Marcus and his crew

I've made a start on my Malifaux crew, which includes some really nice models that I'm a little daunted to attempt painting but must at least try!

So far I've played I think 5 games with them and I'm very much enjoying the game, the strategies (main objective) and schemes (mini objectives) make for a really complex game and the card flipping rather than dice is a really novel mechanic for me. Just don't expect a fast game when I'm playing, there is so much to remember/learn and I still keep spotting new bits on the models' cards even now!

I've managed to pick up a fair selection that can work with the master I first chose, Marcus. He's a bit of a beast shaper, so his gimmick is attaching mutations on his friends and boosting them in a variety of ways. I'll be honest I picked him because I liked the model, and first off chose Neverborn as a faction. In fact he's a dual master, he can also be an Arcanist, so that means I've got a lot of potential models that could work in his crew as he also makes all models with a beast keyword versatile for his crew.

Anyhoo, here's what I've painted up so far, some of those beasts which he'll hopefully shape. The trick with Malifaux is working out how to pick up scheme points (4 per game) and strategy points (4 per game). You can set about the opposing crew, but you also need a bit of potential for objective manipulation which is really fun if difficult to work out!

I've now done 4 corrupted hounds, who hunt in packs and are good at mini objectives, as well as a Slate Ridge Mauler and a Sabretooth Cerberus which are a bit more fighty/vicious.

Should be said, most of the Malifaux models are really nice, but they aren't have difficult to assemble as they come in a lot of parts!

Thanks for reading,

Wil

Is this thing still on?

 Ahem. So 8 months have passed since the last entry in this poor, neglected blog. That's criminal really, but it's been a crazy 8 months for everybody.

Work for me has not stopped since March. I won't bore with the details, but my workload as pretty much doubled covering the pandemic/Westminster machinations/US elections/you name it. It's been an exciting time work-wise, if challenging, and has hindered a lot of hobby time (and energy) I have had.

However, I haven't been idle during that period, I just haven't blogged about it. So, expect a few updates on projects I have been working on shortly, including my ever-expanding Tyranid hive fleet, a new Guild Ball team, some Marvel heroes making an appearance and even tackling a Neverborn Malifaux crew!

Cheers,

Wil

Motivation

It has been a couple of months since my last blog, and I have done very little hobby-wise in that time sadly. I have been struggling motivation-wise despite having three Tyranid warriors sat on my painting table waiting to be finished.

However, I have now finished those three models and have finally painted something in 2020! Yay me.

Here they are in all their glory - happy with how they've turned out. I have one more model - a Tervigon - to go and that takes me to 1,000pts. Should be quicker now I have a lot of the little bugs done.

I have been busy gaming-wise though at Welwyn Wargamers, with a host of enjoyable games from Zombicide, Underworlds and the new shiny Marvel Crisis Protocol under my belt (more on Marvel later I suspect).

Later this month I have my fourth Guild Ball event, and I'm venturing away from my beloved Masons to try out my Farmers team. I haven't nailed down my 12 yet, and now having Festival all painted up I suspect I won't know it until very close to the day. Fingers crossed I do well!

Hopefully I should manage a few more frequent blogs from now on. I have the painting bug back which is nice! Thanks for reading.

Team Blood Bowl!

Hello again, it's been a while but it's time for another tournament report!

This time, I was back to my favourite game of Blood Bowl, and even better it was a team event.

I managed to bag a slot on one of The Tackle Zone teams - captained by good mate Dan Holland for the always excellent UK Team Championship up in York. It's a fantastic event with 68 teams of four players - from across Europe as well as a strong UK contingent - and is a very competitive affair indeed!

My teammates and I were running dark elves, wood elves, norse and undead (me) - as captain Dan wanted to go strong.

This year the organisers had placed the teams in 7 tiers with differing amounts of gold crowns to build them. Tiers are a tricky one as it's the best way to try and balance say halflings from wood elves, but you can never please everyone and therefore you get a few whinging that some teams are too strong or too weak.

I don't tend to worry about that kind of thing, usually because I don't look at the rules until the last minute, and I hadn't played undead for ages so opted for them.

My roster was a pretty standard undead list: 2 mummies (1 x guard), 2 wights (guard, tackle), 4 ghouls (2 x block), 3 zombies, 1 skeleton, 3 rerolls and I chose 3 fan factor. This was to play a role, more of that later.

So more than 200 coaches descended on the University of York for a weekend of dice rolling and debauchery. What more could you ask for?


Round 1 vs Snake Eyes (our team first)

Norse vs Necromantic
Wood Elves vs Orcs
Undead vs Norse
Dark Elf vs Dark Elf

An interesting mix in the first game. I was happy with my draw, as barring an angry snow troll undead can get stuck in to the norse with their low armour.

My opponent had: Snow Troll, (block), 2 x ulfwerener (2x block), runner (dodge), thrower (leader), 8 linemen (tackle), 2 rerolls, apothecary, 1 FF

I lost the toss and kicked in this game. Both teams behaved well, the snow troll not turning over but also not really causing any damage thankfully.

It was a fairly cagey first half, until around turn 6 when I moved most of my team in to put the pressure on. That allowed me to surf the ball-carrying runner, although the ball was thrown back in a bad place.

My opponent recovered well and managed to hit a string of dice to score in turn 8. None was worse than a 4+ for the pick up, but it did feel like one that got away for my team.

The second half was pretty straight forward. I started to break a bit of armour and once the norse had overcommitted on one side, 4 ghouls went the other way and the draw was never really in doubt.

Result: 1-1 3:0 casualties Team result: 1-2-1

My team were held to a draw with the dark elves winning, wood elves also drawing and our norse player coming unstuck. We felt we had edged the round, but not quite got what we needed at crucial times. Onwards!


Round 2 vs Army Ants Nation
Dark Elves vs Amazons
Undead vs Nurgle
Wood Elves vs Khemri
Norse vs Humans

We got four decent match ups in this round so were hoping for a win to get us started!

My opponent had: Rotspawn (guard), 4 Bloaters (4 block), 2 Pestigor (1 sure hands, 1 leader), 4 Rotters, Tolly Glocklinger (ball & chain), 1 reroll, coach, cheerleader

The ball & chain was an interesting choice, as with mummies they can't get out the way easily. I got +2 fame thanks to my 3 fan factor. Fortunately for me, he failed to hit anything in turn 1 and a mummy dealt with him the following turn.

On my drive I managed to knock out a bloater and a couple of others and 1-0 was relatively straightforward.

Second half started with a pitch invasion which downed his entire right side, including the only pestigor. I removed another bloater and isolated the rotspawn and eventually my numbers told and I got to the ball. That went down and the sure hands pestigor died with it, and that was really that for the nurgle.

Result: 2-0 0:0 casualties Team result: 4-0-0


Round 3 vs We Will Change That Later

Fresh from our first win, we got a decent German team in the third round, along with an old Team England player. It only gets trickier at the UKTC!

Dark Elves vs Humans
Undead vs Lizardmen
Wood Elves vs Wood Elves
Norse vs Dark Elves

Mixed bag again for match ups, no real help there for either team imo.

My opponent had: Kroxigor (block), 6 Saurus (3 block, 1 break tackle), 5 skinks, 3 RR

Lizards are my favourite team, and if I'm using them I like this matchup. I do feel it's quite swingy with whoever receives and the first damage on either side can really push you over the edge.

I won the toss and received in this one and immediately knocked out 2 saurus on the line. My tackle wight then killed a skink the following turn, and the lizards never recovered.

By the mid point of the second half all the skinks were gone and saurus were double or triple marked everywhere. Wasn't really a contest sadly, my opponent didn't get a chance!

Unfortunately for the team we lost the round, with our wood elf player having a possible game winning pass intercepted in the final turn. Not to be!

Result: 2-0 3:0 casualties Team result: 1-1-2


Saturday night was a pleasant evening at an Italian restaurant in the middle of York, complete with opera-trained waiter who was pretty amusing. Someone's got a video somewhere..


Round 4 vs Beef Patty Conglomerate

Undead vs Orc
Dark Elves vs Elves
Wood Elves vs Norse
Norse vs Chaos

Not sure I liked the norse vs chaos match up, and norse can be a pain for wood elves too. Work cut out perhaps?

My opponent had: Troll (block), Thrower, 4 Blitzers (2 guard, 1 mighty blow, 1 tackle), 4 black orcs (2 block), 2 linemen, 3 RR

I like this matchup as undead and even though it was raining I decided to receive, as in a bash fest getting numbers up early is key.

It proved a good decision as although I failed to pick the ball up early, I did injure a Black Orc. After scooping the ball I moved up but my advance slowed a little against the block black orcs, and eventually in turn 5 or so the orc coach went all in.

I was up against it, nothing was straightforward or easy, but I felt if I could spring the trap the orcs were done for the half as they're not fast enough or agile enough to catch me.

A mummy blocked one player allowing me to chain the tackle blitzer away from my ball carrying ghoul, but a double skull meant I had to play it safe and just retreat.

It was the orc time to have an iffy turn as the troll went stupid, and a failed GFI was compounded when the orc blitzer with tackle died falling over. That was that for the undead as they stormed through and secured the TD.

Second half, I still had a full team, and down positionals it was always going to be a struggle for the orcs. By turn 5 or 6 I boxed them all in and in turn 7 I had left only 1 blitzer who could score (couldn't knock him down). I screened off though and the orc needed 5+ dodges, 4+ dodges, 3+ dodge and GFIs to score and failed the first dodge.

Result: 1-0 2:2 casualties Team result: 1-1-2

This was another that got away from us as the dark elves driving for a 2-1 win had an awful ball scatter which the elves gobbled up and stole to win it, flipping the result from a round win to a round loss. Just like that.


Round 5 vs Three Men And A Little Hellboy

Undead vs Khemri
Wood Elf vs Dark Elf
Dark Elf vs Skaven
Norse vs Amazon

Decent match ups this time, we were hoping for another win!

My opponent had: 4 tomb guardians (4 guard), 2 blitzers (tackle, mighty blow), 2 throwers (block, leader), 6 skeletons, 2 RR

It was raining again, so I chose to kick this time hoping to take advantage of the khemri's lack of agility. They caught the ball off the kick off though, so that went by the wayside!

My mummies were the stand out here, I knocked out a tomb guardian in turn 1 and regularly broke their armour to really stifle the khemri drive. I left a ghoul close to the sideline knowing he would likely be surfed, but that if he was it would probably cost the khemri a couple of players and that paid off, although no damage on either side.

The pressure told though and the ball was sprung and into the hands of a ghoul who despite some stellar 4+ dodging by the khemri could scamper in for the score.

Second half it was more of the same as I waited for the tomb guardians to get sucked in to one side and the ghoul wagon flew off the other way. That was it really.

Result: 2-0 2:2 casualties Team result: 3-1-0

A morale boosting win, hurray!


Round 6 vs Oh the Inhumanity!

Undead vs Human
Wood Elves vs Lizardmen
Dark Elves vs Skaven
Norse vs Orc

We were hoping for a final win to at least put us in the positive, and we had decent matchups for the most part here.

My opponent had: Ogre (piling on), 4 blitzers (4 mighty blow), 2 Throwers (1 leader), catcher, 5 linemen (1 mighty blow), 2 RR, Apothecary

This was a potentially very scary team, all that mighty blow it was clearly designed to cause damage. Humans usually struggle against undead but if he could chip a player or two...

I received and got stuck in, causing a couple of early knockouts. The ogre behaved himself (from my viewpoint) and tbh it was relatively smooth to cage up in the humans' half and score.

On the humans drive a shallow kick and failed pick up even with sure hands allowed the undead in and although they couldn't get the ball straight away, it wasn't long before they'd got it and scored again for 2-0.

I fancied a possible third TD and it nearly came off as having knocked the ball loose, I couldn't quite recover with a ghoul waiting for the hand off.

Result: 2-0 0:1 casualties Team result: 2-1-1


A final round win saw us finish 3-1-2 as a team, which we were a little disappointed with but as usual it came down to a couple of rolls at key moments in key games. That was good enough for 29th place of the 68 teams.

I managed to finish as 3rd best individual on strength of schedule, which was very pleasing after a while away from tournament Blood Bowl.

Personally I was delighted to go 5/1/0 (shakes fist at passing norse TDs) with the undead. Special mention to my regen rolling abilities. I made all 5 of 5!

The event was won by the Italian Alfea team who are quite a formidable outfit, winning many European team events in the last few years.


Thanks for reading!