They Live...

So,

A buddy of Mine, Mike from Ddgreenskins blog after each Grumble Bowl (local Blood Bowl event) builds a new team and he suggested why not do that myself. I had a couple of choices and a few 2nd teams, but I figured I would give it a go with a team I did not have, Undead.

Whats better then one box, but two of course!

I had one box of Undead for some time, but with the boxes I found that you really need two boxes to be able to cover most options for the team. For example, you can have up to four Ghouls while the box set only has two in it. So two weekends ago I went down to my local shop and picked up another box.

Some nice models in the box

So with the second box acquired, I set out to build the models. Now anyone that knows me understands that I can not have duplicate models in a project, I have to convert the duplicates to give them each there own look. Now I have to say, that these models are a pain in the butt to assemble, the skeletons reminded me of the early days of GW with the torso and legs being glued together on the back bone, well these did as well. Very finicky and a pain to get together, I would not recommend this to a beginner as the first plastic team to assemble. This took me a few hours just to get all the models assembled. I did start altering one of the Ghouls so I would not have a duplicate pose.

Team picture minus paint

 So the second box was for the zombies, skeletons and two other ghouls. So i started with the easy ones, the Ghouls/ Having a large AOS Flesh Eaters army so that means I have a huge amount of extra bits. So I did some arm swaps and head swaps to get three unique looking models.

Some conversion work

 I then tackled the skeletons which many look the same, not alot O could do about it, but their arms are in different poses. The Zombies were a bit more fun, as I cut and reassembled limbs to give each one a different look. In the below picture you can see two of my custom tokens that I use for the game. The Undead comes with a Hand reaching up to be used for rerolls, TDs and turns. You also get a coin for flipping. So I took the had and placed the coin in it, this will be my TD token. Then the other hand I added a single dice to be my re roll counter. The hand all by itself will be the turn token, little things like this make the team.

Tokens and models

 So there you have it, this past weekends work, now onto painting and planning a team display board.

TK

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Grumble Bowl 2019

So, its Monday morning after the Grumble bowl 2019 here in Phoenix and I have had some time to mull over my experience and I thought this may be the best way to document it, so let’s get started.

The Good – Well we had a Blood Bowl event at my local shop, that is awesome enough! This would be my first ever Blood Bowl tournament as a player! When I arrived, the tables were all set with GW pitches, dugouts, templates and quick reference sheets. All the boards were using the regular pitch, some boards are hard to use due to the graphics in my opinion. So, to arrive an hour early and everything was set up and ready to go was awesome! Check in went very quickly as I was early and one other person (Mike) was there. This event you had to register for the NAF and if you had not done that the organizer was getting you signed up there, once again awesome.

I got to play three games for the event and they were enjoyable, although my second game had me loose 8 players to casualties, that hurt! But all in all, the games were fun and no major issues with any of the players.

The Bad -  Well, as this was a NAF sanctioned event, you had to pay $10.00 to join the NAF. So this in a nutshell added $10.00 to the entry fee of $15.00, so it was now $25.00 to play three NAF sanctioned games. Now I have been a member of MAF from when it was free, but now in order to be a member you must pay $10.00 a year, which is not bad, but I still do not see the value in being a paid member of the NAF. Yes, you do get a token and two dice for your $10.00, but it can take up to 9 months for those to get sent to you. Seeing how I would only play in this tournament, I am not sure if it’s worth it.

Also speaking that this was a NAF sanctioned event, I would have thought more players would have been there, we only got 6 players! What the heck happened to all the players? Did the event being NAF sanctioned scare off folks? I will admit, when I heard it was NAF sanctioned, I almost backed out. I play these games to have fun and a good time, with it now being something that players all over the world track their win & loss record, I was expecting to see a lot of “hard core” tournament players. Maybe that is why players did not show.

One other thing that was a downer for me, is that last year what you got for your entry fee was a draw. Last year each player got a ball tray, a Beer Mug and a few other things. I was really looking forward to at least the ball tray as the store prints these on their 3D printer. But the store owner was out of town for personal reasons and nothing got made by any of the other employees (now many may not be able to use the printer, so I get it), but I was really bummed by not getting anything for my entry fee.

The Ugly – Well the lack of promotion for the event, now to be fair the store owner knew he failed on this and apologized for it several times. He has had his time split with being here in Phoenix and doing repairs to his families homestead in Montana, but couldn’t the other employees have stepped up to help? I know a few of them promote other games, but this may have been a reason for the lack of players. What happened to the community? The other thing is that we started late and this was not the organizers fault as he was waiting rather nervously for players to walk in.

So overall it was a well-run event once we got started, but I was rather disappointed in the lack of players. Other than myself, Mike and Eric, we were the only ones on time, the others showed up late (granted one was the store owner who stepped up to play as we only had 5 people). I was asked if I would play in this event again, right now I would say no, the cost and the return was not there for me. I bought a new team (two boxes actually) and spent time building, and painting and even fabricated a display board all for not. The money expended just does not make it feasible to pay all that money for little to no return when I could get in three games with the paying so much.

TK

On the Road to GRUMBLE!!!!!

Okay Sports Fanz,

Back with a new Series called "Road to Grumble" my documentation of building, painting and playing a new Blood Bowl Team for Grumble Bowl 2019, a local run Blood Bowl event here in Phoenix

Local Blood Bowl Event at imperial Outpost Games, Phoenix AZ

Last year was the first annual event and I missed it because the wife surprised me with concert tickets for the same day. I had planned on taking my Azog Ardinals Ork team, but it was not meant to be.

So this year (September 21, 2019) I have no concerts or other surprises planned, so I should be able to attend. (crossing fingers!). So another buddy of mine (Mike of the former Dagreenskins and now Tabletopin) will be playing and he is going to paint up a brand new team for the event. So I thought why not do the same thing.

New team

So with that said, I took a look at what team to build, a few months back I purchased the Beastmen team and figure this would be a great way to get them built, painted and onto the pitch. So with that being said, The Herd was born!

The Herd

My plan is to go for a white uniform trimmed with gold which in a way will make them look a bit angelic to me, but perfect for Chaos, it should be a nice look on the pitch, will we will see.

Markers for the team

Also since I am a modeler, I had to do up a few tokens for the game. In each of the new box sets you get a special marker for TD’s & Re rolls and one coin token for Re-rolls (or which ever one you want to use. So I decided that I liked the had holding the flaming trophy so that will be for the TD’s, I then took the second marker, took the top part of the flaming trophy off and placed the coin token on it to represent my turn marker. I had another box set of the team so I used the third one to be my re rolls but decided to add instead of the trophy or token, to add two dice to it to be my re roll marker. I am very happy how these turned out and fits for the theme aspect.

So there you go, the beginnings of   my next journey in the next few weeks, stay tuned for more updates.

TK

Who's ready for Grumble Bowl 2018???

Good Morning Blood Bowl Fans,

So my local store will be running a one day Blood Bowl event on September 29th, 2018 called Grumble Bowl! They are wanting to make this a once a year event and I have always wanted to play in a Blood Bowl Tournament, so here is my chance.

I pretty much decided that I would run an Orc team and it would be a great chance to bring out my Azog Ardinals team, the only time they have been out was Taco Bowl I, which was earlier this year that I ran for a few friends. My Orcs were run by a friend of mine, Derek Rider. He did very well with them getting Mr. Assassin award, although he was playing against a elf team to get all those casualties!

Any way, I decided that the Ardinals would make another appearance for Grumble Bowl, but I needed to finish off the team. Now when I started the team about a year ago, I had plans to make a few extra models for the Coaching staff, so I dug through my unpainted minis and found a few models to use for coaching staff. First up was a Savage Orc Shaman that would be great for an apothecary,  no real conversion work, just painted him up in the Ardinals colors. Next was the cheer leader, which was a Savage Orc musician that I converted and gave him a banner for the team. I am on the look out for a second edition orc cheer leader and if you have ever seen this model, it is a very disturbing model, but perfect for Orcs! The Head coach model is a 3rd (or 4th or 5th) edition plastic Black Orc Blocker that just seemed to be perfect for the coach.

Apothecary, Head Coach and Cheerleader

So with that I had my coaching staff, which I will use for my Re roll, TD and turn markers for the game. I plan to add a back drop that has the Azog Ardinals name and logo on it for the event, but we will see how the inspiration for that goes. All in all I am very happy with how this team came out and I was worried that the Red/White uniform color with their green skins would give off a xmas vibe, but I don't think so. So now I just have to get in a few practice games with them before Grumble Bowl 2018. here are a few more pictures of the team.

The award winning coaching staff for the AZog Ardinals (Which they looted from the Blood Bowl Hall of Fame!)

2018 AZog Ardinals

TK

Taco Bowl I 2018 in the books!

So,

Ever since I bought my first Blood Bowl box game way back when, I have always wanted to run a Blood Bowl Tournament. Now I had tried many times, but thee was no real interest with my group of players. I had run a few Blood Bowl days with a few folks, but with the game being out of print, it was hard to get folks excited about it.

Well last year when GW re-released Blood Bowl, a few of my gaming group got into it and played a few games. My son over lunch one day (while eating tacos) brought up the idea to do a tournament and I thought maybe it would be a good time to do something about it. As we were eating Tacos at a favorite place of ours the Taco & Dilla Parlor we came up with Taco Bowl I.

So with an idea in my head, I came up with this back story for the Taco Bowl:

Taco Bowl I came about after an up incoming Halfling named Paul Hairytoes went on an “adventure” across the Great ocean in search of new recipes. His travels took him to a far south western port where the locals made hard crispy corn shells that held various meats, vegetables and cheeses, the locals called these Tacos. Well, Paul Hairytoes found his newest creation and sailed back across the Great ocean to introduce this amazing, delicious creation to the people of the Old World.

Unfortunately, Paul had run into some trouble with gambling and betting on Blood Bowl matches before he went on his little “adventure”.  So, while on the ship back to the old-world Paul came up with a brilliant plan, He would change his name to Paco, no last name, just Paco and start selling his own brand of Paco’s Tacos (trademark pending). But Paul aka Paco, had to figure out how to get the word out about his Paco’s Tacos. His plan was simple; he would sponsor a new Halfling Blood Bowl Team called the Tiny Titans and sell his Paco’s Tacos to the crowd. This would allow him to get rich off Paco’s Tacos and let him bet against his own team, thus guarantying that he would never have gambling issues ever again, because Paul aka Paco knows, Halfling teams never win!

With that said, Taco Bowl I was launched, with Paco’s Tacos being a proud sponsor of the Tiny Titans and the glorious Taco Bowl I. Teams from all over the old world will travel the newest venue, the Paco’s Tacos Stadium or as the fans call it, The Taco Bowl.

As this is the first ever Taco Bowl I, this will be an invite only (as Paul aka Paco is trying to stack the deck to better his winnings). 

With the story set, I hand picked 8 players to participate in the first ever Taco Bowl I. The format would be simple, build a Million point list of no more than 16 players on the roster. Each round would have the teams reset but the players needed to keep track of kO's and TD's scored. I also allowed each player to pick one card out of the the various special cards used for the game.

The Mighty Taco Bowl I Trophy as well as the lessor Assassin Award & Mr. TD award, we spared no expense1

Now that we had eight players I needed a fun trophy for the event which was secured at the local party store and then my brother said we need something to put in the trophies. So it was decided that hot sauce packets from a local Del Taco were just the perfect thing! My wife found a "Taco" hat, and we had our prizes for this glorious event. 

Our venue for the glorious Taco Bowl I would be at Funkatronic Rex Board Games and More here in Phoenix. Mike the owner just opened the store about a year and a half ago and was looking to do something with me. And with it being right next door to the Taco & Dilla Parlor, it was a no brainier.  Plus it got a few new folks to come over to his shop.

With that, we were set and 8 players arrived at Taco Bowl I and we were able to get in two games each. Here are a few pictures from the event.

Everyone had a great time, we had two old pros (Myself & Mike G) as well as some veterans (Kat & Derek) and the rest were all newbies (Jerry, Robert, Mychal and John) some had only played one time and that was a few years ago (more like 7 but who's counting!).

After all was said and done, we had three winners for the day. My son Mychal took home Mr. Touch Downs, Derek took the Assassin award and Mike G took home the big Taco, being the First Taco Bowl Champion!

The Big Winners!

All in all it was a very fun day and I used this event to dip my toe into the waters of running a bigger Blood Bowl event. I wanted to see how everything would shack out and I am trying to get folks to join me in playing a small league for BB, we shall see on that.

TK

Where has the time gone?

Well

It has certainly been a very long time since I posted here, you may be wondering why? Well I just haven't felt like posting, I mean I have tried posting but then the urge passes and I am onto to something else. Also it seems that most folks (myself included) have switched over to posting either to Facebook or Twitter. Another thing that a few folks have mentioned on other blogs, it seems that blog readership is in decline. Well that is true, most of the blogs I do follow are in the same state as mine, so in order to try to reverse that, I am going to start reposting here.

So with that I guess the next question is what have I been up to then? Well recently I have been drug back into the GW hobby! You see, GW has been revamping their "Specialist" games. Well GW re released Blood Bowl. Well BB is my weakness and I knew I had to have it!

So now with the new box set in my hands I started,working on a proper Orc team. You see out of all of the teams I have collected I never built a Orc team for myself. A few years ago I did scratch build an Orc team for my son out of GW fantasy kit models. 

Well not be happy with stock models I started to convert the models. You see I hate to have duplicate models, and converting is part of the hobby after all.

With that, the Azog Orkinals were born, since I am a Arizona Cardinals fan, it seemed like the rich choice for the Orks, plus Orks love red, so I came up with Red white and green as the colors.

Well after I did this team, I sort of dug out a few of my older teams and started working on them. Since I first started playing Blood Bowl, I always wanted to,build a Halfling team,. Too me it is just plain funny that Halflings would want to play Blood Bowl and the size of the models is jfunny to see on the board. 

Well for years I have been slowly collecting models and finally I had enough and decide to get them painted up as well. Going with the funny side, I decided to paint them up in the Tennessee Titans colors, because after all, Halfling are such a might team! 

And then my brother and I got in a game and he said he would like to play a dwarf team. So once again I busted out a few models and asked what colors to paint up this new team. Well my brother took one look at the models and said how about purple and white like the Minosotta Vikings. 

So there you have it, a few new Blood Bowl teams for the new year. So I will start posting more this year to try to reverse to decline of blogs and get back to doing my hobby here. So stay tuned for more content on Cursed treasures. And remember to Eat Pacos Tacos!

TK

Blood Bowl Back in the House!

So,

A few weeks ago now, I succumbed to pressure and purchased a GW product. You see, for the past few years I have pretty much given up on GW games as most of my favorites went away. I sold off most armies or collections I had. But as the world now knows, GW updated and brought back a classic game that I always loved, Blood Bowl!

a moment of weakness overtook me!

I knew it was coming out and I had mixed feelings about it, as well as having kept two versions safely in the closet (and from the great GW purge) I told myself I did not really need the same game I already had. I also kept telling myself that I would not have anyone to play against, because the two versions I had (and many teams by the way) went in-played for years, so why should I buy this yet again?

Well before I knew what I was doing, I was walking out of my local store with a copy of the game and the Death Zone Season one book in my arms! As I drove home, I kept asking myself what had I done? How was I so weak? And would anyone play the game with me? I am weak, I know it!

Once I got home, I carefully unwrapped the shrink wrapping and took off the lid, it was like Christmas of days gone by when I opened up the 2nd box all those years ago! There were cool new models, a cool new board, a cool set of templates, everything was so cool looking, GW had done a great job with this update and there was a WOW factor of opening the box like old GW games used to have.

Well a few nights ago I started working on assembling the new Orc models, you get two identical frames of 6 orcs, so I quickly assembled the 6 just as they were. But I knew that the next 6 would be converted into different poses and have a few head swaps. The first conversion was the Throwers.

Stock model on the Left, Converted on the Right.

It was a pretty easy conversion, just had to do a few cuts to alter the look of the model. All the models in the new game are two or three piece kits that really only go together one way. You have to do so thinking about what you want to do to them. Next up was the Blitzer, he had his arms removed and had to Black Orc arms added to him, I pictured him smashing through a line slugging and swinging as he went.

Stock on Right, Converted on Left.

But then, I remembered I had some after market Orc heads and I went crazy with head swaps and re positioning of the rest of the models. I even went and took off the heads on the two above models, I just loved how they look.

New Heads!

Group Shot

 My plan is to paint these guys up like my favorite NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, but in typical Orc fashion, the will be called the AZog Orcinals! So they will be getting painted Red and White uniforms, I am just hoping that with the green skin, they will not look like the Christmas Orcs! We will see!

So there you go, I am weak and yes world, I am a GW addict, God help me if Necromunda comes back, I will be totally lost!

TK

Blood Bowl Returns!

Well,

It seems that Games Workshop is going to re-release Blood Bowl in the fall and I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas morning to arrive! I am totally stoked about this, Blood Bowl was one of the first GW games I picked up and I have a love for the game that I can't really describe. I love the game, I hate the game and whenever I find people selling teams or models I pick them up!

The rumor's have been floating around for years that GW would re-do the game, but word is getting out that the rules are pretty much going to be the same that folks are currently playing now. (Yes there are still people playing Blood Bowl at big events).

So here are a few pictures I grabbed off of Twitter this morning showing all the cool models coming out!

 

 

 



 

 

The new models look amazing and the fact that they have announced that they will be in plastic is great news! One source from Twitter mentioned that Humans, Orcs, Elves, Dwarves and Skaven will be the first releases in plastic. Star Players will be in resin more than likely released through Forge World. And if sales go well, there will be a second season release with even more models. The future looks bright for BB fans.

 

So I know I will be giving more money to GW in the fall, time to start saving my pennies for all the cool new BB stuff that will be coming out. Hmm now I need to make a Buccaneer team for Blood Bowl, hmmm...

 

TK 

Its all the Ferrets Fault!

Okay,

So I have been following a blog called Laughing Ferret for some time now and he has been posting up some coverage of the NATC: North American Team Championship of Blood Bowl in Las Vegas. Well after seeing his reports and also watching him do some amazing conversions for Blood Bowl teams, I decided that I should put up a few of my teams.

I still have the box!

Remember these oldies, yes I still have them!

Now I have been a huge fan of Blood Bowl for some time, starting with 2nd edition. We had about 10 people with teams and we ran a couple of leagues. My wife even was involved and had a team (Rainbow Warriors). But other games took our interests elsewhere and Blood Bowl faded away from the table. Up until the beginning of 2012, which I hosted a Blood Bowl day and had a few friends come over. Everybody loved it, but once again it faded away.

Well, I want to change that, I may try to rally the troops to play more Blood Bowl. Now GW is once again making it tough with the demise of Specialist Games, but where there is will, there is a way. So the first plan is to post up some of my teams to hopefully inspire folks, we will see. So here are my teams, first up the Dirty Rat Bastards, a 1st edition Skaven team. This is a pretty basic team, I do want to pick up a Rat Ogre to flesh out the team, we will see.

Dirty Rat Bastards

Next up are the Brittle Bones, a  Tomb King team that is all converted from plastic Tomb king model. I built these guys a few years ago on a whim and I loved every minute while doing it. I also loved the color scheme that I used, which was going to be the colors for my Tomb King army before I sold it. I purchased a Mummy from Westwind Miniatures to add to the team, but I pressed him into service for Pulp games, so I will need to buy another one (oh darn!)

Brittle Bones!

The Throwers! No witty names yet.

A couple of Blitzers

A few Catchers

 Next up is my Dwarf team, the Black & Bruisers! This is another 1st edition team and there are a bunch of them. This was my brothers team, although they were Green & White after the Eagles colors. Well those were looking pretty bad so these boys got a dip in the Simple Green and repainted back in 2012. I love these figures, they have a bunch of character in there faces. Also you will see one figure that is a dwarf, but a Chaos Dwarf and that's the Thrower. Since Dwarfs were not a throwing team (nor are they now) my brother wanted a dwarf thrower, well he found one and it works well with the team.

Black & Bruisers

Chaos Thrower, why not?

 Now for a time out, here is a referee for Blood Bowl. Back in 2nd edition you could have these guys on the field, so I picked one up.

Hey you, come here!

I got something for yeah!

 Next up is another classic team from the good old days, a High Elf team. Now this paint job was dictated to me from my son to look like the Denver Broncos. We still need to come up with a name for them and like High Elves, they are colorful. There are also a few other cool figures, like the Elf Blitzer (Can't remember his name) as well as the Elf Kicker. Yes you could actually have kicker models on your teams!

Bucking Broncos?? Or something else?

Blitzer whats his name!

Look everyone at my pretty nails!

Hair Band wannabes!

 Next up is another fully converted team, my son's Orcland Raiders (yeah I know, but that's what he wanted to call them). This team was put together with plastic Orc models from the Fantasy line and was another fun team to build. It has goblins (gnobblars) and even his own touchdown token. I gave this to my son for Christmas of 2011.

Orcland Raider team shot

Da Black Orc Blockers

Da Blitzers!

Da Throwers, Little gunz on the Left, Big Gunz on the right!

Were sexy and we know it!

Da Stealin Crew

Our TD marker!

 Now, that concludes the fully painted stuff, here are a few others that are in need of work. First up is my wife's old team, The Rainbow Warriors. This is another 1st edition team and my wife painted these here self 20 years ago. They are a bit dinged up and she will not let me strip them. So they sit waiting there turn to play. Notice the old color bases, that's how we used to keep track of which position the models were. No fuzzy rings here!

My Wife's Rainbow Warriors!

Now the next few pics are interesting, first up are a couple of Chaos Dwarves that my brother bought for his Dwarf team. He gave the figures to me for a season that allowed us to draft other races onto our teams. These guys were on my Dark Elf Team Drows Rage. Now they also show the hideous paint job that I had on my dark elves. The team got stripped down to bare metal, but these guys stayed around with their old uniforms still on.

Drow's Rage Chaos Dwarves!

Now here is my Dark Elf team in all there bare glory, this too is another 1st edition team and I will one day get around to painting them. but for now they wait there turn, but they will return.

My old dark elves!

 Last team I have are 16 Halfling figures. I love the face work on these guys, they have so much character. Now all I need is a cool Treeman to throw these guys around with. One day these guys will get finished up.

Were mean, were tiny, were going to kick you in your hiney!

So there you go, a little trip down Blood Bowl lane. Hopefully this will inspire some of my buddies here and I will get Blood Bowl back onto the table.

TK