Blitz Bowl: And It Turned Into A Blood Bowl Blitz... Blood Bowl Blitz...

Yes, there is a difference between Blood Bowl and Blitz Bowl but it fit the lyrics.  And as for the differences?  Well, that's what this is all about!

That said, in full disclosure I haven't played Blood Bowl since the 1st edition.  I've often thought about picking it up again, but it's always felt like one of those games that you really need to be part of league to get the most out of it.  Even with that in mind, I once again decided to take a look at it and found it just as tempting as ever.

The concept just sounds hilarious to me.  Fantasy races meeting on the field of "battle"?  Just love the concept but as I started digging more into the recent edition I quickly encountered my long time enemy; time.  The reviews that I saw said that a game of Blood Bowl typically takes two to three hours to play.  If a game is fun, then that isn't much of an issue, but finding a block of time that vast to sit down and play a game...  it's just not so easy anymore.  Life, ya know?

And that's when I stumbled across Blitz Bowl.

With an official play time of 30 to 60 minutes, that's a lot easier to fit into life as we know it and having finally been able to play a game...  yeah, I'm glad that I went for the Blitz instead of the Blood.

With only three stats for each figure plus possibly a special rules, the rules are very easy to get your head around.  And it also doesn't feel like it's just trying to be a fantasy version of football.  There are enough differences that I really enjoyed the game play because it felt like I was playing something different, if that makes sense.  The miniatures are really nice as well.  All of these are multi-piece plastic minis from Games Workshop with their own unique sculpts and they live up to their normal reputation for quality.  I mean really, you can say all you want about the company and their games, but they do still make some very nice miniatures.

Only a few turns in and the stunties are already kicking my butt!

As for the game that we played, my friend Deuces took the dwarves (since they were blue... he likes the color blue...) while I fielded the humans.  Well, "fielded" might be too strong a word but he stomped me into the ground with a sudden death win (a sudden death win happens as soon as you are beating your opponent by 10 or more points).  And even though he royally trounced me, I'm really looking forward to getting this one to the table again in the future.  It's a great mix of sports, strategy, mayhem, and wackiness that puts it solidly in my wheelhouse to have a good time, and I'm already looking at purchasing more teams to get trounced with!  More on this one in the future, but until next time...

Random Updates: BrushFu, Badger Games, and Erehwon Assembled!

Last week was a big one for hobby, not because I was able to get a lot done, but because I had a lot delivered!  First off was an order I placed a while back with BrushFu Studios on Etsy.

My perusing of Etsy started in the beginning of the year, after I got Core Space.  I was looking for cyberpunk style miniatures and Etsy has a good selection of them available.  I stumbled across BrushFu Studios and liked what they had to offer but unfortunately they were taking a break at the time.  Still, my hobby was slowing down at the time anyway so I added to my cart and just let it sit there until they were back.

When they did open back up, BrushFu was right up front with the fact that they had a lot of orders to fill and to expect orders to take three weeks to ship.  I was in no rush and I really appreciated the honest about this so I went ahead and ordered.

Fast forward about two weeks and I received a shipping notification, and then the minis themselves a couple of days sooner than the USPS predicted.  I haven't had a chance to really start working on them, but I did check them all out and even gave them a wash to I can start work on them.

From what I have seen, the prints are very clean and crisp.  There are a couple of thin strands from the printing but they will be easy enough to clean up before I get to painting them.  All told, I had ordered ten minis.  Three of those came with bases attached but they threw in eight cyber bases as well which I wasn't expecting.  All in all a good shopping experience and I've already got a bunch more minis queued up in my shopping cart for my next order from BrushFu.

About the time that package showed as shipped, I started see people posting about the Stargrave Nickstarter coming in which got me wondering if might might arriving soon.  I tried to log into the Badger Games website but couldn't remember my password and the system wouldn't let me reset it.  A couple of quick emails to them, and they had it sorted out then my package of goods was sitting on my doorstep!

I don't have pictures of these sets, but I did take a quick look at each of the sprues and man are there a ton of options!  Lots of heads, weapons, and various little gribblies, plus the Nickstarter comes with a sprue of gnolls and cultists for even more options.  Looking forward to getting these into the que at some point and fleshing out my options for Core Space and Five Parsecs From Home.

Last but not least, I even managed to do a little bit of actual hobby! Ages ago I started buying miniatures for a couple of Warlords of Erehwon armies using the now defunct Runewars figures.  I'd made a bit of headway before I was called back to the home office last year, but since then it has just been in a holding pattern.  Last night I decided that I might as well at least assemble the figures that were sitting on my table in baggies and it wound up being a pretty impressive looking horde.

Of course I still need to paint them all but at least now I have a better idea just what I have which is handy.  I had been thinking about getting some more of the crossbowmen and scouts but I'm thinking this is good enough, especially since this isn't including all the spearmen I have as well.  I also did some quick math on the points and just these figures were just shy of 1000 points (minus the wizard and priest at the front, and the standard bearer and musician which don't have stats).  Adding in the leader, champion, spearmen, and rune golems to the mix and it's gotta be around 2000 points which should be more than I'll ever need... in theory anyway.  Now I just need to paint them... along with the Nickstarter...  and the printed minis...  Oh boy...  I think I better start painting again soon!  Until next time...

Core Space: Let's Start This Campaign... Again!

This weekend my friend Deuces and I broke out Core Space after a loooong hiatus since our first game.  We decided to go ahead and give the Perseus Campaign a try but with a slight twist.  We choose one of the three captains I have (Arianna, Jace, and Weaver), then we rifled through the rest of the crew and picked who we wanted.  A little more organic feel to it but since we are basically playing a light RPG it seemed like a better process.  After that, we picked our classes, grabbed our ships, and headed off to do a little bit of burglary and corporate espionage.

Things started off well enough as we explored the Trader's Gambit on Reenoff 4.  I made contact with Butler to see if he had the data from ClawTech we were trying to retrieve, but no such luck.

Deuces even managed to have MAC make contact with Gan'eek early on who asked to join Arianna's crew, but it didn't last.  The very next turn, Gan'eek was distracted by some new shiny and reverted to his civilian state.  MAC did the only sensible thing and promptly put a bullet in Gan'eek's head.

Nope, we aren't murder hobos.  Not at all.

Then there was Kaori.  She was running around on the far side of the board, parkouring off anything she could get in contact with when she suddenly decided to take a pot shot at MAC.  Based on the chance die rolls for her, she was way too hopped up on Go Go Juice to even hold still for even a second.

At this point, the Purge started to arrive.  Just a trickle at first, but the torrent soon began.

With the crazy lady the last option for the data, Deuces got Arianna close enough to ask Kaori about the info only to have a harvester walk right behind her.

Even though she dealt with the harvester, things quickly went from bad to worse as two harvesters, an assassin, and a Live One all decided to pop in right next to Deuces characters.  Luckily, MAC had found a grenade right before this so with one well aimed lob... BOOM!  No more Live One or harvesters!

Unfortunately the assassin proved to be wee bit more trouble and Arianna out...  and then MAC was taken out... and then on my side Faye was taken out... yes, followed by Jace.  First mission and we already had a TPK!

But the good news is they can still be saved, right?  Oh, except we didn't have any money... but there's still the teleporter.  When all else fails sometimes you just gotta take that chance.  On Deuce's side, MAC was saved but lost his equipment while Arianna made it out intact!  Then it was my turn.

Yeah, Jace didn't even get a chance to teleport as the harvesters dragged him away for processing.  But there was still Faye, right?  No, not really.  Not when you have that one particular malfunction that changes your character into someone completely different.

So while yes, we had a great time with all the murder hoboing and general slaughter, but we are starting the campaign yet again.  The issue at the end was just the complete lack of any funds so the teleporters were the only option we had.  I'm thinking to try to mitigate that maybe have a small starting pool of funds to buy our one crew member and maybe get some cheap equipment from BS Mart.  Think that might be an interesting change and maybe give us a couple more options when it comes to the end game.  Until next time...