Where the Wild Things Are. Again.

Hello boys! Happy holidays!

I hope all are well, and your families, too.

Our club, The Thursday night Hero's, are playig a small tourney with the proceeds going to the Wounded Warrior Fund.

For my part, I have decided to put the new Wild Things sets and complete teams(counts as a ogre team) at discount to top our highest amount raised($629usd in2015).

I have lowered the complete team(6 big guys and 10 little max's) to $60usd plus shipping. And sets(one big guy monster and his max buddy) to $12usd plus shipping.

If anyone is interested, pm me, and I'll hook you up.

Thanks again, friends. I hope to return to blogging in the new year, and I'll talk to you then!

Pm me for pictures

New team from my friend

Hello boys! Been awaile, I know. We had a long winter and a too short summer, and here we are;at the tail end of 2017 already!

I wanted to stop by and tell you all about a new Kickstarter my dear friend Fabio, owner/operator of GASPEZ-ARTS, has set to start in a very few hours from now. It is a fantastic new Chaos Dwarf team going by the name of Bull Warriors!

The team harkens back to the "Big Hat" days of the now defunct GW style Chaos Dwarves. But thats about the only thing they share in common, as these ain't your momies Chaos Dwarves!

They are much more dynamic and Modern.The sculpts are by renowned designer Raffaele Stumpo, and man, does he bring an old concept to wide awake life! I've included a few pic's to get you interested, and I think they look ace:

These are just the beginning. There will be a full team of fresh new sculpts and I for one look forward to the Hobgoblins! In fact, I am running a all Hobgoblin side in our new league, and I am having to use the tired GW Hob's. I beg you Fabio! Have your man make plenty of Hobgoblins so I can retire the GW figures to the depths of the boxes!

The Kickstater starts on September 5th, and the "early" bird special Fabio has in place will only be for the first day! So get over to the GASPEZ-ARTS FACEBOOK and check it.

Seriously boys, Fabio has ALWAYS helped out when I was running  my event the Mike Kriger Memorial Cup. In fact, he was the main supporter. Year after year, the man helped when other people/companies sometimes did'n even return my emails. Fabio is a kind man, and he took interest in our event. He can hang his hat on that.

Lets all support the man and his new venture. It looks like its gonna be a good one!

NAF Championship? #BringTheFling17

Hi everyone!

As you probably know, in a very few days we'll have another NAF Championship is coming up (29th and 30th April 2017)!
 As always, a great deal of fun and madness is expected to occur in one of the most prestigious and notorious Blood Bowl tournaments of the year.




Following along the "fun and madness" theme...
A bunch of tough lads from TFF decided to continue this lunacy tradition of gathering the best of the best to coach in the NAF Champs, and field a team of mighty Halflings!

Need I say more?   #BringTheFling17

Check out more on the subject in the appropriate TFF thread: #BringTheFling17
 

The Brandenberry report!

  

The Brandenberry Braves NABBO Tea Cup '16 tournament report!

 The NABBO Tea Cup tournament always has a very welcoming and relaxed environment if not for anything else, because most coaches are old friends and any newcomer quickly catches up with the rest of the crew.

Probably hyped by a newly converted and painted halfling team - the Brandenberry Braves (click on the team name link to check on the team), I decided to take on a challenge and coach a stunty team in the tournament. 

Of course, my expectations where... ahem... low, and my primary objective was to finish the three games of the day with anything else different than the most probably 0-0-3 result!

I understand that hardened veteran stunty coaches might frawn upon such light weight objectives, but since my experience with the halflings resumed to a handful of league matches, I decided it would be wise to keep expectations low.

Pre-tournament thoughts

With the team race decided, the roster choice was for the most part an easy one: all the trees I could get my hands on, and fill the rest of the space with halflings!

At some point, some brainstorm was needed to settle for yet another halfling at expenses of extra Fan Factor, Cheerleaders and Assistant Coaches (previously aiming at kick-off table rerolls). Kudos to Tristan and Neil for the chit-chatting about this and other tabletop issues.

Enter the Brandenberry Braves!

The tournament always starts with a random draw, for the first pairing of the coaches/teams.

(Afterwards the higher ranking coach always plays the second ranked one, except if they have already faced in previous rounds of the tournament.)

No matter where I looked, there was no easy-er challenge for my halflings (I was the only stunty coach in the room) so I braced for whatever team I’d be drawn to play against and waited…

Match 1 vs Juunikyuu BBC (Dark Elf)

Right from the start I knew this wouldn’t be an easy match.

Not only I’d be playing a very able coach and former NTC championess, but also because of this particular race high agility and move that could easily run circles around my players.

My induced master chef served me well giving me a couple extra rerolls right from the start of the match, but unfortunately they didn’t helped that much as my designated ball carrier decided to fail every pick up attempt up until 4^th turn.

By then – as expected, my backfield was flooded by pointy ears, that despite my players resolve in biting and kicking them in the ankles, it was not long before they snatched the ball for themselves and made a walk in the park to the End Zone.

The rest of the first half was mostly uneventful and by halftime I had knocked & fouled a couple out of the pitch, but the elves already were ahead in the scoreboard by one and would get the ball in the second part. Not good.

Second half started (thumbs up for the master chef for another two rerolls), and despite all attempts to stretch my defense to the entire field, the offense just kept changing sides running everywhere up until they already where comfortably settled in my backfield, just chilling and waiting for the ideal time to score.

Of course that could not be, and the Braves from Brandenberry pressed on (aka as gang up and foul), and to some extent it resulted as the dark elves went on and scored the second.

The last few turns of the second half shown a lovely demonstration of how perfectly launched halflings can ruin everything in the landing end, and so the match was concluded with no further developments on the scoreboard.

Final Result: 0-2 Loss, with 2-1 Cas

Match 2 vs Tumbling Rocks (Dwarf)

The draw for the second round pared me up with a dwarf team that in his previous match started losing to a human team (2-0 if I’m not mistaken), but slowly managed to slaughter his his way up into a draw with a 5-0 in the casualty department. Outch.

Needless to say I was worried.

What would it be of such tender leaves and flowers on the pitch when stepped upon by such brutes?!?

After yet another fine display of cooking by the Master Chef, consequently distracting the dwarves out of two of their three rerolls (in both halves!), the match begun.

Ball to the dwarves, a few slaps here and there without major consequences, up until one of the troll “slayeress”(sp? since it was a team of female dwarves), decided she wasn’t afraid of those big trees and when for the dauntless approach.

 Picture of the halftime against the snow based Tumbling Rocks.

Note to self: Give a Michelin Star to the Master Chef for its deeds

Final Result: 1-1 Tie, with 2-3 Cas

 

Match 3 vs (Suevos Sovieticos) Norse

By now the Braves from Brandenberry had already eased their minds a bit: no matter how bad this last game against the heavy hitting Norse lads might go, the former tie result against dwarves gave them some of the respect they were looking after amongst the other players.

While preparing for the ensuing match - gorging down gourmet appetizers, the Braves found they had just won a couple of Team Rerolls to their adversaries, just because of how good the food smelled. Awesome job cook!

The ball was kicked to the Norse side, and before trying anything else, the bearded frenzied Norse decided to mow down the competition, staring with the trees.

Of course trees being temperamental as they are, took it personal and immediately fought back, stopping the Norse assault right where it started, and capitalizing the first casualty of the game: Brandenberry Trees 1- Bearded smelly humans 0!

Surprised by the turn of events, the smaller players of the Braves just stared at the trees while they continued the smacking of the opposing players fool enough to still be in the line of scrimmage.

By turn four, either by “tree whack” action, or by effective team work “ground stomp” – aka “foul”, the Norse where cut down to eight players, and stretching all over to keep the halflings away from the TD line, but to no avail as the Braves would take the lead near the end of the first half.

Nothing changed the rest of the half except for the Norse payback, punching a couple of halflings KO’ed out of the pitch.

 The last turns of the first half against the Suevos Sovieticos. 

(Note: on the top-left of the pic you can see the crowded Dead/SI box of the Norse dugout)

The second half started with the Norse slightly outnumbered but in possession of the ball, which gave them the opportunity to organize a right wing offensive move, knocking down a pair of halflings while at it.

In their turn, the Braves where holding the Norse as they could, making time for the trees to move closer and help to stop the opponents advance.

The game kept on a standstill for a few turns with the Norse having trouble to advance or even change flank, and that’s when one of the trees managed Blitz-Out of his opponent tackle zone and Go-For-It in contact with the Norse ball carrier!

All of the sudden everything changed tactically and in this new scenario the Norse felt compelled to try and get the tree away from the ball carrier, rather than the possibly risky Dodge-Out without rerolls.

A few Norse blocks and a blitz later the tree kept standing firm next to the ball, and it was the halflings turn to do something.

And so they did – Norse ball carrier slapped down and out of the pitch by the tree, the ball scattered a few times, and lands on a open space, where it finally gets caught by and halfling that moves along with his mates to the Norse backfield.

The Norse attempt to cut them off ends up falling short, and the halflings score again by turn 6 of the second half.

The last two turns resumed in a seriously outnumbered Norse team attempt to pick up the ball, harassed by flying halflings - who simply either couldn’t land, or pickup the ball themselves, and by yet another Norse mow down by the trees, properly backed up by their smaller mates, to finish off whoever's left standing both up or down.

Final word on this match to give both thumbs up to the Norse coach and long time friend, who managed to show how very good sports he is throughout all the match, despite Nuffle’s continuous efforts to ruin his dice rolls!

Final Result: 2-0 WIN, with 7-0 Cas!!!

Award time!

The tournament was over, and it was time for the awards.

I was quite happy with the great 1-1-1 game result, but all of the sudden something else caught up my attention - the abnormal casualties sum of my last game could push me upfront to something more then a reasonably defended halfling team honor.

And when the final results came out, a really incredible surprise came along with them, the Brandenberry Braves had accomplished the outstanding result of 11 Casualties passing the closest competition by 1 Cas (the Tumbling Rocks dwarf team which we played in the second game)!

It was not a tournament record (which is 12 Cas in three games), but sure felt an outstanding feat specially pulled off with such team.

It was the cherry on the top of the cake of a great tournament day, passed among friends and playing this great game called Blood Bowl.

Hope you enjoyed the reading, and please feel free to comment!

Cheers,

Axt.

Double posted on the NABBO League blog.

NABBO Tea Cup 2016

For those normally interested in the NABBO Tea Cup tournament, I've just made a report in the NABBO League blog with the usual stuff  - fluff, house rules, rankings, swag, etc.

Please take a peek there if you want some more details on the tournament. --> Here! <--
Below is this year's swag, hope you enjoy it.

NTC'16 tournament Dugout

NTC'16 tournament dice

(Note: I know there's still some dice and a couple of dugouts left, and will make a post about it on TFF later on. If you feel like you might want some please PM me).

Have fun,
Axtklinge

Last day of the year...

It's the last day of the year!

Personaly it has been a rather long and tough year for me, but hobby wise - and fortunatly for those who love Bloodbowl, it has been a very interesting and eventfull year!
A new boxed set has been out, the rules remain mostly the same, and to add to it GW seems to be producing yet again new miniatures and dice to the game we all love so much.
Of course each of us might have a different idea of what it would have liked to see GW do with the boxed set - be it different races in the box or a different sized pitch, but I'm sure everyone would agree that the future of the game never looked so bright in the past 10 or more years.

And now, a few updates that SHOULD HAVE been done long ago but unfortunatly didn't:

- APES OF WRATH
Remember that cool project to create a Symyin Bloodbowl team, that even got miniatures casted, and ended up earning a spot in FUMMBL, with Star Players and all?
Early in the year, the awsome gentlemen from THREE DIE BLOCK podcast did a fluff contest for this same team, and I was one of the proud winners of a complete Symyin resin team!
I've always loved to fluff up my Bloodbowl teams, and this trully was a great oportunity to participate in one of the coolest team projects I've seen in a ong while.
Kudos to Chance and Drew for enjoying my entry.

Have a peek at my entry HERE if you will.

As for the team I got, after adding some shoulder pads on the players, off to the paint station they went, and a couple weeks later they were ready to take on the NABBO League season XIV!

Here the team discussing the tactics for their league assault!


- BOTH DOWN podcast...

During the year, theres been quite a few times I have changed emails with BOTH DOWN ginger crew Steve and Scott, sometimes asking for a few more details about some piece of the latest podcast, others just sharing some bloodbowl league experience.
One of those chats ended up in SWAG talk, and the fine gents from "The #1Podcast... hosted by gingers" kindly sent me some of the great dice they produce every year for the apparently endless stream of tournaments they comish!

Awesome SWAG from awesome guys. Keep it up!

- Splatterday Wight Fever Tournaments

Thank you to both Mr. Neilpferd and Mr. PeterD for their awesomely themed tournament series SWAG (also from other tournaments - greatly appreciated!), and for the ocasional brainstorms of all things Bloodbowl!

That's about it for now, wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR, with lots of success and luck both in your life and dice rolls!

All the best,
Axtklinge

Bull and Max#3 by my wife

Just thought I'd show my wifes work on the newest set of Wild Things, Bull and Max#3.

Sets are still availible at $20usd+shipping, and proceeds go to the wounded warrior fund. Thanks!

Hello boys! How's everyones summer going? I hope everyone is well. I wanted to say I hope everyone in France is ok, and my wife and I have you in our prayers.

The new Wild Thing set is almost ready(being shipped as we speak). The new set includes Bull and Max#3. Each set is $20usd, and proceeds go to the Wounded Warrior Fund.

If anyone wants a set, and they are limited(25 sets), contact me at: lacourjohn@aol.com

Slaaneshter United

I'm working my way through the 24 at NAF Tournaments and decided to take my Chaos Pact team Slaaneshter United to this years NAFC (team number 18). I finished 73rd out of 140+ teams winning 3 and coming second in the other three games. The team is all female and I thought I'd share a few pics here.

Here is the team Logo

 

And here is a shot of the whole squad:

 

 

 

The big girls:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elf lady:

 

 

Girly rat

 

 

Two headed Goblin girl (the mind boggles...)

 

 

and some of the marauders:

 

 







and finally I took Lewdgrip to the tournament, he gives the team a lot of options they wouldn't normally have in this format:

 

 





 



Thanks for looking!

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

NABBO Tea Cup 2015!

The year of the Wizard!

As some of you - followers of the ways of NABBO Tea Cup - might already have read in the past, in order to give each NTC tournament a different feel from league games and an extra layer of fun, the organization of the tournament usually adds some house rule to the otherwise fairly regular team tournament builds.
This year the 'little extra house rule' was a free wizard for each team, which instead of the usual Zaping or Fireballing of the opposing players, could make use of proper spell books and attempt to transform the opposing players into frogs! How could it be any funnier than that?

The rules for all these wizards and spells where quite simple, starting with an 2D6 of 8+ as an "activation roll" for the wizard (fluff wise aka "let's check if the wizard is paying any attention to the game..."), and if that went ok, the coach had another d6 roll of 4+ to actually turn an opposing player into a frog or alternatively reverse one of his "frog-players" to the regular "player" (the "frog" was randomly chosen amongst the players on the pitch).
If the coach was lucky enough to roll a "6" on this last roll, he was allowed to repeat this roll and try to transform a second opposing player into a frog.
This could go as far as three players maximum (which was as much "frog-players" as each team could have on the pitch at the same time).


The frog
The "frog-player" was treatd like any other player, with this profile: MA 5, ST 2, AG 4, AV 6. Skills: No Hands, Dodge, Side Step and Right Stuff. Also, the armour was considered magical so any injury roll of 8+ would KO the player instead of any other nastiness.

(For more information on the house rules please have a look at NABBO Tea Cup V in the NABBO League blog).

The tournament

Despite the low number of participants (only six this time), the event was still a lot of fun and for the first time we had the grand total of two ladies playing - more than 33% of our tournament crew, which is a lot more than many big tournaments out there can brag about!
(Yes, just having a bit of fun with maths...)


As far as team choices go, we had Amazons (x2), Chaos Dwarf, Lizardmen, Slann and Vampire, and a combined total of 49 "frogged" players, over the course of nine games.

The Prizes
To commemorate for the fifth NTC, instead of the usual three awards - Champion, Most Casualties and Wooden Spoon, the organization had decided to go for five, adding the Most TD's and Best Defence (least TD's suffered).
Since we "share the wealth" by not giving more than one award to any coach, this meant that this year almost everyone coach took an award home (which is fine since our objective is to have a good time while playing Bloodbowl).

This year I've played Chaos Dwarf and was lucky enough to win the Champion award (started with a lucky last turn 1-1 tie against Amazons which kept me in the race for the upper places, won 2-0 my second game against Lizard - the team that won the Most Casualties; and won 3-0 my last game against a Slann - which was undefeated that far, and ended up winning the Most TD's).
The Most Casualties award was won by Iuliia, one of the ladies playing in the tournament (a rookie player both on our league and on the tourney scene).
The Wooden Spoon was conquered by Marco Preto - his second WS in a row (last year won it Humans and this time with Amazons), which is quite amazing since is one of the best players in our league, so we can only speculate why on earth Nuffle keeps poking him on our tournaments...


Last but not least...
Here's a pic of the custom dugout and dice we've made for the tourney, so if you like them and feel like supporting us, we might still have a few of those extra.

Have fun!
Axtklinge


Double posted on the NABBO League blog.

Douglas and Max #2: for Mike!

 How say, boys? Been awhile...

I hope everyone had a good summer. seems like I was just sitting in the heat 2 days ago, LOL!
Well, its tourney time in our little corner of pa. we are getting set for the Mike Kriger Memorial CUP, on Saturday October 31st. it will be held at the Nesquehoning rec center, from 10am until its done.

This year, we will have the new set of "wild things" models, Douglas and Max#2. New figures are always fun, and we are very proud of these new figures from ace miniature man, Rykar. He did a great job bringing these monsters to life.

 By now, most here know the story about our event and the figures we have bought to the game. my cousin mike, was killed in the fighting in Afghanistan. He was my best friend, and he was a founding member of our gaming group, The Thursdaynight Hero's. To say that his death left a hole in many peoples lives would be an understatement. Mike was a kind person, always ready to help a friend as well as a stranger. he sadly left behind a wife and little girl.
 This year, we are hoping to surpass the $300 mark with donations to the Wounded Warrior Fund. this organization is set up to help our vets who may need help. Services like mental and physical therapy, service dogs, housing, and things like that.
We know mike would be proud.

If you'd like more info on our event, please feel free to contact me. Our tourney is for beginners, so don't expect "NAF" level game play, but the point of the event is just to play blood bowl and have fun doing it.
 If you can't make it, and would like a set of these limited miniatures, they are $20usd per set, and a portion of the sales go to the Wounded Warrior Fund.
 I only wish we could do more, or I wish I could give one of those big fake checks, just for the LULZ!

 

German Team Bowl

This weekend is German Team Bowl and with the World Cup coming up fast the organisers have decided to mirror the rules of the forthcoming Bloodbowl extravaganza! A great chance to practice and then maybe make some tweaks to team and/or skill selection. Teams of three, different races, six games over two days and as I said using the Wc ruleset. The sole difference really apart from number of players on a team being two days instead of three so each 'day' of the WC will be represented by two games.

Peter (Chaos Pact) and I (High Elf) will be joined by Phillipe (Amazons). After a bit of thinking and a total rethink following it being pointed out to me that I had misread the rules and could not have a star player I settled on the following:

2 blitzers , 4Catchers, 2 Throwers, 3 Linemen, 2rr and an apothecary.

All well and good but when I went to the figure cabinet I realised I only have two catchers. No time to order or eBay any extras I decided to convert a third (why did I have three?) blitzer and one of my many linemen. Here are the results:

I will show you the whole team and let you know how they got on next week :)

Remember "Carol & Max"?

Do you?


Almost one year and a half ago, here in Merry Mayhem News blog, we started a couple articles featuring Bound For Glory bloodbowl tourney, the "Mike Krieger memorial Cup", and the lovely set of limited edition miniatures that he and his crew (The Thursday Night Heroes) have put together for the event: here, and here!

The selling of those, aside from helping funding the tourney, also had the grand objective of providing a donation to be handed over to the pa's fallen soldier fund.
(I obviously could not pass the opportunity to have a go at painting this such exquisite pair too - here - besides I reeeeeeeally loved the movie).

So what's new, you may ask?
As promised back then by BFG, and once again with the help of Rykar (the sculptor), they have another set "on the forge".
This time it's "Doug", the big guy who gets the (well deserving) spotlight, but rest assured that he will also have the company of Max (and yes, a differently sculpted version of our little friend "Max").

Here's a photo of their greens, as found on the "wild thing #2 coming soon" post in TFF.

Too cool to be truth?
By all means, click on the thread link above and go check it out your self!


And yes, start putting a few coins aside to get them when they get out, they deserve it!

NAF Championship 2015 is ON!

NAF Championship LIV (2015) is ON.

If you're not there, make sure you keep updated with one of these links:

- NAF World Headquarters media,
- Twitter The NAF@OfficialNAF,
- Facebook NAF Chapionship 2015 event.

Above a gift to be presented to all attendees at this year's NAF Championship!

Last but not least, this year NAF gift!