Blood Bowl Khorne

Tomorrow is the sporting event of the year- Eucalyptus Bowl! (FIFA eat your heart out!) I'm taking my Khorne team- Hardcore Khorne- these are the Ares Demons from MK1881. They were a pain to put together- I'm getting a bit sick of multipart metal figures. I didn't want them to have the typical red armour as I thought it would blend with the daemons' skin, so I went for white and I'm pretty happy with the colour scheme. The red skin was shaded with a mix of red and brown wash, and I like the final appearance.

Blood Bowl Khorne

I'm indebted to the Scalecreep team for the term 'haemoerotic'.

Blood Bowl Khorne Pitfighters

Blood Bowl Khorne Bloodletters

Blood Bowl Khorne Bloodthirster

I thought this terrifying familiar from Reaper would make a great coach:

Reaper familiar

And this is a great point to show these resin skull piles. I have had them for about 20 years, I think, and they're indestructible and versatile. I commonly use them in Blood Bowl for reroll markers, but I'm sure you can find a use for them in many games. They're still available from Eureka, and I can't recommend them enough.

Eureka Pile of Skulls

In other Blood Bowl news, my Ogre team paintjob has been used among some examples for a crowdfunding campaign to get these teams released in resin by Impact! Miniatures. Tom, the one man team at Impact!, helped keep Blood Bowl alive in the decades it was otherwise neglected. The crowdfunding campaign can be found here, and at time of blogging has a few days to run.

Blood Bowl Ogre team

Necromunda- first game

I played the intro scenario of the new Necromunda with my new walls (and unpainted figures- sob). It was a small clash on 2x2' board with six figures per side. We just ran Escher and Goliaths. Victory is achieved by forcing the other gang to flee. It was a chance to wrap our heads around the combat mechanics, ammo rolls, activations, wounds, morale, etc.

Gangs on opposite baselines

Shootout behind obstacles. The chem-thrower ignores cover...

My Champion lobs a choke grenade through the doorway

Goliaths go down in the crossfire.

An Escher victory, 7:1. I had some great dice rolls. It took a couple of hours since we had to look up every rule. It has been ages since I used a measuring tape for gaming...

It's got decent mechanics- not perfect- and the miniatures are really nice. The company's business model of selling extra rules is shady and means you get all the rules all over the place. I did pick this up dirt cheap, but I don't have a big enough gaming group to really get the most out of it. The campaign is where Necromunda shows its stuff.

I'm very happy with the corridor fighting as opposed to the traditional catwalks and walkways. It is a more claustrophobic game and the short ranged weapons actually get a look-in.

Conan: Infernal Pursuit (Parts I and II)

Part I

Conan and Shevatas  have persuaded some of the pirates they are travelling with to mutiny, and take over their current ship. If they can fight off their loyal crewmates they can use this ship to catch up to bigger prey...

Conan and Shevatas prepare to fight their way along the deck

The Captain (orange) realises he must stop Conan from taking over his vessel. [Conan's pirates are red.]

Conan delivers the killing blow after Shevatas wounds the captain with a crossbow bolt. The ship is theirs!

Part II

Conan and Shevatas must defend the ballistas to destroy their prey. The pirates literally swing into action!

Good pirates, bad pirates, and Conan! Crom!

Conan and Shevatas fight off the other crew. Victory!

Another fun game of Conan, this time with three players (I was Shevatas again) and in two parts. It seemed a little easier than the last, or maybe we're grasping the strategies a bit better. Shevatas with a crossbow is a nasty man. The pirate captain had some rotten luck with several crew failing to swing onto Conan's ship and ending up in a shark...

Underhive wall system

At CanCon this year I picked up a heavy block of MDF from Battlefield Accessories, being their 'Sci-Fi Undercity' set. It just happens to have enough walls and columns to perfectly complement the card tiles with the new Necromunda. I assembled and painted them for the Analogue Challenge and was so pleased I just got some MDF doors to go with them.

One 3'x3' setup

Variation, with doors

Ganger's-eye view

In the kit you get 26 columns, 25 short walls and 12 medium walls, each 3" tall. Each wall is made of six pieces of MDF with simple card detailing. I assembled them with PVA and sprayed them black then gunmetal. The secret ingredient is Woodland Scenics Burnt Umber wash with heavy orange stippling.

MDF sheets

I splashed out on some Tamiya 5mm Masking Tape For Curves, because I love the hazard stripe aesthetic for Necromunda. I used rattle cans to spray the doors yellow, then applied tape and oversprayed black. The tape doesn't sit perfectly around the recesses, which gives some cool effects. I got carried away with more rust wash and a light drybrush to pick out the struts.

Assembled, painted yellow, and taped

Overspray black

Remove tape when dry

Rust wash, drybrush, and tidy outside edges

Voila!

I also got a few straight support columns. I had a few spare card bits I used to detail the tops to make them fit it.

Straight support column

If you can't tell, I'm really taken with these. They're simple, durable, and effective. They give your games a more claustrophobic corridor gunfight feel than the suspended gantryways usually seen.

The tiles are very versatile and double sided. They can actually be offset 50% for even more options.

I do have one complaint: the doors are a little longer than the walls (particularly the smaller doors), so don't match up squarely in a big complex.

Door- wall mismatch

When I was a teenager with the original Necromunda, all my bulkheads had graffiti, bloodstains, propaganda posters, etc.- and never actually got finished. I will be getting more of these new walls, and I'll detail a few up to have access pipes or be partially destroyed.

And they're durable enough to toss in a tub.