Oldhammer Weekend review. Part three.

Part one of the review.

Part two of the review.

Welcome to the table tour! Wargames Foundry welcomes people who want to drop in and have games so if you are able to visit Nottingham easily get in touch with them via their website which has a telephone number displayed on it. It's also a great place to hold a get-together. Those of you going to Blog-Con may be interested to see a few new tables the guys have put together since your recce mission.

Several blogging legends in this snap, I dare not unmask them just in case! This is a row of newly constructed tables built especially for the busy, upcoming period of scheduled events at Foundry. Right at the opposite end of the tables is a rack of Oldhammer minis cast up especially for the day! The table closest is the one we used for Orc's Drift (with Thantsants' excellent terrain), see part two for more details on that one.

This is Harry's amazing Blood Bowl stadium which saw plenty of action over the weekend.

This is the big table used for the 'Rumble in the Jungle' game organised by Padre. This game was huge (and impressive) and took up nearly the entire weekend!

There were several exotic units included in Padre's game, as well as the usual Lustrian suspects. I absolutely loved this armoured War-Gorilla unit!

All the exploring armies had to loot the many temples dotted about (note the siege equipment the Elves are carrying) in order to achieve their objectives.

Random encounters and refereed madness was the order of the day in this fine example of the almost lost art of GM'd Warhammer.

One of the stand alone tables available. Beware the temptation of playing wargames so close to racks of lovely minis! That's the board used for the Realm of Chaos games behind it, see part one for more detail on that.

There was a lot of LASER-cut MDF scenery available for use and you can see some of it here. I'm not sure who brought it to be honest but I know the Foundry has some terrain available. This battlefield is one of the big, connected row of tables depicted in the first photo.

This is one of the tables built for the British TV program 'Midsomer Murders'. Two of them stand on enclosed boxes and are tricky to lean over because you can't get your toes under them, but this one is worth the effort, it's quite lovely.

This is the second table on an enclosed box, the problems are exacerbated by the unusable nature of the first foot of board all the way around and it's not quite as attractive as the other one. It would be OK for a game of Saga in one of the corners though.

This one you can get your feet under and is also my favourite of the three. Hoping to get a game in on this one next time I'm down!

There was one more table in use, quite a large one too. There were reputedly 18000 points (3rd edition Warhammer) of troops in this game alone. Most people agreed that Nico, one of the participants, had the most drool-worthy army of the weekend. Golgfag's army was a stunning sight too though and full of classic lead.

I love this action shot of Golgfag's Orc General exhorting his rock lobber to fire faster while simultaneously goading the Trolls forward!

One more to go, the cabinet tour.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blood Bowl with Thantsants.

I had my first face to face games with a member of the online Oldhammer community today and the day was an absolute blast!

Thantsants made the journey on the trans-Yorkshire highway to Castle Paul and brought with him the beautifully painted 'Slaan in Spacers' Blood Bowl team. He is on the way back now so I have a chance to get my unashamedly biased match report in first if I'm quick.

We played 3rd edition rules with a few roster tweaks to allow an 'all-star' 2nd edition style team and we kind of ignored weather too. The first game went first one way then the other, eventually we got to a key moment with a good deal of thought going on as the grey matter on both sides was stretched to it's limit.

A vital moment in the second half of game one, both Thantsant and myself took our time here with the score at 1-1 and only time for one more touchdown.

The following turn or two favoured the Spacers and my Greenback Gales abandoned any attempt to win and merely clung on to legs looking for the draw. The clock ticked down and things got close but thankfully the seconds ran out and the honours were even at full time! It helped no end when the distressingly mobile Treeman finally took root!

After lunch Thantsants tried out his Dark Elf team, they are all lovely BB2E edition minis and I hope he puts a snap up on his blog for you to enjoy. The Gales had more luck in this game and found knocking pansy pointy-ears about a lot more satisfying than brawling with Dwarfs and a Treeman. It was again 1-1 at half time but with the Orcs to drive in the second half. I found the blocks going my way a lot more often and was able to steadily build up a head of steam with the drive, taking the score to 2-1 to the Gales. A few crunching tackles later and that's how it ended, there is much partying going on in Greenback as I write.

We had a fantastic day, shared the luck of the dice fairly evenly (a string of passed dodge rolls came back to haunt the Dark Elves at one point as balance was restored mercilessly but I think it's right to say luck was mostly good to us both) and had a lovely cuppa and chat afterwards about all sorts of stuff we had in common.

All in all I can't recommend this sort of get together highly enough, I already feel like I have 'met' Erny and Gaj thanks to our game on Roll20 but it is much better to have a proper meet-up. Have a go yourself, maybe Skarsnik's opponent finder will help, you will not regret it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blood Bowl pre-season 2013

Thursday night is club night in the world of Warlord Paul and tonight and next week is the pre-season for the new 2013/14 Blood Bowl league or 'Monsterbowl' (the actual real world Superbowl marks the end of our season). The return of Blood Bowl was a year ago now, I ran a knock-out cup as a toe in the water (the final was won by the Human Bashington Deadskins AET on a simple, single dice-off, how OS is that?) which proved to be a big success so I followed it up with a league (which, rather embarrassingly, the Orc team Greenback Gales coached by yours truly won, see below). The final league positions were used to seed the teams into four divisions and the latest format is close to the Superbowl now, rather than the Premier League as before.

Note the lovely Troll, Nurk Nobrain, centre/back row in the above photo (and centre below). He is an awesome sculpt and was lovingly restored by me after long years of inadequate storage had left him with a broken left arm.

We are playing using the free to download PDF from GW, which is actually a pretty good set of rules. We play with a gentleman's agreement not to foul each other and all the games have been exciting so far. Most people have the 3rd edition pitch and I bring four of them each week to borrow so we use them, though an ambitious few have stated an intent to build their own arenas.

I also have a copy of Kerrunch! This may get an airing at some point if I can dettol the paint of these fellas (below) but the only WIPs I am allowing myself at the moment are the Boone's Landing Rogue Trader project and the Oldhammer Event Day project, so that will have to wait. That battlemat is coming along by the way, but its not half as simple as the mug in the youtube video makes out. He missed out loads of 'this could go wrong!' heads up opportunities which I will share with you at the unveiling.

I am taking on a highly ranked team in the pre-season training game (which allows you to accrue SPP etc.). The Triple Ls (Lustrian Lounge Lizards) should be a tough match for the Orcs, though I beat them 3-0 in the league thanks to the sort of consistent luck one would normally associate with the extensive practice of child sacrifice to the Dice Gods, the sort of luck one expects to account for in the afterlife, so the Triple Ls will be out for revenge.

Additionally, I am keen to make it clear that I am not a complete b******d. Wife preferred V-day to be tomorrow. I have got her flowers and everything.