Cursed dice and leaping wardancers (Blood Bowl match report)

This month I took my high agility wood elf team to play against the Tomb Kings. I don't have any names for the team except for Mosstyn the treeman. He had a decent game, including a successful blitz on an opponent. 

Mosstyn was bostin!

Although he did end up on his face at one point after a bad roll. 

Double skulls!

The wood elves are high agility, and their wardancers have a special ability called 'leap', which means they can jump over an opponent. I have only just learned to use this skill, but it meant on two occasions I was able to get a wardancer into the Tomb Kings back line and sack the ball carrier before running in to score. 

However, the event of the game was a disastrous dice roll of truly epic proportions. Bryan had a power advantage which meant he could roll three dice to resolve an attack on one of my players. He rolled 2 skulls and the 'both down' option where both players are knocked over and his turn would end. But, a lifeline! His attacking player had a skill that meant he could re-roll a both down result. Bryan rolled the dice again and rolled... another skull. 

Triple skulls from four dice rolls is unbelievably bad luck. And possibly a new record. We are seriously wondering if the dice are cursed. 

The Tomb Kings managed a consolation down after the wood elves had put four on the board.

I was a turn away from scoring a fifth down when the game ended. The final score was 4-1.

So close...

We had a very suitable snack this time. Reese's dipped peanuts. They make excellent edible Blood Bowl balls!

Balls to no ball games!

This made me smile when I spotted it last week. Underneath a sign saying "No ball games" someone has painted a football goal. 

It seems like someone decided to stick it to the fun police! (Although I do feel sorry for whoever lives the other side of that wall!)

Blood Bowl match report - dashing past the dwarves

My friend Bryan and I decided we were going to play Blood Bowl more often. We said that back in September... and it's now June. Still, yesterday we found the time for a game.

For a change, I played with an orc team, while Bryan stuck with his trusty dwarves. It was the meeting of two "bash" teams that are set up to thump their way to victory.

Scrimmage!

In the end, thumping-wise, it was honours even. Both teams inflicted an injury that saw an opponent carried off the field. Score-wise, the orcs won 2-0, with both touchdowns scored in the very last turn of the half. (The way Blood Bowl works, both players take 8 turns in each half.)

The second down was funny as my orc thrower picked up the ball next to the endzone, tried to throw the ball but fumbled it, so had to pick it up again, then ran with it, avoided some dwarves and ran with it some more. He was almost stopped by a dwarf attempting to blitz him, but the dice favoured him and the dwarf fell flat on his face instead of tackling him.

That sort of thing is hilarious when it happens to your opponent. Not funny at all when it happens to you!

There is no way the orc in possession (far right)
should have got out of this!

But he did - and he scored! (far left)

(In case you're wondering, yes the orcs are painted in Wrexham colours. I do that to amuse myself.)

My mounting Blood Bowl "pile of shame"

My dad used to say that the problem with buying books is that you think you are buying the time to read the book as well! Despite knowing this, he still bought books. (Lots and lots of books!)

I am heading down a similar path with Blood Bowl teams. I recently heard of a website called Pile of Shame, which invites people to list their unbuilt kits and unpainted armies with the aim of 'encouraging' people to get on and build and paint stuff. It's sounds like self-inflicted nagging to me. But maybe I need it.

This is my current inventory...

A few years ago, as a reward for handing in my MSc dissertation, I bought the Blood Bowl starter set - this came with two teams and various equipment bits like measuring rulers. The teams were humans and orcs. I've built both teams aand they are partially painted.

I already had a team of skaven players (skaven are giant man-sized rats), which had been a Christmas present from my friend Bryan. I then bought an ogre player. All the skaven and the ogre are built and painted. 

The ogre was an essential addition because the skaven got heavily stomped on by their opponents in the few games I'd played.

Then in the middle of last year I bought the Blood Bowl Second Season set, which came with loads of stuff. There were two teams that were different to the ones in the other starter set, two 'star players', an ogre and a troll, and two referees. All of this is still unbuilt and unpainted. (The guilt starts!)

Through gifts and trips to the hobby shop, I've acquired a team of lizardmen (pictures here), a team of wood elves, a team of "necromantic horrors" like werewolves and ghouls, and a "treeman" player to bolster the ranks of the wood elves. I've built half of the lizardmen and necromantic horror teams. The rest of them are still sitting there pristine, waiting to be snapped off their sprues and stuck together.

Just after Christmas I impulse bought a Dungeon Bowl set. This is an evolution of the standard Blood Bowl game, set in a dungeon, where first your teams have to find the ball hidden in a treasure chest, and then carry it to the other end of the dungeon to score. The back of the box sort of explains it. 

Again, the starter set comes with two teams and various other bits, like the treasure chests, to build and paint. I haven't made any progress with that at all yet, let alone played the game. 

And the pile of shame keeps growing! For my birthday, just gone, I received a kroxigor figure - this is a super-strong reptilian player to add some bulk to the generally lightweight and pacey lizardmen Blood Bowl team. I was super excited when I opened the present, then felt the twinges of "unbuilt guilt" about the other teams I have that I need to get on and sort. 

I do enjoy building the figures, and painting them in various coloured uniforms. I also enjoy playing the game. Those things take time though, whereas purchasing new additions to the pile of shame is much less time-consuming. The trade off between fun and work is much less. 

And Games Workshop, the company that makes Blood Bowl, keeps on releasing new teams. The most recent team is a "Norse" themed team of players that look like Vikings. This team comes with "Beer Boars" that bring the player much needed revitalising refreshment during the game.

 

I really don't need any more Blood Bowl teams. But... beer boars! 

I already know I will be buying this team. I just wish I could buy the time to build and paint it.

When I was a Weetabix

Back in the early 80s, Weetabix breakfast cereal was marketed using a collection of anthropomorphic wheat biscuits called the Weetabix Club. Like many multi-character gangs in the comics of the time, these were basically sterotypes. There was Brains (the brainy one), Brian (the normal one), Dunk (the naive one), Crunch (the hard one who wore bovver boots), and Bixie (the girl).

The Club were the stars of short comic strips – found on the back of packets and also printed in regular comics as adverts for the breakfast cereal. Comic strip adverts were quite common at the time. I remember half-page mini-series promoting The Goonies and the early-80s Biggles movie, among others. They’d run for a few weeks alongside the ‘real’ comic strips.

You could, as a buyer and devourer of Weetabix save up tokens and join the Weetabix Club yourself. (The devouring of Weetabixes by hungry children was something that was never discussed in the comic strips, funnily enough.) As a member of the Club you received freebies and could send off for other Weetabix-branded goodies. For ages I had writing paper with the gang members on, and I also had a bright yellow Frisbee I’d sent off for.

I’ve mentioned before how I grew up in a Christian family, and although we weren’t allowed to have Ice Magic dessert sauce due to its occult potential, our family wasn’t quite as strict as some. One day a slightly stricter family came round to our house for tea and I was sent out to play with my brother and their two boys.



Also prohibited!

  We soon hit a problem. The trend at the time was to ‘play’ the TV shows that were popular. There were four of us, which was perfect because we could play A-Team. Unfortunately, the other two had never seen the A-Team, didn’t know the catchphrases, and didn’t want to play (understandably). It turned out that they watched very little television – The A-Team was considered too violent, as was Knight Rider, Danger Mouse, Thundercats, well, pretty much everything.

They didn’t like reading either, so we couldn’t play any comic characters. They weren’t allowed to play soldiers. As you may have guessed, their parents never took them to the cinema. The only possible play-characters we knew and they knew were the Weetabix Gang.

So, finally, with a set of characters we all knew, we started playing. I was Brains, naturally, as I was the one with glasses (I told you it was about stereotypes – brainy people wear thick specs!), the others were Brian, Dunk and Crunch. The game was we were looking for Bixie, who had been kidnapped. We roved the large field next to our house looking for ‘clues’ and avoiding possible threats for most of an afternoon.

I’ve told this story to a few people, but none have yet credited me and my pals with any ingenuity in finding something we could all play. Most people just laugh at how tragic we were. Maybe I was, and maybe my claim to fame is that along with those other three boys we are the only children to pretend to be wholewheat breakfast cereal for an afternoon.

506

Playing Yahtzee round at Mally's last night with Cath, the Vivster and Irony Boy, I chalked up my highest score ever: 506. That's three Yahtzees and everything in the bottom section except a full house. Oh yeah.

Incidentally, this blog has been offline of late because I've been concentrating on job applications. There are some really fantastic looking jobs out there. Now I've sent them off, I've got everything crossed (which make sitting here a bit painful!)

It'll be another four years till I blog again... on a leap day! (Had you going there, didn't I!)

417

We introduced a couple of friends to Yahtzee last night and I scored probably the best score I've ever racked up in a game. Of course, to do that when you're introducing people to the game is a bit embarrassing, especially as you have to keep saying things like: "It's very rare to get a Yahtzee, oh look, there's my second one..."

So, with over 100 on my upper section, and every box filled on the lower section, plus the extra Yahtzee, my 417 won the day. It also took the shine off Irony Boy's double-Yahtzee game as he could only manage to get into the high 300s. Would it be wrong to admit that made it even better!

We then went to a second round where I won again with a very respectable 270-something. Next time we play I know I'll struggle to break 150!