Blood Bowl – MRAAKTAGON

Blood Bowl – identification issues with the new minis

I got some Blood Bowl in last weekend, and it was my first game with the 2016 version of the game. I know the game back and forth, but man it’s been awhile and I had to look up a few rules. I forgot that dodging and picking up the ball are automagically +1 at all times and a couple little things here and there.

I used the humans and my homie had the orks. We used the total stock 11 player teams that come in the box. Suboptimal? oh yeah. Still a fun match up? yep.

My complaints about the Human and Ork scupts proved to be true in game. Even with the human team completely painted, it was nearly impossible to tell the Blitzers from the Lineman. I like the lineman sculpts a lot for the humans and the thrower/catcher minis are totally fine but it’s critical that the blitzers are easily identified via their model on the pitch — and with the new human team they are not. Also, they are very BORING blitzers.

The Gary Morley humans from 1993 and the later human team by an unknown GM sculptor (~2004) have the blitzers in a different stance than the lineman and that helps a ton to sort out which is which during play.

The 2016 orks are a bit easier to tell apart except the Black Ork blockers and the Lineman look almost exactly the same. Multiple times during the game I had to ask: is that a Black Orc? Again the 1993 version of the Ork team had very identifiable silhouettes for the Black Orc and Line orc miniatures– despite the fact that the lineman were not very good looking in that set. The 1993 orc blitzers were awesome looking. Unfortunately, the orcs in the new Blood Bowl are super-Sigmarized, that is, they look very much like their Age of Sigmar counterparts with their… ‘rock armor’ is definitely not Blood Bowl.

For the Humans, Forgeworld to the rescue with the two new blitzers in their ‘booster pack’ that actually look like blitzers! With 4 of these, I think the human minis/team is quite good looking and functional, harkening back in terms of design to Ally Morrison’s human art in the original Blood Bowl rather than SIGMARIZING the miniatures like they did with the orcs. These are great…

All in all I think it’s a good set of blood bowl yet the newGW take on the miniatures is OK. Importantly, there are tons of alternate BB miniatures for nearly all the teams out there– nearly a cottage industry. These guys are where I got my Dark Elves from for the new version of the game.

Blood Bowl stuff!

Here we are, 13? 14 years since the last officially published version of Blood Bowl and finally a new edition is nearing release.

Stuff from the unboxing:

Watch that. Templates are plastic for scatter. Comes with 12 players per team, so you’ll need another sprue for an entire team of 16. The minis can be put together without plastic glue. The bases are BIGGER than we are used to but they have pegs for the balls! The pitch is pretty much awesome and double sided. That’s the main thing people have had to make from scratch if they couldn’t find an old version. Looks beautiful.

Odd and cool stuff:

Comes with a D16 dice for generating players getting hit with stuff, so no more chits!

Biggest thing is the RETURN of the special play cards. I loved these from the original game though they did cause problems in tournament play (serious tournament play that is). The design of these is critical.

All in all:
Fucking awesome.

Mountainous

I was off to the West for a long training and there’s been no time to really post so this is going to be a splatter of crap on the side of the bowl.

Steve and I went to the new Games Workshop (now WARHAMMER) store in Boulder to get some paints and saw a bunch of AOS crap but amidst it was the new Heroquest style Silver Tower game. Miniatures looked great, the card board pieces that came with it are up their with Rackham’s Hybrid and Nemesis (read: good) and while not as cool looking as those, it looks to be a more playable game. Though everything fantasy related from GW these days is really, really, really:

he-man

While out west, I didn’t get inside any headshops or smoke them tweeds as the saying goes. The thought was there, but it didn’t really count for much in the end. I saw a place called “Starbuds” and thought that was clever and likely going to be sued soon! I did walk through MANY clouds of THC both indoors and outdoors. For a little while at least, I could pretend we were (collectively, instead of just Western CO) living in the better times imagined during the mid/late 90’s rather than a billionaire dominated, post citizen united, Swift boat veteran style country.

Blood Bowl is coming out. There are pictures of people playtesting and some of the miniatures. This is the first thing I’ve been really pumped about from GW that wasn’t a video game since Warhammer 8th Edition. While AOS is garbage compared to the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle game and Warhammer proper, with the announcement of a new Epic, Blood Bowl and Necromunda, things may turn around for my interest in their stuff at least.

Blood-Bowl-Human

The BB miniatures look… awful chunky. I’m not sure I dig the look of the orks, but the humans, especially the human catchers, look great. The dwarves I’ve seen are very very blocky, and not the drunk, bearded short-fatties we’re used to. It’s not the olde worlde style, since they blew it up and all that. I’m VERY glad the humans aren’t Sigmarines. That helps a lot.

For weeks now, Warhammer Total War has been out and it’s gotten good reviews. …and I am going to wait to buy it, not because it isn’t great (it’s been the fastest selling TW game to date) or buggy (reports are that it’s a cleanish release by CA, which is a ..second?), but because I want to get a new video card first and play DOOM, then dish out the cash for Warhammer TW. Plans, plans– all go to ruins when I just start up Torchlight 2 again, or Fallout 4, or Darkest Dungeon.

I started playing LISA before I went off to training. Wow. Some broken people are responsible for that shit. While I haven’t gotten anywhere, I want you to share my pain. Highly recommended. Buy it.

lisa

Other stuff along the RPG front:

There are two new releases from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. One is by the guy who did Dwimmmmmermmmmmount and the other is by some English bloke set during the English Civil war. Remember that shit? I got them in the mail and plowed through Cursed Chateau, which reminds me a bit of Castle Amber (a good thing) and started on England Upturn’d. With World of the Lost, Towers Two and these new ones, I’m going to need to run some LotFP again soon.

SLUGS is coming on Free RPG day. Look at that purdy cover. It even has the GENCON booth for this year.

SlugsPromo

And this is from an interview here:

“The inspiration for LotFP is the basic belief that the life of an adventurer is a hellish thing that nobody sane would want – full of danger and violence with no real home, no real family, no certainty, ever. Think of the classic RPG adventure form: You’re going into some dark hole with a sinister history, fully expecting to encounter death traps and supernatural monsters and all sorts of things that want nothing more to kill you and probably eat you, and you’re doing it for some money. …
That’s LotFP.”

GRENKUTS

This weekend is TALISMAN Weekend with Keneda. We will drink, play Tobal 2 and play a massive couple of games of Talisman with (nearly) all the expansions. This will include the new board, which is quite a work of art and a full on deconstructionist version of the original 4E and 2E’s boards.

tm16_board

While the 4e board is good, it really needed the FF artistic touch, so here it is!