Browsing Tag

dreadball

Tournaments

CHOP! Dreadball

Posted on February 24, 2014

I ran a Dreadball “League in a Day” event yesterday. I originally planned this because I wanted to see what a League looked like before I went to AdeptiCon to do it with people I didn’t know. Unfortunately, this backfired as I found 4 other people who wanted to play – meaning the organizer had no opponent!

Instead I answered rules questions and ended up running two demos of the game on the third board we’d set up! I leveled my team along with the league participants by pretending that my team played the same as the player who received the worst tournament points each round. I’d then randomized who on my team got a kill, or a 3-point Strike. My team didn’t level up much, but it was fun anyway.

I found that I didn’t really need more models. The 8 that come in the basic pack were enough. I ended up spending my megacredits on coaching dice (critical for the rats to score!) and replacing any models that died. Pro tip — if the model that died doesn’t have any XP, just recycle him for 5mc and then buy a “brand new player”, where the cost to save that player is his cost+1d6 mc, so you save 1d6+5mc!

I think my AdeptiCon painting priority is still valid. Finish the Malifaux models (going to GottaCon!), finish my skullcannon and then worry about what to do next. Because I still want to paint my Veer-myn Keeper, and painting 5 rats is no more difficult than painting 1 rat. 😛

CHOP! is a great venue – we have games, we have people and we have beer.

Jamie’s orx started the fight, but we ended it.

This was hilarious. Owen’s Forge Father’s cornered Chris’ human and proceeded to beat the ever-living snot out of him. Chris was 1 point from winning the game of Ultimate when Scott took the last point!

Ultimate Dreadball!

In the end, Chris won the tournament/league having won all of his games, 2 of them in landslide and earning 17 points overall! Owen killed the most people at 4 kills, and Chris got the most popular team at 10 cheers! Scott won the Ultimate game.

I really want to play Ultimate again. It took everything I liked about Dreadball, and ramped it up to 11!

Work-in-progress

Dreadball Veer-myn Booster pack “parting”

Posted on February 20, 2014

I picked up the Veer-myn Booster Pack the other day, as the last few models I need to get my AdeptiCon models done. I opened the box and found 3 of the now well known Mantic baggies inside. The sprue-less plastic is nice for packing and shipping. Hell for figuring out what pieces go with what model! Thankfully they have done a superb job of ensuring that the joins for each piece are different – you literally can’t put the wrong tail on the wrong rat.

I thought I’d write and post a photo of the final sorting. The easiest bag is the Keeper, who is in the bottom left of the photo. There are 2 bags that are identical, containing 1 prone marker, 1 alternative guard and 1 alternative striker. The other 4 models in this photo are from 1 of these bags. (I opened the other bag before realizing that I didn’t want to do that…)

I’m playing in a Dreadball one-day league this weekend (or rather, I’m organizing it…) so I’m hoping to figure out roughly how many extra models I’ll need for the Adepticon League in a Night event. I want to get the Keeper done, at a minimum, because I love the idea of a rat who’s sole purpose is to knock people over, take the ball and then punt it into the other end zone. YAY RATS!

I also constructed a name for my team — the Cheddar City Blade Runners. I think it’s a delicious mix of goofiness and sci-fi tropes. Now they all need names. 🙂

Work-in-progress

Building a lot of stuff

Posted on February 7, 2014

(This message has been pre-recorded for your reading pleasure!)

After my paint-fest for a week or so, I didn’t feel like painting anymore, so I built a ton of things.

Rail Golem for Malifaux!

I used this guy once the other day. I’m trying to find a replacement for Miss Step, who I feel isn’t performing well. I don’t know if this guy will, but he was fun to use. Hoping to use him some more before Adepticon, just in case I want to bring him.

Deadzone Reb humans!

I’m playing in an informal Deadzone campaign. Last game I played I lost 7/8 members of my strike force who went into the game. I made a mistake. My force went under 70pts, so High Command sent me 3 free humans…who are at -1 dice for everything for the next game. But I needed some more humans first. No problem…I bought 2 Reb faction starters and a booster, so I’ve got a few humans kicking around the house

Just a ton of Dreadball MVPs.

I’m running a Dreadball tournament next month, so I thought I’d have a few MVPs available for that. Not certain if I’ll paint them all, but I wouldn’t mind getting at Gabe and Reek at least, because they are cool. Slippery Joe too…who knows. 🙂

Tournaments

DREADBALL TOURNAMENT

Posted on January 26, 2014

If you, or anyone you know, plays Dreadball…or even has any models sitting around from the Kickstarter that they’ve never used, let them know about this.

February 23rd, 2014 at the Eagle’s Club in North Vancouver starting at 12:30pm I’m holding a one-day Dreadball league.

My goal is to bring some people together and play this great game in a league setting for the first time. We’ll do 3 games and then bring everyone together for a game of Ultimate, which should be insane and awesome. I’m going to hold a raffle for those attending for an item or two, more if I get more sign-ups.

I don’t even care if the models are painted, or if you’ve never played. We won’t be teaching, so be sure to know the rules, but I think that there will be only 2 people there who’ve had more than 2 games.

We’re going to play 1020mc. I’ll have a league-package available shortly to sort out the details, but you’ll be able to buy ranks for your guys, or extra dice, etc at the usual tournament rates.

Send me an e-mail (chopwarhammer@gmail.com), or Facebook (facebook.com/CHOPGaming) or whatever floats your boat to sign up.

Featured Images

Veer-myn – Final

Posted on June 5, 2013

Bought some lamps and new lights to replace my old ones this evening. Pulled out all of the photography equipment and here’s what I ended up with!

The entire team! …they don’t have a name yet.

Took 4 photos of each of these models to make a little collage. You can click through the images to see larger versions, as always.

One of the strikers. There are 2 variants of this model.

One of the two guards. There is only one variant of guard.

The paint job on these guys was pretty quick. 3 layers on each area, base coat, wash down, highlight up and it was nice to get back to a workflow that I know pretty well and can do quickly.

After applying the transfers last night, I came back and used the matte medium to flatten out the gloss. Then I took a sponge and splattered on some Boltgun Steel and Umbral Umber to muddy the whole thing up.

Still really disappointed by the damned mold lines. I swear to you, I checked every model for those things and every time I turn a model around there’s another that I missed. There has to be a better way to find and remove them!

Technique Work-in-progress

Veermyn – Waterslide transfers (decals)

Posted on June 4, 2013

I picked up some of the Dreadball decals since they look way better than my free-hand numbers painting. Would you believe that I’ve never applied a waterslide decal in my life? I’ve bought next to a billion orks, with 10 billion decals, and I’ve never once used one.

I’ve been reading the Forge World Masterclass Vol 2 book, and it reminded me that decals can look good and not “fake”.

I’ve been using this guide from the blog “From the Warp”, which didn’t steer me wrong. I think I would add three things – use both tweezers and hobby knife when picking up the transfer, don’t put to much water on the model, and have a paper towel handy.

You need one implement to move the decal from the water to the model, and a second implement to get it off the first implement! I picked up with the tweezers and removed with the knife. The water thing is because otherwise you’ll have no control over where the decal slides to once it’s on the model. The paper towel is because no matter how much you think you’ve master point 2, you’ll eventually add to much water and need to soak some of it away so your thrice-damned decal will stop sliding around.

Thinking I’ll head to Staples tomorrow and pick up some more lamps, so I can photographize this week. This team is a decal-weathering away from being done! I love a project that starts and finishes in 4 days. 🙂

Work-in-progress

Veermyn – Base coat and more

Posted on June 2, 2013

I’m scared of my howdah, and I had an urge to paint purple so I pulled out the veermyn.

Rucksack tan skin, liche purple clothes and rune fang steel gloves and armor. They might be done Monday…doing it fairly quickly. 🙂

Work-in-progress

Minor repair

Posted on May 9, 2013

A minor hobby tonight — making the veer-myn set of “flying” strikers so they have 2 paws on the ground. Just bent their legs a bit and then glued and puttied to fill the gaps that were left. It’s not a great fix. Thinking of putting some gravel rubble on their bases (they are rats, after all) to provide another anchor point for the hands.

Regular Wednesday night CHOP gaming tonight. I wouldn’t call it “practice” for OFCC, since practicing would require something that I’m calling “recall of lessons learned”, but played with my proposed OFCC list tonight and it’s alright. The Engine is new and odd. Actually choosing to put that many points into Heavens magic as a valid and strategic choice, also odd.

I bought another K&R case the other day, along with some new foam which is 2 layers of 10×5 rows. This is fantastic, because combined with a half layer of pick’n’pluck, I can fit my entire 2800 OFCC army into a single regular case with room to spare. Brilliant.

Work-in-progress

Veer-myn Dreadball Team

Posted on May 7, 2013

I’m torn between wanting to paint up another Dreadball team, and working on the Steg which I need to finish for OFCC (in June, thankfully). Last night Miranda and I were watching The Voice when I realized that I didn’t really need to watch most of the show. I probably couldn’t paint and watch TV, but assembling models should be fine.

I’ve enjoyed playing with the humans, but all of the talk on the intarwehbz about how they are OP bugs me. I don’t like OP things, I tend to shy away from them. I like things with obvious weaknesses, and the humans are so jack-of-all-trades that they don’t have many (except when the orx player gets the drop on sending your guards off the pitch). Veer-myn aren’t the worst team in the game, but they have some weakness – a Skill of 5+ means they’ll need some luck to grab or throw the ball, even though they are movement 6 each and Speed 3+.

I was thinking while assembling these guys. Mantic (so far) has no where near the quality of models as GW. GW plastic is crisp, solid and their newer models fit together near perfectly. These veer-myn have soft edges in their fingers, bend quite readily and the detail just isn’t as crisp. Three of the models had sprue-poles up their asses as well – they’d been cut away at the factory, but I had to clean up this 3-4mm sprue point at the meeting point of 2 legs and a tail.

But I will continue to support Mantic, because I believe that this can be fixed and that their attitude is refreshing. I think that anyone who uses Kickstarter as much as they do “gets it”. Their head-honcho was seen around Adepticon. He personally showed up at the Blood Bowl tournament I was at to give Dreadball prizes to the tournament. They are on Facebook constantly with neat videos and one of their primary game designers has a blog where he goes into detail about why he did certain mechanics. I eat that shit up.

After finishing my Blood Bowl team I realized that I needed to work more on modelling. But I really don’t know how to fix this problem…

Their hands are supposed to be touching the base…

A lot of cutting and putty, I suppose.

Featured Images

Dreadball Humans – Final

Posted on February 19, 2013

It turns out that I’ve been painting a bit in my free time (ie, when not on vacation), but didn’t realize it. Finished off the Dreadball team tonight! And I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

After I last left them, I put a few sections of Bleached Bone on them as a contrast colour. I probably didn’t place it well, but eh…I think I should have used a darker colour on the chest plates. It’s ok as-is, but I think a strong dark contrast in the middle is a better idea.

Then I painted some metal bits. Wash the ever-living-shit out of them. Devlan Mud (yes, I still have 3 pots of the Mud) over the metal to burnish it a bit and bring the Bone down in shade.

I think the finishing touch was the base edges. After I had finished painting them, I realized what my general problem with the models were – they weren’t flashy enough. Every army I have has some wickedly bright colour on it somewhere, where these guys were all darker green. Some bright turqoise, some white and BAM I have a sweet edge highlight that’s somewhat reminiscent of the electronic grid they play on.

Next project – converting a Lizardman Blood Bowl team!

Older Posts