Aug 18, 2014

Plans for a nurgle team

I've played a couple of games with nurgle online (both Cyanide and FUMBBL) and I like the way they play (or rather hinder the opponent team from playing).

I started with this roster:

1 BoN
4 Warriors
1 Pestigor
5 Rotters
2 ReRolls

and so far I'm at 3-2-0 (W-D-L) (FUMBBL and Cyanide combined).
I had to try this team on the tabletop.

So I set out to find some miniatures that I could use for my nurgle team.

I started with the pestigors and found a couple of the old warhammer pestigors on Ebay.

Warhammer pestigors
I need to do some cutting and green stuffing to make them more blood bowly, but it should be relatively easy.

After finding them, I started looking for a set of warriors and had a look at the Avatars of War warriors, but then I remembered that I'll get a set of the Apocalyptic Hunters from Impact Miniatures as part of their latest kickstarter. They'll be perfect, with a bit of green stuffing and head swapping.

Apocalyptic hunter Set from Impact Miniatures
Finding a spawn proved to be a bit more of a challenge. I started biding for a Warhammer one on Ebay, but I got outbid. Thankfully though, I found a better version from Kromlech.
Morbid Spawn from Kromlech
Now I was just missing the rotters. I initially thought I'd just use my zombies as rotters, but then I found something better, Blights from Heresy Miniatures. Same here, a bit of green stuff and they'll be good to go.

Blights from Heresy Miniatures
So there you have it, my plans for a new nurgle team. I'll update you as the project moves along. I'll probably prepare the miniatures quite soon, but they'll have to wait a bit before being painted. I'd like to finish my 'flings as well as my dark elves before starting with my nurgle, human, chaos pact or orcs. So much to paint, so little time.

Aug 2, 2014

Perfect Blood Bowl weather

The sun was shining, the beer flowing and we had a good time.
It was however a different story on the actual field. I thought I'd give a short recap of yesterdays games and maybe analys said games.

Game 1, Wedding Deerskins (Necro) vs. The Orclandraiders (Orcs)


The Orclandraiders, place 2 in group B of the BBBL, came in to the game with a TV of 560k more than the Wedding Deadskins. This only because their star blitzed was MNG. The Orclandraiders have been around since the start of the BBBL in 2005, but suffer from some odd skill choices of early inexperience and therefore some bloat.
The Wedding Deadskins entered this season as a fresh team (in our league you start with 110k extra gold plus one skill). So far they'd payed 6 games (2-2-2) and skilled up the werewolfs (blodge and block), a golem (block) and a ST4 zombie.

Inducements

For the inducement money they hired Ramtut III and a wizard.
My thought about hiring Ramtut III was simple. The orcs, missing their star blitzer, are quite slow. A ST6 piece with wrestle would cause them problems and slow them down. He can also act as a cage breaker with his break tackle and wrestle. Add to that the two golems and the orcs should have a hard time moving forward. The wizard is more or less a no brainer in this case, stopping the orcs from caging.

1st half

This game started off with a twist from the first dice roll. The field was covered in snow and ice. A blizzard had rolled in, which I was quite happy with. It would stop the orcs from GFIing and I might be able to take advantage of this with my faster players.

The stands were covered with Orclandraiders fans. 20k of them, easily outnumbering the 9k Wedding Deadskins fans. You could here the orc fans cheering as  the orcs kick off the game, thus giving them a 6th reroll. The kick was placed deep and thanks to one lineorc with kick, it stayed there.
The Deadskins started blocking the orcs to the left, forming a screen on their right side. The ghoul in the backfield scooped up the ball and ran down to the screen. A good start to the game.
The orcs then started battering themselves against the screen, almost breaking through. The Deadskins however took advantage of the situation and the fact that the troll didn't want to do anything for the first two turn, pinning the orcs down on their right hand side while running the ghoul and some protection up the left hand side. The orcs tried to get back and almost made it, but thanks to Ramtut III and a dodge, followed by two GFIs from the ghoul, the Deadskins managed to score in turn 7. The picture below showing the start of turn 7.

Start of Deadskin turn 7, just before the TD
During this mad dash toward the end zone, one werewolf and a zombie had been KOed. One zombie had been badly hurt, but he managed to regenerate. The KOed zombie came back, but the werewolf spent the rest of the game KOed.

The Deadskins then kicked off to the Raiders, ball landing just behind the goblin. It was picked up and handed to said goblin. However, the troll didn't want to throw the goblin, fumbling him twice, thus ending the first half of the game, 1-0 for the Deadskins.

2nd half

The Deadskins kicked off again, this time it was a high kick, landing deep in the end zone of the Raiders half. Their thrower saw the high kick and placed himself underneath it, but failed to catch the ball. Turn 1, the orcs start blocking and picks up the ball, driving it downfield.
The Deadskins stopped the forward movement off the orcs and this is when the wizard decides to cast a fireball in to the fray. The screen goes down and Ramtut III dodges and blitzes the ball carrier. The ball carrier sees Ramtut III coming, thus dumping the ball to one of the orcs in the backfield (who's marked by a ghoul). The lineorc can't catch the ball and it comes to rest next to him. The orc thrower is knocked down by Ramtut III and the Deadskins put a TZ on the ball in the form of a wight.
In the following turn, the orcs can't get the wight away from the ball and thus fails to pick the ball up.
The Deadskins see their chance and Ramtut III dodges one square to blitz the orc thrower in to the crowed, but disaster strikes. Double skulls!

The dreaded double skulls
The orcs can't capitalize and yet again fails to pick the ball up. In the following turn, Ramtut III blitzes in to the scrum, freeing the ball up. There's just one orc TZ on it and a ghoul jumps in, picks up the ball, doges away and runs off. The orcs can't get to him and the Deadskins score in turn 6.
This was however not without cost. A wight and a zombie (regenerates) has been MNGed and the star werewolf (blodge) got -AG. With a badly hurt zombie, this totals up to five CAS for the orcs (claw didn't work a single time for the Deadskins).

This is also how the game ends and I was very happy with managing a win.
To compensate the -AG on the werewolf both a ghoul and a wight (MNG) get +AG. The -AG werewolf was retired and a new one was brought in for the last game of the season against the Barbarian Icefighters (Norse).

TD      2 - 0
CAS    0 - 5

Thoughts

I think I was lucky, pulling away with a win in this one. My dodge rolls went my way and I could out maneuver the orcs. If I'd failed more dodges, it would probably have been a draw.
I'm also very happy with my choice of inducements. Ramtut III was great in this game, causing a lot of problems for my opponent. The wizard worked, taking out the right people of the screen. This was however balanced by the fact that I couldn't roll above seven when it came to armor rolls with the wolfs. When I did break the orcs armor, it was never above seven.

I've also started to doubt dodge as a second skill on my werewolfs. There's so much tackle around, so I think I'll give jump up a try. They can either jump up and hit the player marking them (a free blitz on 2+) or use their M8 to the fullest. I've 1 SPP away from the second skill on the werewolf with block. I think I'll give jump up a try one him.