Blood Bowl!!!!!!

As most do, I dropped out of the hobby around 18/19 years old as reali life began to assert itself with full time work, girls, beer, bills etc. I never truly lost touch (still picking up White Dwarf for example), but my actual participation in it was very minimal - I imagine I painted about 3 models in 7 years and didn't game at all. 

When I began to the slow return, my gateway drug was of course Games Workshop, and the first offering was Blood Bowl. A mate, Simon, and I picked up a copy and started playing. For us, it was the ultimate game for playing with a beer or two (or eight). Many games followed, but if died off a few years ago when my hobby took the parent hood hit. 

Anyway, the other day we dusted it all off and got our first game in for quite while:

We played our usual teams, I opted for my Skaven team, known as the Sewer Skutters, whilst Simon bought his Wissenland Wolverine human team out of retirement. Both these teams are arch rivals. We haven't kept an exact track but I think honours are roughly even over the years. The Skaven's speed often leads to two-turn touch downs, whilst Simon's humans can be quite good at squashing rats. 

Here is the table at the start of the game:

Simon was receiving and it was fair to say the dice were diabolical for him to start with. His thrower couldn't pick up the ball, all his blocks led to his guys falling over and it just went horribly wrong, leading to the Gutter Runners tearing through the lines, picking up the ball and making it 1-0. Here's the Gutter Runner receiving a handoff and about to score:

After that, his rolls got a little better and his chaps battered there way through the Skaven lines to leave it 1-1 at the end of the first half. 

At the start of the second half, the Skaven team received the kick off, but despite making a run for it, the gutter runners got smacked down, and Simon managed to turn it around and go 2-1 up:

The Skaven then got to receive the kick again. This time I managed to pull off a two turn touch down and even the score. You can see here that my team have made a hole and got three gutter runners through with plenty of support:

Getting at them would prove troublesome and marking/blocking all three is near impossible. Even when I am defending I try to get at least two gutter runners into the opponents half as they are dsitracting and can cause mayhem.

The last section of the game was a propper scrap. With Simon receiving he was able to batter a couple of my guys off the field and force his way into my half. I realised at this stage I was playing for a draw so used my speed to surround my his blitzer:

This left the whole fate of the game resting on a single roll. If he got a natural 6, his throw was accurate and he would just need a 2+ with a reroll to touchdown. To both our surprises, the dice came good for him when it mattered and he took the game 3-2!

The whole game was great fun, and I think it's fair to say the Blood Bowl bug has bitten again. It's a real shame that GW canned the whole specialist game range a few years ago as otherwise I would pick up another team in a heart beat. Oh well, I have already found a couple of alternate sources for teams that I think I will be investing in soon.

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A Few More Germans

A quick little blog post to tide things over, I have competed another half a dozen Germans:

This lot are split down the middle, three are a Warlord Games late war plastic Germans (now discontinued I think) and the other three are Artizan miniatures. The later three are metal and a joy to paint, really nice chunky details. Here they are in their own:

These three guys will allow to field three 10 man squads, or act us swap outs for my panzerfaust toting guys, if they ever actually get to fire them!

Pleased with them, seem to have cleared quite a bit of the Bolt Action back log of late.

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Empress Miniatures Taliban Review and WiP

I picked up several packs of stuff from Empresss Miniatures at Partizan the other month, and finally found the time to open up the Taliban packs. 

So first impressions. Lovely models. Mostly one part (only two came with loose arms). They are your usual white metal models, very solid with just enough give in them to bend back the odd warped weapon. The worst in this kit was the RPG guy, and that was nothing at all to worry about. 

Clean up wise, they had very little flash or mould lines. The biggest problem was on a couple of models the mould lines ran straight down the middle of the face. Not a big deal with a bit of patience but it's never the best place to have a mould line. They all cleaned up fine in the end. 

The poses are all fairly decent, you have your standard runners and firers, although there is nothing overly dramamtic or ridiculous. I like this, as I feel that it is generally more realistic for stuff routed in the real world. 

I have managed to get mine based and ready for painting, as you can see below. The only reason I have done these before the modern British troops I picked up at the same time is that these will be loads simpler to paint than a ton of camo:

I would certainly recommend Empress Mini's so far. Looking forward to getting these done and on the table. I shall be using them with the Force on Force rule set and shall, of course, let you all know how that works out. 

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The British Arrive.

Those pesky British are finally done! 

Managed to finish up the basing on these guys last night (so pretty much a week late), and got some pics today. Pleased with how they all came out, and without further ado, onto the pictures:

Squad 1:

Squad 2:

Officer:

Light mortar team:

And the Sniper team:

I'll be honest, none of them are going to win any painting competitions, they are strictly table top quality. That is fine with me though, becase with the limited hobby time I do get and how slow I am when I do paint, it's the only way to get an army ready. In any case, with 25 men done, it's a big step towards a full army. 

In putting them together I followed my normal basing conventions in that two man squads go on their own bases. 3 men and more will go on large, group bases. The squads are the traditional 10 men, with one LMG, NCO with SMG and rifles all round for the rest.

In terms of continuing this army, the only other unit I have is a Sherman Firefly. However, it's my birthday at the end of the month and both the parents and the wife have been provided with wish lists. They are not exclusively British (or even Bolt Action), but I imagine I'll get a few more units for this army. 

Got plenty in the painting queue at the moment, just can't see much time ahead for hobbying, so I apologise if the blog gets a bit irregular. 

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Failure!

This month I had a self imposed goal of building and painting a full box of the Warlord late war British Infantry. So that was 25 miniatures, all at 28mm scale in 30 days. This was actually quite a tall order for me as I am a slow painter at the best of times! But I gave it a good go.

There were times when it seemed possible but regrettably, I did not make it. The main reason was just that real life got in they way. A lost hour here and a missing evening there all added up to get in the way. What is worse is I only fell short by the narrowest of margins, the basing was all that needed doing. 

They currently stand at this stage:

The good news is that they should get done this weekend, which gets October off to a flying start. Once they are done, it shall be on to either some Germans, Taliban, tanks or Epic Imperial Guard? Choices, choices! Anyone any preferences? 

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