Best in Show, Worst on Field; Massivebowl, the wrap-up

I'm back! Wow, sorry about that extended interlude, three weeks without a post is way longer than I intended.

So, what have I been up to in all that time? Well, um, a busy week at work, then watched a lot of Counterstrike during Dreamhack... then a bit over a week ago I realised I had committed to attending Massivebowl in Melbourne on Sunday. Hmm, didn't leave that until the last second, did I?
So last week I finally returned to the hobby and set about finishing my team. The first few days were spent assembling/converting the remaining seven or eight figures I needed for the team. The most effort went into my deathroller conversion - I've never liked to steamroller style of the official models, to me, they just look ugly. The concept I came up with was somewhat inspired by the Trollkin caber thrower from Hordes - basically a dwarf carrying a massive stone column onto the pitch. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, given my limited sculpting ability.
WIP pic:

 I lost a day on Tuesday when I went to Canberra for the day (got to see the cartography exhibition at the National Library, was pretty awesome). On Wednesday and Thursday I got stuck into painting the ten models I had left to do, then on Friday I finished the team, packed, booked tickets, tried to make last minute arrangements to meet up with people on Saturday, and got next to no sleep before getting up at 1am to catch my train.
Phew, by that stage I was feeling pretty exhausted.
Anyway, the weekend was a whole bunch of fun. I got to meet up with a bunch of people I'd previously only known online and everyone was friendly and accommodating. Particular thanks to Penny, for keeping me company while I tried to stay awake on Saturday, and Chris and Roy for giving me a place to sleep on Sat/Sun respectively. While wandering the CBD on Sat I also found this beauty in a store full of geeky collectibles. While I might not devote as much time to my Mass Effect project as I'd like, I'm still a huge ME fan, so couldn't resist...

Anyway, Sunday was the big day, and it was as much fun as I'd hoped. In reality, the weekend was more about coming down to Melbourne and hanging out than actually playing seriously. On that account, it was a total success.
The actual games... well... I might have finished my team in time, but the problem with leaving that until the last minute was that I ran out of time to actually, you know, learn to play. So the tournament represented my first four games of Bloodbowl. Suffice to say, it was a steep learning curve, but all my opponents were great and very helpful, and by the end I was starting to get a grip on at least the basics.
In the end, I lost all four matches. To give a brief rundown -
Game 1: I played Chris' pro elf team, featuring Morg'n'thorg. I very quickly went down a point, before getting a bunch of KO's that left his team badly outnumbered in the first half (I had some pretty good luck). Unfortunately, come the second half, with my two heavy hitters sent off and most of Chris' players recovering, I found myself outnumbered and overrun. Result - loss, 0-3
Game 2: I played James' halfling list, featuring three treemen and Morg. It's fair to say not much went my way this game, and James actually felt a bit guilty for how badly he beat me. It was all good fun though, and produced some moments of hilarity. Basically, I couldn't break the halfling's armour. Seriously. By the end of the match I had just 5(!) players left, while he had four reserves remaining. The only player James lost was a halfling sent off for fouling (and killing!) my deathroller on turn two. Clearly halflings are an overpowered bash team and need nerfing! I did manage to cause a casualty on one of his treemen with Flint's chainsaw (so apropos), but he had an apothecary, so not even that made a difference. The other highlight of the match was Grim failing a dodge roll, tripping and killing himself. Yeah. Result - loss, 0-5
Game 3: I played Brett's humans. Brett was fairly new to the game himself, and this was the closest game for me, as I almost scored on two occasions, only to fall just short, running out of turns in both halves thanks to some great, desperate defence. The most noteworthy moment of the game came when I used Grim's multiple block rule for the first and only time (such a terribad rule...). It nearly worked... except I failed my dauntless roll on the ogre and Grim proceeded to get killed on his own turn. Again. Grim really didn't have a great tournament actually... Also amusing was rolling on the kick-off table, and having one of my fans throw a stone, killing one of Brett's blitzers. I like to imagine it was my deathroller after being sent off... Result - loss, 0-2
Game 4: I played Liam's wood elves, led by Jordell. This was a great game, Liam was a super friendly guy and made a real effort to show me how to play better (since by that stage he'd basically won...). His ultra fast team more or less toyed with me for the first half, during which my deathroller blitzed four times rolling nothing by pushes and skulls *sigh* In the second half, I landed some hits and KO'd a bunch of his team. He wound up with just three players left, while I had the ball, and showed me how to form the infamous 'cage' dwarf teams are known for using to grind out games. Result - loss, 1-2

So there we go, my tournament in a nutshell. If you're interested in reading more, check the thread on WAU which has the winners and such. I came, surprisingly, not last. Apparently there was someone else who also lost every game. I did, however, manage to win best painted. The TO Scott described it as something of a landslide, and throughout the day almost everyone complimented me on the team, which was pretty gratifying since it's been four years since I had a chance to play games with other people. It also made me feel kind of bad for describing the team as a rush job... which they really were to be honest. Anyway, I was very happy to win best painted, and thanks to everyone who voted, there were plenty of other great looking teams there.

So, that more or less wraps up this mammoth post, which hopefully somewhat makes up for my recent silence. I'll finish things with some photos of my finished (mostly) team:

Stars

Slayers and blitzers

Runners

Blockers

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

Something Tiny, Something Epic; real life, Bloodbowl and 6mm 40k

Few things to share today, more Bloodbowl, a new project, and some personal stuff. 

On a personal front, at the start of next year I will be moving from my current abode in rural NSW, to the (less) sunny shores of Warrnambool. The biggest upshot of this is that there is actually a gaming club in Warrnambool, not to mention that it's far closer to my spiritual home gaming club, the Massive in Melbourne.

So hopefully this will mean gaming will once again be a weekly occurrence, as opposed to the handful of times a year thing it's been for the last four years. 

On the downside, well, moving sucks (and I've done it more than most people), and there'll be the hassle of finding gainful employment etc. So chances are this blog will become (more) infrequent during January/February as I pack up, move, and set up again. Probably won't get much painting done.

Anyway, enough of the boring real life nonsense. I got some painting done tonight.

First off, a WIP pic of the next member of my Bloodbowl team. Not much else to say about him yet.

And finally, I began another project tonight. Surprise. I've long been interested in the idea of trying to play 40k using 6mm epic figures. Most of the range is now OOP, but there are a number of quality proxies available. I got myself a small OOP marine force from ebay for not many pesos, and in the future will look to add Tau, Tyranids, Sisters of Battle and other such armies. For now I'm just going to be doing occasional bases up with what I've got.
My space marine chapter of choice has always been Imperial Fists - tough, defensive, my favourite sort of playstyle. I also like yellow.

So tonight I painted a squad of veterans (denoted by carrying assault shields), these will function as sternguard. I also painted a rhino, ostensibly to transport the squad, though eventually I'll be getting the parts to make razorbacks for the smaller squads and save the rhinos for the larger ones.

While the painting/sculpting (Mk3 helmets on a couple dudes) may appear rough, keep in mind that these guys are 6mm tall. I've never painted anything this small before and they're a bundle of fun, if fiddly. Might go back and try to neaten up some of the eagles/fists.

Thanks for reading,

~ Alex/Magos

Pale Ranga Dwarf; another Bloodbowl blocker

As promised, painting has happened today. I finally got my act together and cleared my desk a bit, and decided to knock out another member of my Bloodbowl team, since I have about six weeks left to finish the whole team (and learn to play better...).

Anyway, I want my team to have a fair bit of variety when it comes to skin tone. My first dwarf was fairly ruddy toned, this time I decided to do a paler dwarf, which makes sense given they spend so much time underground. I used more blues and purples in the skin to try and make the shading cool rather than warm. In general, he's not quite as good as the first team member, but that's mostly due to me spending less time on him I think. And while the overall result may not be quite as good, I'm far happier with the cloth, which was the only think I didn't like about the first. So that's progress. I'm still not totally sold on the gold. Metallic silver is easy to create depth, colour etc, gold is much harder.
I tried to stretch my skills a bit on the tattoos for this guy, creating a scaly green dragon that twists down his back. Suffice to say, it's pretty crap, though I tried to salvage it from ruining the model. I think in future I'll stick to simple abstract swirls...
I also went back and added some colour to the monochrome test base I did. I'm glad I opted to go with the coloured version, it adds a lot to the model I think.

Let me know what you think!

The team so far:

Oh, and in the process of painting this fellow I finished my Russian Rulers History podcast (until the next episode is uploaded at least), so, given my recent interest in Japanese history thanks to Ronin, I've started the Samurai Archives Japanese History podcast. Should be interesting, since I'm unfamiliar with much of Oriental history.

Thanks for reading,
~ Alex/Magos

Don't Trip on This Pitch; Bloodbowl bases

Yesterday the postie (who probably delivers more parcels to my house than the rest of the street combined...) dropped off a small box from Poland. In contained the MicroArt bases I'd ordered to use with my Bloodbowl dwarf team, as well as a polite note from Australian Customs letting me know they hadn't found anything illegal in my parcel (bet the inspector was kind of confused though).

Anyway, I painted up a couple tonight, and got some opinions on which looked better:

The general consensus was for colours, so I'll go back and add some to the anvil base. Having settled on a scheme, I based up my current painted model. As an aside, I went back and painted the edges of my Ronin Sohei's bases black too, since one of my WAU readers pointed out I'd forgotten that.

I'm looking forward to heading down to Melbourne for Massivebowl, but really need to get stuck into finishing the team. Although I do now have an extra fortnight, since the event had to be rescheduled (thanks Obama Scott).

In the immediate future though... well, I still need to paint the Bandits for Ronin, and I've been re-enthused for my Mass Effect project, so might have a few new members of the team to paint. My geth should hopefully be here sometime in the next month, which will be exciting.

That's all for now, happy gaming bros.

~Alex/Magos

Bones, Bloodbowl, Battles; hobbying hard on Sunday

Today was a good day for all things hobby. Managed to wrangle my brother (and only gaming opponent in town) away from his year 12 studies and video games for a day of painting and gaming. Want to try and do it more often, so hopefully can make it a weekly thing or something.
He painted up some bones, since he hasn't painted in over a year and really just needed to have some practice. I tried brush on primer this time and it worked better, no lingering tackyness, although the white on white meant I didn't get a perfect coat and this plastic just hates paint with a passion. Really not a fan of it at all.

Anyway, in an hour or two of paint jamming together he finished this:

While I got to work on the first of my Bloodbowl figures.

Yeah that's right, Bloodbowl.

Basically, the Wargamers Massive down in Melbourne, of whose trolly ranks I am an honorary member, are having a Bloodbowl tournament in November. I stuck my hand up to attend, mainly for the excuse of getting down to Melbourne for a weekend of gaming. Only problem? Well, aside from one game ten years ago, I've never played Bloodbowl, don't own a team and don't know the rules...
Well, the team was easy to fix - I have always loved dwarves, and settled on a Slayer themed team using the awesome Avatars of War slayers. The rules are a work in progress, but thanks to the Bloodbowl video game, I'm getting there. By November I shall be an unstoppable force. Or not.
Anyway, here is the first test figure for the team, the Zhufbar Barbarians. I am VERY happy with the skin, it was fun to paint and looks great IMO. I'm much less happy with the cloth and metal... yeah, just wasn't feeling it. What do people think? Am I being over critical, or should I repaint them?
Finally, tattoos, not something I'm good at painting. Do they work?

And after all the painting, we knocked up two 35pt lists and smashed some face in Warmachine. My Khador (proxying Vlad for Harkevich) won the day, though we were both a bit rusty and my bro made a few mistakes that probably cost him.

Only one (bad, flashy) photo, showing the glorious moment when my Berserker, having charged and mauled the Scythian, detonated. I'd given him a single point of focus using Power Booster, and predictably, I rolled a 1. It was funny, and almost killed the Scythian, so wasn't much of a loss.

Anyway, long post. Thanks for reading,

~Alex/Magos