Blood Bowl High Elves

The world continues to spin, and we seem to be cycling in and out of lockdowns due to COVID19. It has been some time since I last managed a game of Warhammer or Kings of War... Probably close to a year, really. However, we have recently started up another Blood Bowl league and I've managed a few games of that. I have even managed to build and paint a team!

All of these players are 3D printed from bits from Ilhadiel, who has been rather prolific in producing models for specific armies (Elves, Herd/Nature/Beastmen, Varangur/Chaos and various other odds and ends). The models tend not to have excessively elaborate detail, but they have a particular style that I quite like. In particular I do like the range of Elf helmets spread across the units.

This is a High Elf team, but I've also printed some slightly different parts with which I intend to build an Elf Union team for a friend in the same league. The models won't be terribly different, but I will obviously use a different colour scheme. And capes. Everyone likes capes.

(Well, maybe not everyone...)

Anyway, nowadays High Elf teams have Blitzers and Throwers and Catchers, and it all makes sense and is very boring. Back in the day those things were less obvious and more High Elven - Dragon and Phoenix and Lion Warriors, respectively. I used that as a queue for how I was going to assemble the models.

The bare minimum 11 players, but I was in a hurry to get a team on the field and I had some minor misprints that ensured I couldn't make any reserves immediately.

Not dead yet

You know it's been a long time between blog posts when people start sending you messages just to make sure you're still alive. Apparently I have reached this point. It's nice that someone was concerned enough about my welfare to check up on me (thank you for that), but it's also rather embarrassing. I am a truly terrible blogger...

So where have I been? I am still around, but my focus has been utterly lacking in recent times. I have played perhaps 1 or 2 games of Kings of War since my last post, but the majority of my tabletop gaming has actually been in a Blood Bowl league that is running at the club. After several weeks of games in the group stages of the league, we're now heading into the semi finals. I finished the early stages in second place, so I'm still involved in the pointy end of things.

I decided to play with an Ogre team, partly because I put a team of Ogres on round bases years ago for this purpose, and partly because Ogres are considered a relatively challenging team to use. There have been a few people questioning my choice of team already, given my impressive ability to roll badly for things like Bone Head tests (my current record is failing 4 in a single turn, twice in one game). Truly, it was a bad idea if I actually wanted to win the league. But it's good for a laugh, and on the odd occasion that they actually do what you want, a team with 5 or 6 Ogres on the field is a pretty horrifying thing to contend with.

My unpainted Ogres face off with Lachie's Dark Elves. This game did not go especially well, but I will get another crack at him in the semi-finals. The Lego hair and beanies are very useful for working out which Ogres have which skills.

In general hobby terms, I am still struggling with motivation and direction in terms of my main fantasy battle gaming. Recently I've spent more time playing computer games than painting. Somewhat embarrassingly, I've not even managed to make real progress on painting the Blood Bowl team I've been playing with. Disgraceful, I know. And it's largely prevented me from making any effort to report on my games on the blog. Maybe I will rectify this in the future.

Anyway, I am still here. I have just been a little quiet. And sooner or later there will be more blog posts. About something. I promise.

Painting progress

In the months leading up to Christmas, I had lost all of my painting momentum and motivation. I had burned myself out trying to get organised for a large battle report, and it was all I could do to sit back, relax a bit, and spend more time playing computer games than fiddling with miniatures.

Things have improved slightly from a hobby perspective in the time since then, thankfully. In the lead-up to Cancon I was working on a Chaos Blood Bowl team that a friend was borrowing. I didn't get it finished, but I did at least get it to a usable state. That may be as far as it gets for a while - we shall see.

No, they are not completely painted yet. Well, the Chaos Warriors probably are done. And maybe the Minotaur and one of the of the Beastmen are close. Actually, they're all close.

Planning and re-planning

Cancon is fast approaching (it's a little over a week away), and I am not really prepared. I sort of know what is happening, but I have not done much in the way of ensuring that I am ready for it. I posted a while back that I was going to be playing Warhammer 8.5 this time, but that plan kind of fell through when low numbers combined with a crush from other events for extra space, and the event was cancelled.

So now I am playing Kings of War. Along with 61 other players, apparently. What army am I using? I have no idea yet, beyond the fact that it will have to use models I already have painted. I don't have time to paint anything else, because my available time will be spent working on these guys.

One Chaos Blood Bowl team in the making