Blood Bowl 7s Pitch

So my youngest is now getting to the age where he can be taught Blood Bowl.  I have tried to teach people the game in the past but it takes a long time to play a game with a new player so I normal get through less than a half when I am showing it.  Blood Bowl 7s to the rescue.  With only 7 players on the pitch for each side and 6 turns per half with very limited rerolls, the games go quicker.

I have been slowly picking up the new plastic teams to add to my collection so wanted a pitch that would fit the bigger models.  The plastic teams work well for sevens also since the often missing models for a optimal league team do not matter with only 4 total non lineman allowed.  I looked around for a pitch from several vendors but no one really listed it as a standard product.  After contacting some of the different makers for quotes, I decided to purchase one made by Mats by Mars.

The mat is vinyl.  It rolls and unrolls nicely.  Since the Sevens pitch has fewer squares it still fits nicely across the table.  I still have not adjusted to playing sideways with the BB2016 pitches.

 

The pitch has integrated sideline items.  Turn markers, Score, Fame, and Reserves up to the Morgue.

Blood Bowl 7s kickoff table on one side.

Pass Table, Weather Markers, and scatter on the other.

Overall I am quite happy with it.  I got it in the standard grassy style but they have a whole ranges of background patterns if you want to match your favorite teams.  Now onto training the Next Generation.

Kings of War Vanguard Model Groupings

Mantic has a tendency to just throw a lot of parts in a box or bag in their stuff which some times makes it hard to tell if you got everything.  I have gone through the kickstarter posts and collected images of the various parts and collected them here.  No images of the hard plastics as it is pretty easy to know if they are there or not.

 

Plastic Giant (Note that You get 6 arrows)

 

PVC Basileans (1 Bag Contents)

 

Resin Basileans

  

PVC Nightstalkers (1 Bag Contents) 

 

Resin Nightstalkers

PVC FoA (One Bag Contents)

Resin FoA

PVC Northern Alliance (One Bag Contents)

Resin Northern Alliance (Note Ice Elemental is 3 parts:Body, Arm, Face)

Blood Bowl: Miniature Size Comparisons Orcs

Now for Part II of the size comparison between the models in Blood Bowl 2016 and previous releases.
From left to right I have aligned the 2nd Edition Plastics, 2nd Edition Lead, 3rd Edition Plastic, 3rd Edition Petwer and Finally the 2016 Edition Plastics.

Blizters

Blockers

Lineman

Throwers

As you can see the size varation is more pronounced that with the Humans but also all over the place with the 2nd edition plastic being often the biggest until the newest edition.  Strangely the 2nd edition metal Blizters and Blockers seems smaller than the lineman or thrower from the same edition.

Blood Bowl: Model Size Comparisons Humans

So the new edition of Blood Bowl dropped last month and I got a copy for my collection for Christmas.  One of the first things people commented on during the rumor and reveal time was that GW was following the Age of Sigmar path and increasing the size of the models.  I am sure this is only to allow more detail and not to try to get people to rebuy stuff so that it is not funny looking next to the new stuff.

Now that I have the set I was able to leverage my collection to compare the different models from the game over nearly the past 30 years to see how consistent they have been in scale.  Long story short is that they have never been very consistent.  The models from the Humans are from 6 different official GW products.
From Left to Right: 2nd Edition Plastics (Monopose), 2nd Edition Metal, 3rd Edition Plastic, 3rd Edition Metal, 4-5th Edition Metal, and 2016 Edition Plastics.

Blizters

Catchers

Linemen (2nd and 3rd Models are Human Blocker and Human Lineman from 2nd Edition Metals)

Throwers

Overall we see that the 2nd edition plastics were larger than most of the other models until the recent release.  The 2nd edition metals are bulkier than the 3rd-5th editions but generally not taller.  The most recently released metal team is pretty similar in size the new team.  If they were on the pitch together the 3rd edition plastics would probably show the scale change the worst of these.

Blood Bowl: Where to Get Teams?

So GW has dropped the newest version of Blood Bowl, but it does seem a little lacking in teams.  Starting a league with only miniatures for 3 types of teams is a bit of a waste.  The LRB 6 rulebook which is very very similar to the new release has rules for 24 teams.  You can ofcourse convert teams out of other GW plastics.  There was a great set of images up on the Warhammer World site like a week ago from last years Bugman's Cup of converted teams but they removed it now since this years event passed.

Another great place to look is at the third party manufacturers.

Impact Miniatures
Willy Miniatures
Greebo Games

Or Places the retail a variety of models
Tritex Games
Comixininos

While these minis are going to be more expensive generally the GW 12 man plastics(Only Skaven currently), I am guessing they will be priced fine compared Forgeworld stuff.

Dungeon Saga: Undead Boss Creation Rules in IronWatch

My rules for creating your own Undead Bosses have appeared in the November issue of IronWatch.

Lost Patrol: Retro Rules

So I gave Lost Patrol a try tonight.  I had heard bad things about the updated rules taking an intentionally unbalanced game and making it almost unwinnable against someone who know how to play the aliens so I went Old School Rules with the Lurker Counters instead.  I was just getting a feeling for the rules and was playing myself before getting the kids involved.  Scouts went 1 for 3 tries which was not bad.  This was after the first turn Scout on the map they won.  Because of all the Y splits right near the clearing I was able to reveal tiles pretty fast, getting 20 tiles after an aggressive first turn push.  On trick for the Scouts is to get just far enough from the clearing to get some of its outgoing paths to clear and then try to retake it to draw new paths out.  Sort of cheap I know, but the Lurker player can counter it by spanning Lurkers in the region when Scouts push out.

Next time I will unpack some stealers to see how the new version plays.
Update:  Tried the new version of the rules.  These are pretty bad.  Pretty much every turn for the scouts is roll 5+ or lose a scout regardless of what you do.  It plays so bad I think I must be playing it wrong but have read the rules and discussions a couple of times.

Get a Copy of Blood Bowl Rules Before They Disappear

With a new version of Blood Bowl due soon, GW will ofcourse be trying to sell rules that are very much like the last edition.  Well you can still get a free pdf of the best version of the rules every made.

Dungeon Saga: Keldan Character Card

Finally, we have Keldan, Elf fighter.  He is the last of the kickstarter exclusive models from the Dungeon Master pledge in need of a full character card.

Dungeon Saga: Logan Halfling Fighter Character Card

Here is the Card for the Halfling Fighter Logan.  Not very fighter like.  Still very much thief like but not exactly.