Dreadball.....

So, I had my first game of Dreadball this weekend...

I used my recently acquired 'Void Sirens' team and Gary (the guy teaching me) used the shops human team. He's one of whatever Mantic calls it's Henchman/Press-ganger equivalents so he seemed the best candidate as a teacher ;-)

The game mechanics are fairly simple.

Each team has six players on the table at any one time though your team itself can be larger with the extras being available as substitutes for incapacitated (or killed) players. These models are divided between three types (Strikers, Jacks and Guards) with each having certain advantages and disadvantages. Certain player types are unable to do certain things and others get bonus dice for certain actions. The number of these player types available to you also is a good indicator of the inclinations of your team...Marauders (Orks to all intents and purposes) for example have no 'Strikers' but make up for it with extra Jacks and Guards (the ones that do the hitting).

A card is drawn to decide who is the home or away player (home player deploys first) and different teams (Human, Marauder, etc.) get different numbers of coaching dice (bonus dice you can add to rolls) and cards (granting extra actions amongst other things).

Each team gets a number of actions to divide amongst their players with no more than two on a single player (though they need not be consecutive) and your turn automatically ends if you fumble the ball or score. Actions have a target number depending on your team and player type (Humans need a 4+ on a D6 for pretty much everything, Skaven are faster but weaker, etc.).

Most Actions are accomplished with a 'pool' of 3 dice which is then modified up or down depending on who you are and what your doing at the time) and these are so simple and manageable in number that after a few turns the modifiers become second nature. You can add a single one of your coaching dice (if you have any left) to any dice roll you wish if you deem it important. Should you be making an opposed roll against another player and double their total then bonus effects come into effect (free moves and so on).

Should you be unfortunate enough to get one of your players injured he takes a number of saves equal to the difference between his result and the opponents with the number of failures being equal to the amount of time  (turns) the player is removed from the table...more than three and the player is unfortunately removed permanently...

The board has several scoring zones (red and white in the above picture) with different points being available based upon where you 'shoot' from and how far away from the 'goal' you are. The score zig-zags back and forth as each time you score your points first counter any your opponent may have already made. First to seven wins though you'll probably have scored far more than that as the score swings back and forth during the 14 turns

I lost....

I should probably have spent more time in my opponents half...

The real question is, I suppose...was it any good?

The answer would have to be yes. The rules are so simple that by turn three or so I didn't need to really ask anything other than some of the effects for 'doubling' your opponents successes and for a simple system it becomes surprisingly tactical very quickly. The models are fairly characterful (as much as can be done on such a small scale and are easily identifiable as their respective types as the poses are quite distinctive. It's also surprisingly involving and immersive which I wasn't expecting from such a basic premise.

There are also campaign rules in the instructions should you and a group of friends wish to utilise them for a prolonged group of games and several of the locals are already doing so (and have been for quite some time).

I'll be buying a copy next month ;-)

I'm sure all the Dreadball players will be rushing to tell me how much of the above I got completely wrong but until then...

...thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Crew a Week Challenge (Week 9) - Zoraida (Complete)

So I'm a day late but at least they're done now.

I'm quite happy with how they've turned out. There's a lot of green...but they do all live in a swamp ;-)

Zoraida, the Hag.

Silurid.

'Bad Juju', The Mire Golem.

No idea which crew I'll be doing this week...Mei Feng maybe?

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Crew a Week Challenge - First Failure...

So as expected I fucked up this one.

Real life, poor time management, other hobby commitments, etc. are all viable excuses but the simple fact is...I didn't get it done in time.....

Currently they look like this.....

and with 10 minutes left of today I guess that's how they're going to stay till tomorrow...

Thoughts and comments are (rather unusually) not at all welcome as I'm too busy wallowing in self pity to answer them.....

Crew a Week Challenge - Zoraida the Hag

I'm so far behind on this weeks project that my first failure might be on the cards....

....hell, I've only just got around to basing them.....

The idea is to have the base area to be painted as swamp water with the crew standing on rocks in that water. There will be appropriate looking reeds and things coming out from under the rocks...that's the plan anyway...but to be honest 'have paint on them' will be a result the way it's going so far, lol.

To make it worse my FLGS (Titan Games) is having a weekend to promote the Malifaux M2E rule-set and that means that most of my Sunday hobby time is going to be taken up by demoing Malifaux rather than painting Malifaux...

Thoughts, comments or functional plans for a time-machine are (as usual) most welcome.

Weekly House of Paincakes Article (7)

This weeks House of Paincakes article is on the subject of Malifaux's Gremlin population and can be found here.

Gremlins are somewhat strange so I thought that the accompanying 'Eye-Candy' should move towards the bizarre as well. So here's some 'Batman' cosplay with a bit of gender reversal...

Batman and Robin...

A pair of Jokers...

Bane, The Riddler and Two-face....

Those were all I could find with my half-arsed five minute web search. For those of you who only come to my blog once a week...see you in seven days time ;-)

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome...they can even be on the article if you like...

Cthulhu Wars - Kickstarter

Unlike some of my fellow local bloggers I've never been a massive board game fan and even less of a card game one...admittedly Malifaux uses cards but isn't a card game as such so I can't really count that as one.

Though I'm not a board game aficionado I am a big H.P. Lovecraft fan which is how the following came to my attention.....

Though I doubt I can stretch to all the expansions (it's been a rather bill heavy month) I think I might be able to afford the core game. It seems to have been quite a successful Kickstarter up to now and they've thrown in a few free Old Ones now they've started to hit a decent amount of pledges.

The initial game concept was 3-5 players which was a bit tricky for me as due to my working hours and odd shifts most of my friends are asleep or at work while I'm free and vice versa, however one of the early stretch goals was 2-player rules which has fortunately been achieved so my interest had been rekindled.....

If your interested the link to the Kickstarter page is here.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Unboxing Malifaux - Zoraida the Hag

Crew of the week is Zoraida and her Swamp dwelling servants.

Zoraida the Hag - The Hags Puppets.

The Box - Front and Rear.

With the unboxing articles that cover metal models I'll be taking the initial pictures without any cleaning up so you can see them 'warts and all'...

Zoraida the Hag.

The Silurid.

Bad Juju, Mire Golem.

Here's them assembled. They're temporarily tacked to bases as they will need some appropriately swampy looking ones when I paint them.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.