Alzuri Angels

Hi all

This is the last in my series of Blood Bowl teams this year, but have no fear there will be more coming as I've backed a Norse Team KS due to land mid 2020 and I will be getting a Xmas treat involving the halflings.

So for my 4th and final team of 2019, we have the Alzuri Angels!

The Angels are another all female elf team, this time Elven Union.   This is taken from Wiki

"The story of High Elves in Blood Bowl is a long and interesting one, full of juicy scandals and long-running disputes between larger-than-life characters. One of the biggest scandals in their history came in the years following the collapse of the NAF, when teams suddenly found themselves indebted to noble backers from the Elven kingdoms, who- thanks to a lot of small print- began to make their way onto the pitch, shunting established players to the sidelines. Outrage abounded among players and fans alike, and it was only a matter of time before someone did something about it.

When it finally happened, the formation of the Elven Union came as a surprise to no one. A loose federation of Elven teams, made primarily of disgruntled former High Elf players, but including the odd Wood Elf and even Dark Elf, the Union seeks to repair the damaged reputation of Elven teams and show that they can take Blood Bowl seriously. What the teams lack in funding, they make up for with experience and stubborn determination."

Sadly, I didn't have enough time to take pictures for you, as Damon has whisked them away to practice with them for the tournament in January. So you just get the ones I did just after finishing the main team.

Now the very sharp-eyed among you may remember this team from the beginning of last year - https://dagobbosgrotto.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-alzuri-angels.html and think this is just a recycled post... and you would be kind of correct. In the last post, I had numbered the minis incorrectly, the bases were awful and I only had 2 catchers painted.  So now was the time to dust them off, paint the newbies and re-highlight the old ones before basing the minis as a team.

The miniatures are from Shadowforge and I bought them many years ago. Scale wise they are 28mm and are really nice minis - detail wise and to paint. I bought the main team as I said years ago, but in order to fit the new roster I needed to pick up a couple of catchers and these are the only duplicates in the team. I decided to go for a pink/purple and white strip which looks kinda jazzy and painted the base rims in the colours recommended in BB ed 2 to identify positions.  There are some other back room minis for this team which I bought with the extra catchers, including cheerleaders, apothecary and assistant coach, but they are on the paint table so will have to be for another time.

That's it for me this year.  I won't be posting until 2020 now, so please have a great Christmas and I hope you get the toys that you wish for!

dGG 

The Darkened Dream or The Ramsgate Razors...

Hi guys

I haven't decided on the name of my 3rd team for Blood Bowl, hence the title of this post. Online I have both and they are both doing well but I can't quite choose between the two...

Anyhoo, for my 3rd team I went to a 3rd party producer and got myself some Dark Elves!  Oh how I love the Delfs. I love the dark and twisted lore from the Warhammer world, I love the Malus Darkblade books, I love playing them online. What I don't love is the GW Delf team.... more specifically I mean these ones

Now don't get me wrong, GW make some pretty bloody awesome minis but I do NOT like these ones. It's the cold one skin scarfs, they leave me...well... cold. 

So instead I sourced these from Sukubus Miniatures, https://www.sukubusstudio.com/witches-team.

This is my favourite sculpt

I'm not gonna lie, these are some of the best miniatures I have ever had the pleasure to paint and I was nervous to put brush to resin, because I didn't want to bugger them up! but hell, just look at them...

Anyway, these are my Dark Elf players. Unlike my other teams i'm not going to do separate intros, instead you'll get them all in one splurge of a post, with all of the minis I have.

First up, the line elves.

The bases are made by Das modelling clay and my favourite Green Stuff World rollers and will be the surface of a custom Delf pitch, that I will build later.  The armour is a bastardisation of a paint scheme perfected by Bryan "Vampifan" on his Nemesis bugs.

Next are the Witch Elves, I love the red cloaks on these beauts.

The Blitzers, with their elaborate helms are very impressive.

The assassins are the reason I spotted this miniature range in the first place and are lush.

Onto the Runners and also the only two males in the team...

alongside their female counterparts...

and finally I couldn't resist the last miniature that they had on offer, the cheerleader

I love these minis so much and I love the way the team play, so much so that I'm taking them to a BB tournament in late January.

hope you enjoy.

dGG

Throw-throw, catch-catch!!

Hi all

***edit*** in my haste to post, I put out the last in this series of BB posts first and forgot this one.  Looks like a double post this week you lucky people!!***

This week I look at the first two positionals for the Gnash-Gnaw. 

First up are the throwers.  I have 2 (naturally) but only take one in my first 11.  So number 1 is Krik,  this all-star rat boy originally ran with the bad rats at the lowest level of "the Pit". Spotted by the overlords of that Hellish place when he kept his nerve, not spraying the musk of fear, when facing down a squad of Storm Vermin and flinging a pilfered bag of warptokens at a waiting runt in a nearby tunnel with pinpoint accuracy.  Since then his calming presence helps steer the Gnash-Gnaw to victory.

Number 13 is yet to appear on the TableTop for me, although he has made it into my online version of the Gnash-Gnaw (when I play BB2) and therefore has finally been given a name - Likad Venom. Venom is happily warming the benches most times, its safe and warm but when he does manage to get some field time, he's known for his "dump off" skills - a quick pass just before being sacked.  This cool headed ability allows the team to keep the ball even as he gets taken out.

Onto the sneakiest of the sneaky - the Gutter Runners. The Skaven don't have catchers as such, but they do have these guys. Super agile, fast and armed with the dodge skill, they are able to get themselves into and out of tricky situations and into scoring positions.  These guys are literally the fastest players in the entire game and have pulled my fat out of the fire on many an occasion. I started with two with the option to take two more as and when I can afford them.  Not much is known about the mysterious runners, closeted away in the Eshin quarter of Hells Pit when not playing but Nurgjit is my star player online and on the TT, racking up the SPP

so that's my throw/catching contingent, next up is the heavy hitters.

hope you enjoy

dGG

Crush- crush, kill-kill

Hi all

***edit*** in all the excitement, I've published this post before another, rather than recall this one and publish in order, I've just posted both today. My suggestion would be to read "Throw-Throw, Catch-Catch" first and then come back to this one***  https://dagobbosgrotto.blogspot.com/2019/12/throw-throw-catch-catch.html

So we get to the last part of my Gnash-Gnaw team overview - The muscle section

Skaven, in this edition, have access to Storm Vermin who play in the Blitzer role.  These are my favourite minis in the 2nd ed range and the reason I didn't buy the new GW minis for my fave race.

So we have Surgad Venom (2) litter-kin to Likad Venom, substitute thrower for the GGs. Surgad was taken from the litter as an infant due to his aggressive (for a skaven) behaviour and began his training as a Storm Vermin, the elite warriors of the Clan. It was due to Surged's influence that his smaller kin was taken onto the team and away from the beast pits of the deeper warrens at Hell's Pit.

Neeable Snarl (3) is a massive ratman, bulging muscles ripple beneath his fur, mostly due to his Skalm addiction and this is reflected in a strength increase for him.  This increase combined with his block skill, makes him a very formidable player and I often use him out on his own, splitting the play and my opponents attention.

Kratak (4) is a huge Rat Ogre, a mutated beast - created by mad engineers of Clan Moulder at the cost of many warp tokens. Online he was killed in my very first league game, leaving a huge gap in my team. He has survived and performed much better on the TT and restores my faith in taken a "big guy" despite the downsides of skills such as "wild animal" meaning they only perform some of the time.  Kratak is a Warhammer FB mini from some time in the 90's and was part of my massive Skaven horde up until recently when I painted him up to bolster the Gnash-Gnaw ranks.

So that's my team guys, with no support staff.  I was going to ask for some coaching minis and cheerleaders (yes there are some around!!) for xmas but ended up buying another BB team which I will show off next week.

just to finish this post, I've attached a YouTube playthrough of my boardgame "Blood, Sweat & Horses" that I recently recorded with Jay Austin, the founder of Meeples Peoples Circus. Sadly you don't get the multi camera angles that were planned due to technical difficulties, but you do get a top down view of the game board and of course some quality banter between the players. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how the game plays.

https://youtu.be/hB3FSCCwLYs

hope you enjoy

dGG