Knight of Chaos?

Went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival today with my wife, daughter, mom and her friend and at the joust our sections knight featured this logo on his shield. Is he a servant of the dark powers?

Check out the Close up of the helm.

I did not see any gifts yet from his masters but he did win the joust and was named Champion so maybe one will be coming to him soon.

New Warhammer 40K Mission: Clear the Drop Site

New Warhammer 40K Mission: Clear the Drop Site

When battles are fierce, some units need to be resupplied from the air. To make this easier on the pilots and ships doing the dropping it is helpful to clear the area of enemies so the drop can be as on target as possible. While it is good to get resupplied it is often better to prevent your enemy from being resupplied as well. Who knows what alien technology maybe dropping to the ground?

Objective: This mission is a combination of kill points and objectives. The game starts with no objectives on the map. Kill points can only be earned in turns 1-3. Any unit that is fall back at the end of turn 3 that does not regroup during the game also counts as a kill point. At the beginning of turn 4 before anything else each player gets to deep strike their objective onto the board. The objectives will always scatter 2d6 – 2 *KP (number of kill points earned for destroyed and currently fallback units) so if a hit is rolled on the scatter die use the small arrow to determine the direction. A deepstrike mishap will only occur if the objective lands off the board, on impassable terrain, or on a terrain feature position not accessible by infantry. If a mishap occurs your opponent gets to choose the position to deepstrike of your objective at. The objective still always scatters 2d6 but this time the kill points do not matter. A second mishap allows the players whose objective it is to place it anywhere on the table without deepstriking it.

At the end of the battle, controlling your objective is worth 2 points while controlling your opponents is worth 4. This is added to the kill point total generated during the first 3 turns to determine the winner.

Special Rules: Reserves, Inflitrate, Outflank, Scout, Deep Strike.

Blood Bowl League: Skaven Team Advancement

So I have 3 league games under my belt and now it is time to look at how my rats are advancing. Since I was new coming into the league, I got to start players with a normal skill for 20,000 and this gave them 6 SPP to start. This did not allow for a roll on the table so I did not take the option with players most likely to get SPP on their own. Players that started with a skill and 6 SPP are labeled with a *.

Blitzer: Guard (13)*
Blitzer: Grab (10)*
Thrower: Leader (7)*
Thrower: (0)
Gutter Runner: Block (9)
Gutter Runner: (5)
Gutter Runner: Wrestle (12)
Gutter Runner: Strip Ball (8)
Lineman: Kick (6)*
Lineman: Block (6)*
Lineman: Block (6)*
Lineman: Wrestle (6)*
Lineman: Wrestle (6)*
Lineman: Dirty Player (6)*
Rat Ogre: Break Tackle (6)

So I have manage to get 4 skills in my three games with 1 gutter runner ready to get one with a completion in the next game. He will be getting Block baring a special advancement or doubles. I know very boring. Two players are getting close to their second skills. The gutter runner might get dauntless or another strip ball. The blitzer might get Mighty Blow. Not really sure. This is not bad but the problem is that the primary scorers on the opponents teams are up at like 30+ SPP meaning they have picked up 3 skills. They are getting tough to take down.

I can see how lineman can be hard to advance. None have yet to pick up a single new star player point since they are mainly used as line of scrimmage bait.

My roster is also almost full with space for just one more linerat. He will be drafted after the next match then it will just be about saving money for replacements and more reroll my 3+1 for leader have been working pretty well especially with the occasion illegal procedure called on me.

Tzeentch Challenge!

Just a reminder about the upcoming Tzeentch Challenge! Blood Bowl Tournament scheduled for September 12 and 13 at Rider's Hobbies in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I know that this is now 1 week after space hulk drops so everyone should be in a board game type of mood.

Rider's is a good location with free parking, it is less than a mile off the highway(US-23), and their are both fast food or sit down restaurants up and down the street a little way. Should be about an hours drive from anywhere in the Detroit Metro Area, Lansing, Toledo, Jackson, Flint. So players living in that region can come for the first day then go home then come back for the second day. Sure it is some driving but it is also a chance to meet other local Blood Bowlers which is great for setting up new leagues and things in the future.

Any Blood Bowl players in the Midwest area (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Ontario) should come down for 5 games worth of fun.

Rules Info can be found here:
Tzeentch Challenge Rules

This event is not just for Hardcore players. All you need is a board, dice and templates. None of which need to be official in anyway just consistent with the rules. Heck the guy running the event does not even own a copy of the game just uses homebuilt upscaled versions for everything to better fit big guys. Then you just need your team (unpainted OK or else I could not play) and a desire to have fun playing some blood bowl.

As a note I am not running the event and have no financial stake in its success. My promotion is being done solely in the hope of meeting more Blood Bowl players in the area and I am receiving no compensation. I just want everyone to have a good time.

Norse Blood Bowl Team

Here is my complete but unpainted Norse Blood Bowl Team. The base players are just the standard GW team but I added the additional model to be in sync with the Living Rule Book edition team . GW has done a bad job on model support for specialist games so it is up to the players to find what they need to field the full teams. The Norse team picked up the Ulfwerener which are Nordic Werewolves and Snow Trolls. I am doing this post since I saw in the page info someone was search for info about Blood Bowl Snow Troll.

Here are the models I am using for the Ulfwerener. These are two Beorg Bearstruck models I got as bits from GW for the team. It is a Fantasy Dogs of War model for a Nordic Werebear so is pretty close. Also the rulebook actually talks about Norse teams using werebears so it works out perfect. Models need a little greenstuff love before painting. You could use the Blood Bowl werewolf from the Necromancer team but since they have very different stats it is nice to have different models. Also if I remember my fluff correctly the Ulfwerener have more control of their shapeshifting so the ripped clothes might not be correct for them.

Here is my Snow Troll. It is a Yhetee model also GW Fantasy from the Orge Kingdoms line. They have a few different sculpts but this one is the best for this since only 1 arm has a weapon. This guy also needs some gap filling. He certainly looks Wild Animally.

Space Hulk: My First Look

I got down to my FLGS this weekend to get a look at the new Space Hulk game. I had already talk to the owner twice trying to get info about his expected stock level and price. I had pretty much decide to get it but wanted to get a fair price so prepaid with cash to help the price level.

Got to handle all the mini's, the boards, and rules. The models do look really good. Almost too good. Most of my 40K army is very low on embellishments. This is battle time not dress uniforms so my marines even the honor guard are all business. If I tried to add these into my army they would probably look out of place. The sergeant with powersword is more done up than my Belail model. So the marine will stay with the game. The genestealers are also pretty good. These could be easily added to a stealer shock list to give it tons of character. The broodlord is much bigger than the stealers and was more interesting looking than the current metal one in the 40K line. If you want to rebased them they will probably transfer fine. Boards are nice and thick and the rules are 2 full color booklets. There are 12 missions including missions with multiple levels.

I got to listen to a rules run down and watch about half of a game between 2 GW gaming veterans(people old enough to have been space hulk players back in the day). The game play looks pretty solid with the space marine player having to do a lot of planning to optimize his actions to get the mission finished. The first mission just required you to flame a room but the by the time you could get near it, the stealer player would probably have played 8-10 blips each representing a few stealers. The space marine player appeared to take the wrong tactic and hold him flamer in the unit center instead of using to more aggressively to limit enemy movement. He also seemed to forget that you can shoot doors open with your free shots during movement as you move up to them to try to save the action point opening them. This also allows you to see the stealers quicker.

Looks like a great game and cannot wait to get my hands on it for some more game play. I will just have to make the time to get some games in.

GWpertinent Give Away Prize

I got my Old School Sicarius model in the mail this week from Tristan for winning his give away over at GWpertinent for showing off old school 40K models. Nice classic piece still in pretty good shape including slotta base and caped backpack. Plan in to remove the 2 Ultramarine U's and paint him up in Sons of Twilight colors to replace my counts as Cato Sicarius I current have.

Blood Bowl League: Game 3

"Hello and welcome to Blood Bowl Tonight on Cabalvision, your number one stop for all the best on the pitch action. I am your host Sknock Van Pelt. Our lead story is a match between the sinister dark elves of the Gate Gladiators and the twisted ratmen of the Darkthunder Deviants where something unusual appeared to be going on."
"We take you now live to Orkin Andrews on site"

"Thanks Sknock. The Deviants were really able to take it to the Gladiators today. On their opening drive, the ratmen were able to send several of the elves to the bench for the rest of the game. Exploiting this ratpower advantage the Deviants were able to get a quick score. The Gladiators then responded on the ensuing drive to break through the Deviants line with some fancy footwork and a quick pass. Unfortunately, the player in question could not match the speed of the deviants who brought him down. The rats then recovered the ball for another score. Up two nil the Deviants look in good shape to take control of the match early.”

“It was soon noticed that the elves were playing very unelf like. Missing quick passes, tripping over their own feet, failing to grab the ball in the open pitch, all seemed like very un-elven maneuvers. The Gladiator fan heavy crowd got a little angry after the third score for the Deviants and stormed the pitch on the next kick off. They took down almost half of the Deviants which appear to open the field up for Gladiators, who would have the man advantage for the remainder of the drive, but time was short and the elves continued to barely be able to walk straight. So at half time the game was 3-0 for the Deviants.”

“Whatever was wrong with the Gladiators could not be shaken off in the second half when the Deviants were able to recover their kick off to the Gladiators and score making it 4-0. The stupor only deepened as on the next kick off to the Gladiators, the Deviants got the drop on them with the first hits, putting pressure on the ball before the Gladiators even seemed to know it was kicked. While Gladiators recovered the ball, a missed pass caused all hope to be lost. Both sides fans rushed to be the first to get back underground and even the coaches stopped paying attention to the action. “

"Back to you, Sknock"

"Thanks for the report, Orkin. Looks like the Deviants might have slipped something into the Gladiators water cooler."

That pretty much sums up the game. Some lucky blocks initially to knock the dark elves to about 8-9 players the whole game coupled with just the worst luck on the dark elves. Anytime a 2+ was need to do anything the die would come 1 for him. I had my own problems with my Rat Ogre not even wanting to blitz but nothing like his horrible luck.

Tackle Zone Radio

I found this new Podcast on Blood Bowl last month with discussions of both the board game and new pc game. I have posted about them before but they got only about 3 hours as the prime post due to the white dwarf archive news so I am reposting.

I enjoyed listening to the shows and picked up a couple of interesting ideas. The show is put on by some guys in the Brisbane Blood Bowl League. So if you are interested in learning what Blood Bowl is all about check it out

The pilot episode introduces the hosts and talks about what Blood Bowl is. The first episode talks about the 4 main offensive playing styles and gives a review of the new PC game. The long delayed second episode is just out and it has a good discussion of advancing players to fill certain specialized roles on the team and how to get a league going.

I have my third league game scheduled for today against the dark elves so I will let everyone know how it goes. Currently the Norse Team is 3-0-0, My Skaven are 1-1-0, Dark Elves are 0-1-0, and the Commish's Nurgle Team is a surprising 0-2-0.

New 40K Mission Deployment: Line Breakers

I have been continuing my work trying to come up with some new missions and deployments to supplement the main rulebook ones since the 9 total combinations are pretty limited. Here is a new deployment type called Line Breakers:


Line Breakers Deployment:

In some battles, the armies are just trying to hold their ground while waiting for those critical reinforcements to drive back the opponent. Night is approaching so it they do not get here soon the battle could get bloody.

Divide the Board into 2 halfs the long way. Player going first can choose which long edge is his deployment edge. Player going first deploys first. He may deploy his units anywhere within 15 inches of his deployment edge.

Players must deploy all of their troops and heavy support choices that do not have a special deployment rule(inflitrate, deepstrike, scout used to outflank, etc.). The player must place all HQ, Elite, and Fast Attack Choices into reserves. Players then alternate placing inflitrators(only troop or heavy support) and making scout moves.

Special Rules: Reserves, Inflitrate, Scout, Deepstrike, Outflank, Nightfighting for Turn 6+, Not in the First Wave.

Not in the First Wave: Armies which have special deployment rules which allow units to enter the game from reserves on turn 1 can only apply this rule to troops and heavy support choices. If the rule involves half of a group entering play in first turn like Deathwing or Drop Pod assault then that half must be troop or heavy support choices. If you do not have enough troops or heavy support choices to fill the required half, the remaining first turn reserve entry slots are lost. A Daemon army will be split into half containing only troops and heavy support and the other half the remainder. If the army is more than half troops and heavy support extra heavy support units go into the second wave before troops units. If half the army cannot be made with just troops and heavy support then all troops and heavy support enter on turn 1 with the remainder arriving from reserves later.

Space Hulk: To Buy or Not To Buy

Now if you are a GW player and do not know that GW is issuing a new Space Hulk game in some type of limited format after todays announcement you probably do not follow GW very closely. I do not have to tell you what is in it that is up on their site.


I am thinking about whether I should get it. Do I want it? Yes. Ofcourse. The mini's look cool and I have always heard good things about the classic game. The board game nature is fine with me so what is my problem. I think my problem is that I look at it and wonder more about whether I need it, not do I want it. I certainly do not need it as a life or death matter but that is not really what I mean. The minis will be hard to integrate into existing armies so I would probably just leave them with the game. While some more stealers would be nice in the end I still have 14 unassebled ones left from the assault brood box. I have 25+ termis once I finish that last set from Assault on Black Reach so I am not short on those either. I essentially have verisons of all the minis in the box at a level which I need for 40K so I would really be buying it for the game.


Will I ever get a chance to actually play it enough to justify the 100 dollar price? How many games will that take. Maybe 5-10 plays at 2 hours a piece. While that would be easy for a lot of people, I really do not get to play very much of anything. My wife wants nothing to do with this stuff. My daughter is to young. I only get out to the gaming store events every couple of months so playing games there is not going to happen. I already have a small Blood Bowl League that it is tough to get the games scheduled for. I have a huge number of projects to work on at home.

Do I have space in my life to actually play this game? I have spent plenty of money in my life on games rarely or never played. I have Battle for Skull Pass, some extra dwarf characters and slayers, the Dwarf army book, the Ork Goblin Army book, the hard cover rulebook. Have I ever come even close to playing a game of regular Warhammer. No. Would that money be better spent on other things or saved for the future, certainly. Is this another case of wanting a game that I will never actually play. Probably. Do I still want it? Yes. Will I buy it? Probably depends on whether my local independent can hook me up with a copy. I try to never buy from GW directly. My local store can get me whatever I want cheaper and without an inane workers trying to upsell me on what ever is new.

Is Your Army WYSIWYG?

So I was reading a space marine list posted on Warseer. The list featured several SM scout sergeants with shotguns and powerfists. I was wondering if the player actually has a model for these or was just thinking about different lists. I have made one version of this model but multiple poses might be tricky since I only found 1 ready to add shotgun. So I went searching in google images for any other out there with no luck. I was interested in seeing how other gamers built this model. I did not even find mine since the post did not originally include a nice description of the model. This got me think about the WYSIWYG rule and if it was strictly enforced anywhere.

What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) is supposedly the law of the land in 40K. If a model has a piece of optional equipment, it should be represented on the model clearly. The basic idea is to allow players to quickly know which model has what abilities without constantly having to look back at the list. This can be important if you are trying to play quickly and need to see exactly where that powerfist or meltabomb is in that squad so you can avoid it during the tank shock.

Having everything modeled seems like a simple thing but generally runs into trouble pretty fast for players who like to switch up lists and might not have a large inventory of models ready to go. Very few players have models for every possible option so sometimes things just have to count as. GW also is not always helpful on this when they introduce total new units in the Codex but do not have them out for like a year after the codes. This can be seen with the SM Ironclad and Landspeeder Storm appearing recently for the Codex out last year. So people either had to build up their own version or just use something close. Also some upgrades do not always even have well defined modeling equivalents.

I know that at our FLGS it is pretty loose about WYSIWYG at events. Players should be able to identify who has what or what something is quickly but it does not have to be exact. IE I need to be able to see who in the unit is the Sergeant or has special weapons, but their exact equipment does not have to be perfect. A flamer can be a meltagun, etc. I personally try to play my marines very strictly WYSIWYG. Eventhough they are unpainted at least I can do one thing right.

Are your groups tight or loose on WYSIWYG?

Blood Bowl Quick Tip: Skaven

I now have a couple of games with Skaven under my belt in the current rules and I am finding that there is something I need to do more off. Looking back to front when deciding what to do. Skaven's speed advantage makes it important to first look at the players furthest from the action to see how they can contribute. If you are used to playing a slow undead team like me, players more than a few squares away from the action cannot do much directly so you do not take them into account in your primary actions. Skaven with their speed can be surprising in where they can get to lend a claw.

This was pointed out to me by a better player recently when my opponent had marked up my gutter runner pretty well. He had three guys on him and the runner could not go a step backward and still score in the half. I struggled with finding a way to break him free but I made the mistake of using a few close skaven to cancel assists when I had a few skaven farther back who could have done. This would have allowed the closer skaven to blitz at the proper angle to push my runner forward and away from some of the tackle zones. Lesson learned.

Look to the Back then to the Front.

Blood Bowl: 2nd Edition Elf Team

Last of the series of 2nd Edition Blood Bowl Teams. This is an elf team which actually still works pretty well with the current rules. Since the structure of the elf teams are all pretty similar it could work as high elf, pro elf, or wood elves. I personally would use them as my pro elf team since I have other models for the high elves and wood elves.

I just love the blitzers. Nice Look and great masks.

Two Throwers masked and unmasked.
This is where the problem appears. 6 Catchers instead of 4. The old elf team could field 6 catchers I assume to fill the losses as they were mercilessly pounded on by the other team. Now your can only field 4 so I have 2 spare.

Two Kickers. Since the Kicker position is gone these guys will just have to be lineman. One could be the lineman with kick and the other a lineman with dirty player kicking someone while they are down.
7 Lineman. The original box only came with 5 so 2 more were aquired off of ebay to make up the 16 man team since I have 2 unusable catcher models currently.

Here we have Star Player Eldric Sidewinder.

These are the last of the 2nd edition blood bowl team series. I have many more random 2nd edition minis but no more full teams. If people are interest in these I can put them up also.

New Tyranid Codex

So the scuttlebutt is that a new Tyranid codex is on the horizon. Now you might not know this from the blog, but Nids are my second army in theory. I say in theory since my nids have never taken the field. I have been trying to build up a nid army for about 3 years after getting a classic battleforce box(twice the gaunts, no fex, more old stealers). These are all assembled and going with my other small purchases make about a 1K force. I also have a ton of unassembled stuff which would get me to 2-2.5K with a Tyrant, couple of Zoans, and the Assault Brood Box(2 Current battleforces plus an extra fex). I just do not get to play enough to really need a second army. I will get to the stuff but probably not before a new codex with all the painting and modeling left on my marines and blood bowl teams.

My real question with this new codex and all new codexes is how much input the marketing people get to add to the game design. It seems like the new models always seem to have awesome rules while some of the old standbys are weakened. This requires list adjustments and thus new purchases. I am not saying that marketing data should not be used for aiding design. If your goal is to make all the unit choices just as desirable then looking at what units sell poorly might give you an idea of where to look for the first improvements. I am guessing that this data would point to Biovores and gargoyles. They redid the Biovore model a couple of years ago to make it somewhat better looking but I still think it is a poor seller compared to fexes in the heavy support class.

If the marketing suits were really starting to meddle, you could expect that Fexes would not be an elite choice anymore. Since the most common list in 4th edition was nidzilla, removing this as a legal list would drive new sales of other elite choices. Will they do such a thing, I do not know. It would of course anger many existing players, but we know that gw is more interesting in new players than old players so they might not mind. They could always claim that nidzilla was not fluffy enough since people essential eliminated the swarms of small nids that exist even during the highest stage of nid invasions.

Ofcourse, many armies have been getting cheaper. Are gaunts going to get cheaper? Probably more gaunts means more models purchased, more primer, more paint, etc. Do Nids need an update, sure, will it cost you money. Definately.

Beginners Blood Bowl Guide: Rerolls and Turnovers

This is part 1 of my new series, Beginner's Guide to Blood Bowl. As the name suggest this is just some basic thoughts for new players who might have become interested in the game because of the new PC Blood Bowl Game. While I do not have a copy of the PC game, it is said to be very true to the board game rules so what I say here applies there.

No single thing in Blood Bowl is more important than your team rerolls. I never start a team with less than 3 and like to get at least 4 available pretty quickly. Now as a recent mainly 40K player, this is very different. In 40K rerolls are all tied to very specific things most commonly shooting, wounding, and saves. They are important to that event and may save the day through their repeated use but they are not vital to the entire game because they are tied to specific events for that character or unit. Blood Bowl has these types of rerolls also granted to individuals for specific tasks through player skills which often grant that player a reroll at that specific task, but team rerolls are different.

Why are your team rerolls so vital in Blood Bowl? First, you can use them on most die rolls you do during your turn. How great would that be in 40K? How many games have been decided by failing 1 random save or morale test. Having a reroll to be used anywhere would be great there. Ofcourse there is a trade off and that trade off is the dreaded turnover. In Blood Bowl often when a die roll does not go your way, your turn is over through a turnover. This means not only did what you want to happen not happen, you do not get any chance to respond to the change in events. It also means that any players who have not already completed their actions in a turn will not get to do anything. Now in Blood Bowl, pretty much anything you want a player to do that is not moving about 5 or 6 squares(varies with race and position) nowhere near anyone will have you roll the dice and risk the turnover.

Recently while listening to a tactica someone said a good 40K general does not like to leave things up to the dice. In Blood Bowl, you really have no choice. Even the most unlikely result can occur, 3 Skulls when your Star Mummy blocks a goblin resulting a down mummy who could in fact end up no longer a member of the undead if the dice really go against you. So the team rerolls really save your bacon. Therefore I almost exclusively save them for trying to avoid turnovers and then only turnovers that really matter. Maybe I am trying to dodge a linerat away from a chaos warrior so he does not get pounded the next turn. If it is near the end of my turn and I have already gotten the important stuff done then I let him fall. Sure he might hurt himself, but he is only a linerat.

This is where it is important to prioritize your actions. What must get done? What order does that need to happen? How risky is it? What else would be helpful? All these questions are important to answer before you move a player (but always remember your turn marker so the opponent does not take one of your rerolls). Managing the risk while maximizing the reward is really what Blood Bowl is about. You can play it safe the whole game and still win but adding a little more risk makes the game better. I think my recent opponents would say I play a very risky style. I probably end about half my turns in a turn over, but that is fine because they are coming after the important stuff has occurred(sometimes while trying the important stuff unfortunately).

Some people complain that Blood Bowl depends too much on the dice since a single bad roll can turn triumph into tragedy. Well, your rerolls prevent this so use them wisely. And if it still does not go your way, you have something interesting for the game report and to remember the match by.

How do you play your matches? Do you want 2+ and a reroll on a d6 or are you throwing long bombs with your AG3 players over opponents heads to your triple marked up reciever.

GWpertinent Old School

For GW pertinent's Old School Mini Contest:

These are as old as it gets for my space marines. Metal bodies, plastic arms, old style bolters. If we want to get really old I while keeping in the 40K universe I have epic scale marines and such, but this challenge asks for 40K stuff that is painted so this is the best I can do.

Update: I was selected in the random drawing to get the prize. I will post a picture of it when it arrives and will tell my conversion plans to make him fit in my chapter.

100th Post Review

Here it is Sons of Twilight 100th post. Time to look back at the last 8 months and see what I did and what got the most interest out there from you guys. I started out as a purely space marine 40K blog but have been adding more and more Blood Bowl content since I am now playing in a league again after about 3 years since my last league.


First in the hit parade is the Belial model I did back in March for my homebrew verison of the Deathwing. I decided to go with the dual lightening claw Belial since I already have a Terminator Captain with Power weapon who could also be used as Belial if I wanted the standard weapons. People seemed to like the dynamic open pose I get with the claws. He has several posts as a WIP: 1, 2, 3. I really think he turned out well and maybe will actually get painted with my new painting emphasis.


Here is the another part of the Deathwing, the Apothecary. He uses a couple of parts from the command squad apothecary on the lower torso but does not use the apothecary arm. That is being saved for a future bike army. Deathwing Apothecary post is here.



Here is the Mk IV Armor member of the Honor Guard made from mainly Black Templar upgrade parts. This Space Marine Honour Guard seems to bring in daily traffic off of Google Image Search. I did a long series of different Honour Guards with My Honor Guard Tutorial can be found here.

From these mini pictures you can see that my modeling falls heavily in the kit bashing phase currently. My green stuff skills are poor so no custom sculpting yet but maybe in the future.

Here is a picture of my blood bowl collection I started posting about more recently. Something like 27 unpainted teams reside in these boxes. I am currently working on changing at least some of those to painted and based status. I am currently not letting myself buy or build any models until I have finished painting 3 blood bowl teams(wood elves, undead, and lizardman) and a 1500 point space marine list (Mech Pedro for the win). That might take until Christmas but seems like a good goal.

Blood Bowl League Game 2

I got my second league game in this week. It was against Matt who is the commish and reigning league champion. He is a very good player who goes to tournaments and does well. He has a pretty valuable Nurgle Team(1,710,000) Half Dead, All Rank. With my rat orge and a line rat out I was way down in team value with over 580,000 in inducements. I got 2 Traveling Apothacaries and called in Freebooter Headsplitter to cover the gap. Taking a Freebooter is risky since they can get your MVP and will such a sort season each MVP is pretty valuable.

Headsplitter is a monster of a Rat Orge. He does not have Wild Animal, Really Stupid, or Bone Head so he is a dependable player. Sure he is still a loner but you do not have to worry about wasting your blizt or leave your rat orge on the ground as he fails to standup for the 2 time in a row. With strenght of 6 and Agility of 3 he can hit hard but still has a standard chance to dodge out of a tackle zone to get the blitz into the cage. With him I was able to open holes to the third level of the Nurgle defense.

The critical drive of the game came in the second half. Deviants are up 2-1 with the ball in the hands of my thrower. Due to the 5 Disturbing presences in the middle of the field I was forced to throw long passes and bombs over the top of the defense. I will have to think more about this since the recievers have 4 agility and no free reroll while the thrower has 3 and a free reroll. It might be better to let the reciever feel some presences and get the shorter pass.

I had lined up a long pass with both the receiver(in the endzone) and the thrower clear of presences. I throw the pass and a Nurgle warrior intercepts it on a 6. We rolled the die to see if the pass would have been on target and it was so I would have scored the clincher. Now Nurgle starts moving up the field. I knock the ball loose twice but on the 8 down of the second half I am scrampling to stop them from scoring. It is desperate on both sides. I try to dodge a Blitzer out of the tentacles of the Beast of Nurgle. He is trying to get over to support a lineman blocking the only nurgle player who can get to the end zone. He breaks free but then fails his dodge roll and the reroll. My turn is over. The nurgle team then just needs to knock over 1 linerat and complete a hand off to a Rotter for the tie. Linerat goes down but the hand off is dropped. Game Over

Deviants get the 2-1 win but as luck would have it, Headsplitter gets my MVP. He deserved it though since he had like 4 Casualties(Most of them Regenerated) and was at one point drawing attention of all 4 nurgle warriors during the end of the critical drive. Unfortanutely the MVP is probably worth more than the win but at should be noted that only 2 skaven(Block Linerat and Gutter runner who has 3 touchdowns) will miss the next game and no major injuries or deaths to the Deviants. The Deviants were able to kill 1 rotter though.

Next Time Dark Elves. This will be a very different game. Another Agility team instead of a bashy team. Interesting.

Blood Bowl: 2nd Edition Dwarf Team

Here is my 2nd edition Dwarf Blood Bowl Team. Most of these guys I have had about 20 years. A couple random ones picked up more recently on ebay.

The biggest problem for this team under the current rules is no Trollslayers. These blitzers seem like the closest ones. Just paint their hair orange and they are good to go.

Lineman and Blocker
Kickers
Blockers
Clearly Blitzers with the dwarves clearly running.

One down dwarf plus a Thrower(Runner) and Star Player Barik Farblast.

Here is a new addition to the team. Dwarf Secret Weapon Starplayer Flint Churnblade.

40K New Mission Deployment Type: Narrow Front

As part of my series on mission variations I present a new type of deployment called Narrow front.

Narrow Front

In this deployment scheme the battle lines are narrowed due to terrain obstructions or other battlefield requirement. To represent this, the player will use the short table edges as their appropriate board edge. This makes for a long but narrow battlefield.

Special Rules: Deepstrike, Reserves, Outflank, Scout, Infiltrate, Outflank, Mountain Passes.

Players roll for first turn choice. Winner chooses to go first or second. Loser chooses table side. Player going first deploys all forces not being placed in reserves or infiltrating. The player going second. Then alternate placing infiltrators using the infiltrate rule starting with player going first. The player with first turn will then make all scout moves followed by player going second. Player going second may try to Steal the Initiative.

Deployment zones are anywhere on your half more than 6 inches from the table center line. Model can be placed anywhere in these zones during normal deployment so there is no restriction about how close you can start from enemy models(could be a close as 12 inches if both players deployed at the very limit). Normal Rules for placing mission objectives remain in place. Models fall back toward the players table edge(short table edge).

Special Rule: Mountain Passes
Due to the restricted nature of the battlefield it is hard for outflankers to always show up where desired. Therefore any models using a special rule(outflank or codex special rule) that allows them to move on to the board from reserves from any table edge other than the owning player's table edge, they must instead roll a d6 and consult this table.

1: Outflank Total Failure: Deploy from your table edge.
2: A Little Lost: Deploy from your half of the board left table edge.
3: A Little Lost: Deploy from your half of board right table edge.
4: Flank Exposed: Deploy from opponents half left table edge.
5: Flank Exposed: Deploy from opponents half right table edge.
6: Right Where we want them: Deploy from any table edge.