So, back in September I posted about my first tournament win and painting my first NAF tournament champion trophy. I painted the trophy in official NAF colors and said that if I ever won another that I would probably paint the trophy in the team colors of whatever team I won with. Well…
I have officially lived up to my word.
Months ago I pledged on the Goblin Guild Green Rats Underworld team on Indiegogo. I did not have too much interest in Underworld teams in general, but this team was sculpted by Pedro Ramos and all the minis looked really great, so I jumped on board. As far as indie teams for Blood Bowl go, this team was a pretty decent price and Pedro is my favorite indie sculptor. Today, after months of waiting, a package from Spain finally showed up at my house. I have no idea when I’ll manage to get around to painting this minis, but they sure do look great.
I have a couple of minis on the table right now, but I put them on hold for one night so that I could paint my first ever NAF trophy mini. As I posted previously, I won it this past weekend at Bugman’ Bowl here in Austin. I was not really sure what color scheme to go with to paint this piece, so I hopped on the Googles and did an image search for painted NAF trophies. Lots of cool images came up, but for my first NAF trophy, I decided to go with the official NAF color scheme. It also helps that the official NAF color scheme is also the official XBBL color scheme. If I ever win another one, I will probably paint it up in the color scheme of whatever team I was using when I won.
What is this madness? Two posts in two days? Is this a sign of the apocalypse? Nope, I just felt like trowing up another quick post to have something to do. I just wanted to share my Blood Bowl corner. This is where I paint and store minis and terrain supplies waiting to be worked on. I will not bother showing the actual painting area as it is pretty much a total mess at all times. Anyway, as I can not think of anything else approaching clever to write, I will get directly to the picture…
So, yesterday I attended a new local Blood Bowl tournament called Bugman’s Bowl. As always, it was good to see friends and play some good games. The tournament itself was very well run and Dean did a great job for a first time tournament organizer. He has some interesting concepts such as using playing cards to randomly assign table numbers for the first game, as well as for door prize drawings at the end of the day. They added a little more flavor than using little pink or blue raffle style tickets. The most entertaining element all day was the “Get Me a Beer” hat. If any players got pushed into the crowd, the player doing the pushing would yell, “Get me a beer!” and the player who got pushed would then have to wear a large, and very silly hat until someone else yelled, “Get me a beer!” Anyone who finished the game while wearing the hat, then had to go up to the bar and exchange the hat for a free beer to give to his opponent. Very clever and thematically appropriate. Finally, while we did not get any custom tournament dice (which was a little bit of a bummer), we each got an Impact! miniature in our welcome bag. At the end of each game, if you lost your game, you could force your opponent to trade minis with you, and if you tied, you both had to agree on the trade. Like ROT Cup earlier in the year, Bugman’s Bowl was held at 4th Tap Brewery here in Austin, TX. Also like ROT Cup, I brought Chaos Dwarves as they served me pretty well the last time that I brought them.
Another tournament down… I attended Diablo Bowl yesterday and I finally made it home today. Lots of die were thrown, lots of cussing was heard, and a good time was had by all (for the most part). With thirteen coaches, it was a decent turnout for a newer tournament. The following is a quick rundown of my three matches:
Well… twenty-two minis down.
Diablo Bowl in Dallas is two weeks from today and as usual, things are coming down to the wire fore me. I managed to finish applying static grass to the latest group of minis that were on the table last night. I also started applying numbers to the minis that were already completed.
Another quick update as I have gotten more painting done this week.
I am slowly managing to knock out these Dwarves. It is time for basing as I have decided that I am done with the minis themselves. I could probably do a better job if I sunk more time into them, but at this point, I am more interested in simply having them “done.”
Well, I am (very) slowly chipping away at my Dwarf team for Diablo Bowl. Diablo Bowl is exactly three weeks from today, and as always… I have pretty much waited until the last minute to paint. As always, my biggest problem is motivation. In case I have not mentioned it lately, I REALLY do not enjoy painting minis, but it has to be done. And since I have already won a couple of trophies at various Blood Bowl tournaments (including last year’s Diablo Bowl), I might as well do the best job I can. The upside is that all the minis that I NEED for this team at the tournament are already done. The minis that I am painting now are pretty much for “wow” factor. And since the best mini painter that I personally know, my friend James, is currently deployed, I might actually stand a chance of bringing home another trophy this year. 🙂
OK, so it has been what… eight months since my last post? Well, I never claimed to be particularly good at this blogging thing.  I can mostly attribute my lack of activity on this site to two things: 1) A general lack of activity in my gaming group. 2) A bit of hobby burnout. Anyway, I am going to see if I can pick things back up a bit, and start posting a little more regularly again.
The lack of group activity is due to real life. One guy moved away, one guy has five kids and is too busy with other things, one guy has had some significant family health issues, one guy is still active military and just got deployed to the Middle East. The burnout basically stems from a marathon painting session at the beginning of the year in an attempt to get three Blood Bowl teams ready for Orclahoma Bowl in March. It looked a little something like this…
Wyrd Stones and Tackle Zones 