Double trouble 2: Space marines

Hello reader! Continuing our musing on what to take for double trouble l, I thought I'd address what is probably the elephant in the strike cruiser. The skyhammer formation. 

Alex has updated the page since last I posted about this, and there are a couple of interesting things that both encourage and discourage me to take it. I don't quite know how well it will work in teams, where as I am sure that in the 3rd deployment type it would be awesome. That's because each 750 starts in a different corner, allowing you and your team mate to gang up completely on one side.  In a later post I'll discuss my thoughts on the mission. 



Tickets and attendance

Happily, I've already achieved first place at this tournament! Check out the link here: http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/p/double-trouble-doubles-with-difference.html?m=1 to see who got ticket number 1! At the moment only 4 of the tickets have sold, I'd really encourage people to buy tickets if they can make it, Alex's events have always been well run and the vibe is usually excellent. If you're reading this and you're a Leicester sabre, ask me about it - we can always take a couple of extra ppl in the cars. Otherwise, get on board!

Skyhammer Draft 1

As you may or may not be aware, a fully decked out skyhammer formation comes in at around 800 points, so it's not hard to reduce that to 750. Let's take a look at my first stab at it:

 

9 Assault Marines: flamer; eviscerator; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combat shield) 175

5 Assault Marines: flamer; eviscerator; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant (combat shield) 119

9 Devastator Marines: 4× multi-melta; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant 180

• Drop Pod 35

9 Devastator Marines: 3× missile launcher; lascannon; + 1 Space Marine Sergeant 205

• Drop Pod 35

749 points

The main thing to note here is that the assault marines aren't big enough to both combat squad, with only one being 10 men. The devastators however are, making handy use of thier 3d6 morale check rule.  To stick to the format, here and some of the brief pros and cons.

Positive 

1. The special rules that this formation gets. All turning up turn 1? Yes. Relentless devastators and assault marines charging on turn 1? Yes. 
2. Board Control. Deploying my entire force after my oppenant is almost guaranteed. Not 100%, but most of the time I will get to choose the engagements, overwhelming specific flanks or areas. 
3. Mission types. Good for objectives in the first few turns, but even better for collapsing your opponent. 
4. Other deep strike armies. This combos nicely with other deep striking units. Got some swooping Hawks? Another skyhammer even?

Negative

1. It's only 35 marines. Not a lot of men so you'd need to be careful with them. One loose battle cannon shell and you're done for!
2. Anti armour. I'm not sure how well it would do against Knights. I've got eviscerators and multimeltas I suppose, but no grav, and no plasma for terminators. 
3. Hordes. Tyrannids and orks would love you to drop right in front of them and maybe kill a unit or two. 
4. Fearless. One of the hidden strengths of the skyhammer is the pinning effect the devastators can have. If your oppenant is fearless, that strength is taken away. 
5. Other skyhammers. Or people just reserving their stuff. It's then almost the battle to go second!

I am honestly unsure as to how competitive a taking a Skyhammer would be. As you can see from the negatives, it basically fails on paper against most things. Im not convinced that it would play very well in maelstrom missions either. Part of the game here is to make your opponent do something different and make a mistake because of what you're presenting them with. It would also had much more of an impact at 1500 than 1850, especially when everything has the potential to be much more disjointed.


I think for me overall, the skyhammer will still make your oppenant sigh as they look at your army, even with 30k, knights and other things all being allowed. So do I want to be that guy? And just as importantly, can I be bothered to paint 15 assault marines (that are pretty useless apart from this formation!) Its the trap that Games Workshop try to get you with all the time. Most of the time, I'm ashamed to say, they get me hook line and sinker. We will have to see. I might start getting some practice games in my local club now Alex has released the missions!


Until next time!



The Juggernaut Shield - Pictures and Final Thoughts

I thought I would showcase some photos of the teams from our tourney last weekend, and also muse on the advantages and disadvantages of having a bye.

Waaaagshington Greenskins

Ian's team are an experienced team of many editions of blood bowl, and even include a painted coach and apothecary (see back row in the centre).

The starting line up, a nice traditional red colour scheme, with some added extras. Ian did a bit of touching up on the models in preparation with some liquid skill (nuln oil). There are some really nice details, for example the shoulder pads of the blitzers came out really well. 

These are the two models that were hastily assembled in order to crunch me in round 4 and the semi final. Rather intimidating when he's assembling a black Orc (Thrasher) as we play, in case we play next round. The goblin was who nearly scored in the final is called "Pancake McNumpty". 

The final line up! With added emergency models takin thier assigned places. Really nice team to play against, great to have two fully painted playing ball on the pitch!

Pro Elf Pansies

Not fully painted, but that didn't stop them destroying all before them! They scored 18 touchdowns in three games!

And very impressively, these 3 were the cornerstone of the attack. 11 completions and 13 touchdowns between the three players (one of the catchers got a completion as well!) meant that the thrower and 2 catchers made this team champions! Plus they had terrific names :)

Mul-Buldohr Brewmiesters 

As featured in a previous post, the drunken dwarves! Thankfully from my perspective I never had to face thier death roller. Love the 3D printed tankards, and especially beer leader in the middle!

And to underline things- here they are kicking the teeth in of my wood elves! For some reason I tried to go toe to toe with them!

Bad Kings of the Old World

Although you've seen them before, here is a shot or two of my team:

A close up of a loyal lineman

Some of the star performers. My catcher scored most of my TDs and this wardancer got +1 armour! (And also didn't die!)

Obviously there were 5 teams, but I didn't get any close up shots of the South Park Rangers - although very nicely painted they were a stand in team and tbh I also forgot!

Project completed!

Whilst I'm a little late to the party, I'm declaring the combined blood bowl bits from January a major achievement of my 2015-2016 list. I completed the team by the 16th, majorly fast painting skills! And we also held the tourney. I only scored 8 touchdowns in 5 games, so that's a bit of a fail, and something I need to work on in the future. 

Having a bye
One of the things that we encountered was that every person had a bye for one game. In such a small tournament it didnt have to great an effect, but I can think of a couple of ways that it might be made more interesting. For example, so that there could be some benefit to having a bye, the coach could pick one of the following four options for his team to complete.

• "Rest week". In the middle of any busy season, teams always need a chance to rest and recuperate. Sometimes squads arent big enough to allow proper rotation, so you choose to give your team a short break. Effect: This bye allows any "miss next game" effects from the casualty table to be healed during your bye, meaning that players can start your next match.
• "Press Drive". Every second counts in this league! You and your players go on a press drive, flooding instagoblin, faceelf and all other types of social media/media in an effort to grow your fanbase. This has a positive effect, but you wont know how much until your next game. Effect: At the start of your next league game, you may permanently add some fan factor to your roster. Roll a D3 and add the result to your fan factor.
• "Intensive Training". Theres no rest for the wicked. You need to use this week to train your team up and work on those special plays. They spend the whole week on the training ground. This has varying positive outcomes, but at least you get more experienced as a unit. Effect: Randomly assign one team member +3 SPP to represent this training.
• "Gala Dinner". Be it Dragon Steak or Halfling Hotpot, your team has a fund raising dinner in an effort to prop up its ailing bank balance. You invite the local nobles and barons to your home ground for an evening of mixing with their star players in the hope of attracting more funding. Effect: Roll a D3 and add this much to your treasury. If this boosts your treasury enough to make a purchase, you may do so before your next game.

These are just my ideas! Does anybody have any comments or counterpoints? To powerful? To weak? Not needed? 

As ever, thanks for reading :) hopefully later this week, I will be musing further on double trouble lists. I'm going to address what for me is the elephant in the room :) 

The Juggernaut Shield: Blood Bowl Baby Cup Part 2

Today you join us as we look at part 2 of my review of the Juggernaut Shield: Blood Bowl Baby Cup. For part one, please go here.

As a reminder, the table after 4 rounds looked like this:

Head Coach	Team Race	Team Name	Played	Win	Draw	Loss	Points
Matt Grimes	Pro Elves	Pro Elf Pansies	3	3	-	-	9
Ian King	Orcs	Waaaagshington Greenskins	3	2	-	1	6
Luke Fogg (me!)	Wood Elves	Bad-Kings of the Old World	3	1	1	1	4
Matt Calow	Dwarfs	Mul-Buldohr Brewmeisters	4*	1	-	3	3
Peter Barrett	Humans	South Park Rangers	3	-	1	2	1

*Calow received the first round bye on the Sunday morning

So, in the fifth round my elves were to play the Waaashington Greenskins, with South Park Rangers needing to beat the Pro Elf Pansies to make the cut. I wasn't sure if I would be able to beat Ian. We'd played a practice game a couple of weeks ago, and he had stomped all over me for a 2-1 win for the Orcs. I touched the ball once after my second turn the whole game! So I knew I had to do better.

I got to receive in the first half, and was able to score almost straight away, in my second turn (this is my almost complete cage - the last guy fell over! However, in-spite of this I was leading 1-0, and then looking to craft a decent defense. I succeeded in this endeavor, managing to keep Ian from scoring for the rest of the half. Not only this, but on my turn 7 I bundled his ball carrier into the crowd, scattering the ball deep into his half. This was the turning point in the game, it went from the Orcs probably equalizing to me scoring a second touchdown on the stroke of half time. 

Quick! Stop them!

In the second half, Ian scored (despite my wizard i had bought with my inducements!) and if memory serves, punched me quite a bit! I did shove at least two of his players into the crowd though! The final score however, was 2-1 to me. With Pete failing to stop the Pansies as they raced into the semi finals, the final table looked like this: 

Head Coach	Team Race	Team Name	Played	Win	Draw	Loss	Points
Matt Grimes	Pro Elves	Pro Elf Pansies	4	4	-	-	12
Luke Fogg (me!)	Wood Elves	Bad-Kings of the Old World	4	2	1	1	7
Ian King	Orcs	Waaaagshington Greenskins	4	2	-	2	6
Matt Calow	Dwarfs	Mul-Buldohr Brewmeisters	4	1	-	3	3
Peter Barrett	Humans	South Park Rangers	4	-	1	3	1

We'd agreed beforehand that 1st would play 4th, and 2nd would play 3rd. This for me meant a grudge match with Ian straight away, whilst in the other semi final we had a game to decide who was the better Matt.

Ian and I took to the field again, with the game progressing in similar manner to the previous one. I scored reasonably early on (took me until turn 3 this time!) and then after the reset we had riot, which moved the turn markers on by 1 square. this was significant, because it gave the Orcs less time to grind through elves on the way to a touchdown, which gave me more opportunities to break the cage. Indeed, I started the second half with 11 players still on the pitch!

BB is the real fantasy football 

However, this was not the end of the story for the first half. In what was the biggest mess imaginable, I fumbled a long pass (twice) and the ball bounced out of the grasp of my thrower. Suddenly, there were Black Orcs and spare Black Orcs punching my elves out of the way. My elves, like my morale collapsed in a heap as the Orcs ran in for a Touchdown with the last move of the first half. Instead of going in 1 ahead, I was drawing.

These guys served me loyally but ate a lot of astrogranite

As we went into the second half, both of the semi finals were tied at 1-1, the Dwarfs holding their own against the Pro Elf Pansies. I felt confident in the second half, but alas it was not to be. Without a wizard i was unable to stop the Orcs scoring again, and without an apothecary i was unable to save my lineman who had kick from dying. (Kick is a seriously amazing skill as far as im concerned!) I could have tied it up 2-2 but for three turns in a row I was unable to throw the ball, or dodge to get to the ball, or throw the ball. So Ian rolled out with a 2-1 win,  and in a controversial turn of events the coach of the Wood Elves petulantly fired the whole team on the spot, so grumpy was he with their performances. In the other semi final, the "battleMatt semi final"  was won by the Pro Elf Pansies  2-1. This set up an Orc vs Pro Elves final.

The Final was a tense affair, with not only the Juggernaut Shield up for grabs, but bragging rights as well. If it had been me in Ian's shoes, I would have tried to kill the Catchers and then worry about everything else later. On reflection I think that may have been his plan.




With Matt leading 1-0 from an early touchdown as we approached half time, the Orc's were driving towards the end zone. However, their Cage was broken and in one turn the ball ended up one square away from the Orc end zone as matt failed his last go for it before scoring. Ian then tried to repeat the same feat, picking the ball up and going to a long throw that would have led to a hand off to a black Orc to score. It was not to be however, with the throw spiralling away in the wrong direction. Thus the first half ended with Matt ahead 1-0.

In the second half, Matt scored again and the situation become desperate enough for Ian to bring on his new goblin "Pancake McNumpty". Even this Goblin couldn't make it to the end zone, despite getting very close. To add insult to injury as Pancake failed a dodge roll and dropped the ball, the Pro Elves picked it up and again scored on the final turn of the Game, meaning that they deservedly won 3-0.




All in all, a great little mini tournament. I personally re-learnt a lot about how to play the game and also watching Matt play with the Pro Elves about how to block better/to my advantage. Ill be covering more of that in another post later this week, but for now I will leave you with a picture of the winner, with the Juggernaut Shield.

The Juggernaut Shield - Blood Bowl Baby Cup

Today I will be reviewing the first day of the Juggernaut Shield Blood Bowl Baby Cup that took place this weekend. This post forms the first of two that will record into the blog sphere our inaugural Juggernaut Cup.Originally we had planned to have 8 of us play in Coalville (just outside Leicester in the UK) in the nerd-airium of one of our club members Chris (toph). However, a couple of people couldn't make it, and then on Friday Chris' wife went into labor early. She gave birth on Sunday to a beautiful baby boy named Arthur, putting all our toys into perspective! Congratulations Chris and Kat! So because of the tiny amount of players and the newest addition to the Buckle Clan, we've gone with the name "Baby Cup".

So this left 5 of us, (see the below table), and nowhere to play. Fortunately, my wife was away for the weekend and we could all bundle round to my place. After some frantic phone calls on Friday night, we agreed to play 4 games of Round Robin with one person taking a bye each round, and then the top 4 would play semi-finals and then a final. This review is the first part of two, mainly from my perspective but with a few comments on the other highlights that I can remember!

Head Coach	Team Race	Team Name
Matt Grimes	Pro Elves	Pro Elf Pansies
Matt Calow	Dwarfs	Mul-Buldohr Brewmeisters
Ian King	Orcs	Waaaagshington Greenskins
Luke Fogg (me!)	Wood Elves	Bad-Kings of the Old World
Peter Barrett	Humans*	South Park Rangers

*Pete had order a Khemri team online before Christmas but frustratingly it still hadn’t turned up by the time we were due to play.

My first game was against the Mul-Buldohr Brewmeisters. These hardy Dwarfs were all custom modelled, with 3d printed tankards and other bits and bobs attached. Calow did an excellent job converting them. I got very lucky in this game on a couple of occasions, and ended up winning 2-1. In the second half i kicked to the Dwarfs and got a blitz straight away (free defensive turn before the receiving team has a go). This allowed me to score a second touchdown by the end of the my first "proper"turn of the second half. I did take a bit of beating, ending up with only 6 players on the pitch by the end of the game. 

me for some reason going toe-to-toe with Dwarves

There were a couple of highlights for my first game against Matt. The first was that over the course of the game i failed the first role of each turn more times than i care to remember. I also got double attacker down 5 times. That's not including the times i got attacker down plus both down. It was seemingly more dangerous for me to try two dice blocks than "risk" a 1 dice block.

The Mul-Buldohr Brewmeisters

The second highlight was that a Dwarf runner nearly blitzed + dodged out of a 4 man Wood elf defensive cage to score BY HIMSELF. He failed one of the last dodge rolls. Kudos to Matt for trying it - it certainly scared the crap out of me!

stop him! hes not supposed to dodge like that!

In the other first round game the Orcs beat the humans, with the Pro Elves receiving the bye. My second round game was the bye so i chilled out and got some lunch. The picture below is the Waashington Greenskins vs the Pro Elf pansies in the second round. A game that the Elves went on to win. The other game from the second round was one where the humans were again punched by the Dwarfs. 

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

For the third round I played the Pro Elf Pansies. From my perspective, this looked set to be a properly classic, high scoring game of Blood Bowl. It was both of those things, but not quite in the way i had expected!  Because I wanted to receive in the second half, i kicked to him at the start of the game and didn't quite catch on quick enough that i needed to foul his catchers off the pitch! At half time it was 2-1 to the pro elves, and i wasn't feeling to bad about the game. However, i didn't score again and Matt punched the life out of my team - he scored twice in the second half from him kicking to me! I ended the game with only 4 players on the pitch, and lost 4-1 overall. 

If we were to play again, I would make an effort to cripple the catchers as quickly as possible, Nerves of steel is a very good skill for playing a quick, incisive passing game. I would also try and receive first - giving me a chance to put a few of his players on the floor. Over the course of the weekend I think i should have done that more. I was always trying to dodge out of blocks instead of punching, i think that this left me a bit behind the eight ball. In the other game this round, Ian out punched Calow, and the Human team had a bye. 

I was so close to being able to just straight-up concede with no penalties!

In the 4th round of the round robin, I played Pete's South Park Rangers and the Dwarfs went head to Head with the undefeated Pro Elves. Ian had a bye, and was kind enough to cook dinner for us all. I hear the pork we ate was delicious (as a veggie i didn't have any!)

I was reasonably confident that I could take the Human team. They were neither as tough as the Dwarfs + Orcs, or as fast as the Pro Elves. This proved to be true in several areas, and for a large portion of the game I was ahead. I managed to hurt enough of the humans to ensure that my elves could blitz almost all the time. But then the tables turned and I again ended up with 5 casualties (including a dead and freshly painted wardancer!). Pete played very well, and ran in for a second touchdown near the end of the game to tie things up 2-2. In the other game of round 4 the Dwarfs were unable to stop the Pro Elf Pansies as the continued their rampage. 

After 4 Rounds the table stood like this: 

Head Coach	Team Race	Team Name	Played	Win	Draw	Loss	Points
Matt Grimes	Pro Elves	Pro Elf Pansies	3	3	-	-	9
Ian King	Orcs	Waaaagshington Greenskins	3	2	-	1	6
Luke Fogg (me!)	Wood Elves	Bad-Kings of the Old World	3	1	1	1	4
Matt Calow	Dwarfs	Mul-Buldohr Brewmeisters	4*	1	-	3	3
Peter Barrett	Humans	South Park Rangers	3	-	1	2	1

*Calow received the first round bye on the Sunday morning 

With some of the 5th played that evening and some on Sunday morning, I will report on that later this week (probably weds/thurs) and also hopefully Vlog about it as well. Im hoping to get some photos of the teams up by the weekend. I'll leave you with a tease of what the trophy looks like: 

rawr!

Blood Bowl: The Juggernaut Shield prep post

Hello one and all! 

I thought I'd share some photos of my fully painted woodelf team. I've now got 12 models painted! I managed to complete them all before we started this morning, including rather hasty numbering of the team. We were a bit late in starting, but things are underway!

Here's the second war dancer. A limited colour palette, but I don't mind that. There are a couple of different colours of gold on this guy, the old shining gold and the new gold layer paint. I'm also really happy with the belt, it goes all the way round and I've tried to blend the gems, so that they are white to blue. 

This is my thrower. I've done something potentially a little risky - I haven't started with a thrower. He is my first purchase if I can't get a lineman with pass. Doing his allows me to have two re-rolls to start with, meaning I save net 50k over the course of the league. I think. 

You can see from these first two models that I've changed the way I've been highlighting thier uniforms. I've tried to further go for blending the green. I'm pleased with effect, the softer contrast looks more natural. 

As with these guys here, they are all uniquely modelled as you can see :) 

I've tried to keep the colour palette of the hair reasonably close to normal, so that they look more natural and realistic. I like the end result. 

I'm really pleased with the end result! Team completed!

Blood Bowl painting update

Dear reader. Today's blog forms two parts. The first is a quick painting update, and the second is a tactical question on team building. 

Painting bums

Here are the four lineman I have painted since Sunday evening. As you can see, there is a range of dynamic poses that really give off what it means to be a fast paced passing team. 

What you may be able to notice is that they are painted slightly differently. The two on the right have more extreme highlights on them, and consequently extra washes to thin it down. The two on the left (your left, not theirs) have slightly more muted highlights, and therefore only one coat of liquid skill. 

As you can see from this bum photograph, the two on the right (your right) have slightly more extremely highlighted glutes. The left sided models have slightly more muted cheeks and muscles. 

In a larger army this wouldn't be a problem, but when it's 11-14 (optomistically, I mean I am a wood elf player!) players im nervous that it might show up a bit more. Hopefully in the hustle and bustle of professional sports it won't be noticed, and can be put down to the washing powder. Ironically, the next two models are a different form of highlighting again!

Building a team roster 

Having partially read the version of the competiton rules we are playing (catchy named "Blood bowl competiton rules") it seems that fan factor has both less and more impact that before. Now you add your FAME to many of the dice rolls, (including the gate, some of the kick of results) which you only get if you have more fans basically. So if you don't have enough fan factor it's worthless, but there doesn't appear to be much benefit to spending say, 50,000 on it, like there was before. I am missing something? What do people think?

Blood Blood: The Juggernaut Shield

Dear readers! Please join me on a trip down memory lane, to a time when games workshop made the best miniature games in the world. To a time when there were cool, characterful comments in the rule books, and to when fanatic existed (shout out if you remember that!) To the time of Blood Bowl.

On the coming weekend we have a Blood Bowl round robin tournament. Potentially 8 games of what the real fantasy football is.

In preparation for this, I turned my parents house upside down lookin for my original wood elves team. And I found them. So I thought I'd do a quick painting update to let you know where I've got to. 

This is what they looked like when I got them home. Some classic painting from 2000-2005 in this box. As you can see, the team was halfway through a repaint anyways, with the yellow ones slowly replacing the purple and blue colour scheme. 

Alas, as much as nostalgia filled my being when looking at these models, we'd agreed to push ourselves with the painting a bit. This is because following BWX we noticed that whilst we took 3 spaces in the top 10, we weren't competing as hard as in the painting side of the hobby. It's something we want to sharpen ourselves up on this year.  

So without further ado, here are some sharper Wood Elves.

First off, one of my war dancers. He's featured before but is now complete. Really pleased with the fact he's only got one foot on the ground, it gives him a real sense of movement. 

A Catcher - with fancy painted line on the base

Some linemen. These guys are the mainstay workhorses of any team, but costing 70,000 each this even more so for Wood Elves. 

I'm pleased with how all of these have turned out. They are better painted than my most recent howling griffons, but I do feel like because the colour scheme is simpler that they've taken less effort. The bases in particular are something I'm really pleased with. They look like boggy, churned up Rugby (for my non British readers that's American football without any padding or helmets) pitches. Exactly the look I was going for. 

So this is a 5 done, 8 to go in 5 days post. I'd better get back to it! 

Harry Potter Monopoly - Darksun Life Vol. 11

Whilst this post isn't entirely toy soldiers related, I thought it was cool enough to be included. For Christmas, I made my wife Harry Potter Monopoly! You can't buy it, it doesn't exist, so I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!

As somebody who glues and paints for a hobby, the process was reasonably easy. It actually went quite well once i'd put myself in the zone, the same as if I were taking on a big modeling project. The main thing i learnt was to take my time.

If you know somebody that likes Harry Potter and Monopoly, then head to over this guys blog: http://collettcreative.com/how-to-make-harry-potter-monopoly/. All the free PDFs I used are there. Obviously, I dont hold any of the copyrights so don't sell this, do try and make money out of it blah blah blah.

As a gamer I really enjoy most types of board game, from Ticket to Ride to Articulate. (and others that dont have the letter "tic" in them!). If you're looking for a new one to try, I'd recommend Love Letter. Its a simple game of guessing set within a medieval court. Lots of fun, and near infinite replay-a-bility.

A dangerous way to play