFF thread, or go directly to this picture section, kindly provided by TFF fellow gamer traveller to see all the lovely teams and pitches they had there this year.

And since you're there, take your time and have a look at all other great Blood Bowl info and goodies in traveller Blood Bowl Miniatures site.


And just for a fun fact, take a look at the dugouts they used this year in "The Dungeon" - the stage where the Dungeonbowl winner will be decided (pic below)!

Wondering where you've seen those before? ;-)

It's really cool to see our stuff being used out there.

Thanks for that guys!

Axt.

Double posted on NABBO League blog

Dungeon Bowl Boards (pt.3)

 Here it is, the last article on the "Dungeon Bowl Board" series!


As you may recall, in the first one I describe and illustrate how I've "built" and gave some basic painting to the Dungeon Bowl tiles (First here). In the second I've introduced the "teleporters" and "chests", and add some more colour to the End Zones (Second here).

After the painting of the End Zones was done, I felt the other boards would benefit of some colour too, so in a trial-and-error kind of process I've painted some shades and/or some solid colours on the floor of a few of the tiles (in order to make them look like different rooms), so its easier to distinguish them, and perhaps even use them for games other then Dungeon Bowl.

You might have noticed before that I've built four End Zones (instead of the usual two), because I really want the option of playing with more then two players. To that end, I've also made two extra tiles (one with a small lake and island in the middle, and other crossed by a lava river), that will allow me to have a wider layout (or should I say a "bigger dungeon"?), that might prove useful when playing with more than two players.

In the above photo (sorry for the poor flash induced quality), you have all the tiles in one possible set up, with six teleporters and chests. As usual, the "black" squares stand for walls (so no crossing or throwing the ball over those), and all the others are 'normal' tiles, except for the 'lava' and 'water' ones of course.
(Speaking of 'lava' and 'water' tiles, they are the second ones counting from the top, both right and left, just in case you're having trouble finding them...)

It was a very fun, quick and cheap project to do (less then 5€ for both big mdf boards I've bought, with the cutting in 'tiles' done in the same place for free). Now I just have to find some time to have a go at it with my BB league mates.

Further ideas for this project might include "real" walls using magnets to keep them in place and make them easy to take off and store (kudos for the magnets idea Tristan!), building "staircases" and "passage ways" to add an upper level to the dungeon , and possibly get a few random monsters to sneak up on the players!

Hope you enjoyed it, and please feel free to comment or add some more suggestions!

Dungeonbowl boards (pt.2)

Soooo...

Here are some updates on my Dungeon Bowl project.

During the past weekend, I’ve managed to do some work on the end zones (they were way to grey for my taste), so up there you can check on how they look right now. 

 

Also here are the teleporters, made from water gallon caps (cut down to leave only a small edge), with a number made out of a bit of green stuff (I was working with GS at the time, otherwise it would be just painted), and then painted to have some warp/lightning effects on it.

 

And these are the chests I'll be using... 

Yeah I know, they are from a very well know 'block system' game for youngsters, but truth is the size is good enough, they actually look like chests, and they work (as in the top open and closes perfectly).

Now I only have to build a few bombs to place inside them.

 See how the BB ball fits fine? :)

 As usual, comments or suggestions are welcome!

Dungeonbowl boards (pt.1)

First post of the year! :)

Hope you’ve all had nice festivities!

And possibly some free time to have a few games, or at least a couple of hours to work on some hobby related project (since we “table top gamers”, seem to always have a bunch of those, carving for our attention).  Moving on…

 As a kid I used to be a big fan of “Fighting Fantasy” books (with those fantastic stories with plenty of monsters, dungeons,… and dice rolling!), and despite only having a hand full of them (for some reason they weren’t that easy to find), I really enjoyed the creepy atmosphere they created and all the forbidden secrets they always seemed to hold on the turn of every page. I’ve always loved to read, and one of the most amazing things about those books, was the fact that you could actually have different paths and endings, according to the options you took during the read. A bit like the table top ‘wargames’ or ‘fantasy sports’ games we play nowadays, where the ‘story’ of the battle/game is built along the way.

Why did I bring this up? Well, during Christmas week I’ve came across a “clearout” sale of a book store, found one of those I don’t own, quite cheap, so I brought it home with me.

I haven’t read it yet, and admit that it might probably be somehow ‘less appealing’ then when I first started to read them, but those fantastic black&white illustrations along the book, are worth every short cent I’ve spent for sure.

Anyway, I’ve been following a couple of threads in Talk Fantasy Football forum about “Dungeon Bowl”, for some time now. They both have different approaches on the game, but do have one thing in common: both are absolutely full of fantastic ideas, cool conversions and paint jobs, and truly are worth checking out, even if you don’t intent to play DB, since most of it might be useful for Blood Bowl as well.

(Here are the links if you care to check them out (which you absolutely should!): Yggdrasil thread here, and the solitaire thread here. Thumbs up to both Yggdrasil and the solitaire for their brilliant and inspiring jobs!)

And so, during my Christmas week short ‘time off’, and after many weeks (or months) trying to keep my building/converting drive at bay, I have 'incidentally' stumbled (sort of) into a sheet of 3mm MDF that was begging to be sawn into smaller pieces, which the clerk of the store promptly did!

One of issues that tends to keep me away from new projects, is the storing space most of these take, but if I manage to keep these dungeons as single sheets (without walls), they will be fairly easy to store, but I guess time will tell how this evolves.

Here's some pics, hope you like how they’re turning out! 
  

 Here's a quick sketch of how the layout of the tiles had to be (based on the second edition of Dungeon Bowl. Link from Board Game Geek here).

 

  Here are the boards shortly after being sawn, with 3cm squares drawn on them.

The next step was to carve each board along the previously drawn lines, with a sharp blade. I've actually carved each line twice, each time positioning the blade in a different angle, so that the bas relief would end with a "V" shape. The cuts ended up with 1mm deep approximately.

Here you have a mini in a 25mm base as a scale. To add a bit of detail to the board, I've carved a few shattered "pavement stones". Not too easy to see on this pic, but later on they will be easilly noticeable.

Here's one of the boards with the grey spray (undercoat). This undercoat has two roles, one to give the base colour for the "pavement stones". The other (and perhaps most important), was to "seal" the MDF. Despite looking like wood and 'acting like its tough', MDF behaves like denser cardboard, and as I wanted to paint it with acrylics, I simply didn't want it to absorb all the water in and and end up warping. Hopefully the layer of undercoat would help avoid it.

Next step was to give each board a serious wash of diluted black ink, and let it dry for a while. After 10 or 15 minutes (depending on how dry is the air in the room you paint), and before the ink was completely dry, I took an absorbing piece of paper (those used in the kitchen), and absorbed the ink excess. I used it like if it was a "stamp" all over the board, so the leftovers of the ink would give the board a more natural (irregular) 'stony' look.

Here's another similar one, with a mini for scale. Both in this and in the above picture you can clearly see the "shattered stones" I mentioned before.

In this picture you can see the eight boards (two endzones and six board games), after the black ink wash. There's a mini out there for scale too.

This final image for today shows the same boards of the previous picture, but with some more paint on them. The black represents the walls (which I wont be building - at least for now-, since this will make the boards far easier to storage). I've painted some splashes of diluted brown, and green (it's a dungeon so it's supposed to be slimy), and two different coloured lines to distinguish each endzone.

One of the worries I had on this stage was how to protect the ink on the boards (since the movement of the minis on the board can be quite abrasive), so I decided to give it a try with an acrylic based varnish (check how shiny it looks the top right board), and I'm quite happy with the result.

Not sure how fast this will move from now on (kinda short on free time), but as soon as there's new stuff I'll make an update.

Hope you enjoy it.