Finally felt the lure of the Trontek team always rattling about inside the game box and got crackin’ into painting them. They where originally the team I was gonna go, and the Marauders where supposed to go up on Ebay, but alas I enjoyed the bashing even after only one go. But that niggle wouldn’t let go, and so I present the Silver Centurions (in a very early form :D):
Silver Centurions WIP
Early logo draft
Would love to hear what you think of them.
Decided as I’ve been using Photoshop a fair bit recently I would have a go at designing a pitch for the Gamma Slammers and so I introduce you to Gamma Park (v.1):
Dreadball Pitch
These are still a bit rough, with a few bits here and there to clean up and to add some consistency, but very pleased with the results after the hours it took (took a lot longer than I thought it would :().
I also did another one with a wee bit more Gamma Slammer (and the blood that comes with that :P) to it:
Dreadball Pitch Alternative
Would love to hear what you think of them both 😀
The robot team is now complete, other than the clear hexes, and here they are:
Robot Jacks
Robot Jacks Back
Robot Guards
Robot Strikers
Only have numbers on the Jacks, as with swapping in and out there’s not much point to having them on the Guards and Strikers, unless you have the same amount of each of these as you have jacks.
Next up for Dreadball I’m going to be painting numbers on the bases for the Gamma Slammers, as it’s fairly difficult to make out the digital displays whilst playing. Especially if your in the usual dark gamer dungeon we seem to play most of our games :D. I’ve also started on what will be my next team, the Z’zor:
Z’zor Team
I’m wanting to go for a praying mantis vibe with these guys, as I not only think this will look awesome, it also gives me the opportunity to paint a fairly vibrant team.
Work has been progressing on the robots and here they are;
Jacks WIP
Guards & Strikers WIP
The idea at present is to have the eye and glowy bits of each variety a different colour, which should make it a bit more obvious as to which is which. So Blue for the Jacks, Green for the Strikers and Red for the Guards. I’ve started this off on them but obviously it still needs a bit more work, as does the red team stripes. I’m hoping that I should be able to make some good progress on this tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled for the next update.
In other news the Gamma Slammers have had their 10 game winning streak broken by the Playa H8ters :(, who have also now stolen the top spot in the league. It was a damn good game but I was completely outmaneuvered the whole way through. I went for a very bashy game as this is what has worked for me before, but the Veer-myn’s prominence of strikers, which the coach utilised to their full potential, ran circles around me. I did however manage to retain my kill streak, with another 2 deaths caused by my Guards :D. The league organiser gave a very apt write up which you can find here: https://www.facebook.com/edinburghdreadball
Although I lost I still managed to get another of the guards up to level 3 and spent a coaching dice to roll on the Extra Coaching table. Rolling a 6 meant that I got to choose anything I wanted so opted for Grizzled. This is a fantastic ability, meaning the opponant loses an extra dice when performing a slam or slamback against this player. After analysing this match I think I’m going to have to give my jacks a bit of a push next time, not only to level them up, but to get a bit of a different game.
You can check out the league table here: http://dreadballedinburgh.leaguerepublic.com/l/standingsForDate/51755152/2/-1/-1.html
League! Wooooooooo!
As you may have guessed we kicked off the local Dreadball league this weekend, and the Gamma Slammers made a damn good start. We have a fair amounts of the same team in the league, with the line up looking a little like this:
Gamma Slammers(obviously) – Marauders
The Thorsson Hammerers – Forgefathers
The Playa H8ters – Veer-myn
The Boner Corp – Corporation
Decepticons – Robots
Brigadoom – Marauders
The Bronze Warriors – Forgefathers
??? – Robots (I unfortunately forgot to get the name of this team)
I managed to get the two games. The first was against the hammerers, and they had me on the ropes for the first half of the game with the score swinging back and forth. That is until the Orx got warmed up, causing several injuries and 2 deaths(Bwahahaha :P) by the end of the game. This left my jacks the freedom to run around and get the score back on my side, ending the match at 3-0. Because of their superb performance two of the guards went up to rank two, gaining one 360 vision and the other stretch. Not a bad start 😀
The second game was against the Decepticons and my first time up against the robots. To be honest it was much the same as the first one but the Orx didn’t need to limber up first and by the end had cleared the pitch of opposing players and causing another 2 deaths. As much as I enjoy the killing and maiming, it didn’t feel too good killing 2 from a starting team of 6 :(. Although it did allow another 2 of my guards to rank up giving another 360 vision and changing another who already had 360 vision into a keeper. A jack also got a boost and gained a bonus to his skill 🙂
And this is how the team looks now:
Gamma Slammers Roster
You can find the roster template I used here: http://thepaintingmonkey.wordpress.com/dreadball-roster-creator/. Fantastic job this guy has done 😀
Before the next set of league games I’m planning on painting threat zone markings fully round the bases on the Orx with 360 vision(I know I’ll forgot the ability if I don’t), but am still working away on the robot team and have managed to get the majority of them up to the finished armour colour, other than a little cleaning up here and there. I’m gonna have a wee chat with the client before I go onto anything else, as I have a few ideas floating about but more on that later. In the meantime, look, robots:
Chromium Chargers WIP
Had a few games of Dreadball last night, and think we have managed to get all the rules down properly as we where playing a couple incorrectly. Primarily moving the ref at the start of the turn rather than the end, and also not putting events into play that came from ref moving, random player selection etc. We also tried out some experience gaining just to get an idea of what will happen with this when our league kicks off this weekend.
I played two games, both against Forgefathers, one was a home and one an away. Both where victories :D, which means the Gamma Slammers are undefeated for 6 games in a row. Here’s a wee rundown on some highlights for the game(note: I forget to take any notes as planned :(, and apologies for the bad pics):
The Gamma Slammers Vs The Bronze Warriors
Both games I decided to play it very bashy, as this seems to be a strength of the marauders. In the first game this meant that half the Forgefather team was injured by the end of the first rush, which put them
Goblin preparing to score
at a severe disadvantage. This coupled with the Forgefathers low movement meant it was fairly easy to outmaneuver them and get rid of any pesky strikers(knocking these guys down is great, 3 times one tried to stand up, but with a 5+ speed stat he failed each time). In this match I also gained 3 experience, one on a jack for a 3 pointer and two on a guard for doing what they do best, slamming. This led to the guard gaining the stretch skill in the end, which is handy but hardly super-powered :).
The second game seemed to have a bit more violence (always a good thing in Dreadball), with one death per team. One of the Forgefather jacks decided I shouldn’t have anyone with skills so pummeled the Orc who gained a rank in the last match into the shiny floor until all that remained was a bloody husk
Sweet, sweet revenge!
:(. My following rush I only had one thing in mind, revenge!
I distracted the ref with one of my jacks, whilst we had an event in play that meant ref checks where rolled with one less dice(which meant I couldn’t get sent off :D), then proceeded to sucker punch him down with one Orc and stomp with the next, which inevitably led to his death(that’ll teach the short arses). Shortly after this I managed to get enough strikes to make it a landslide, and got enough experience to rank up a jack and a guard! Gained running interference on the jack and a strength up on the guard. This should make this guard one hell of a fighter in any future games and I’m hoping that he’ll rack up a healthy kill count.
In conclusion I really like the Marauder team and don’t know how I would cope with a team like the Judwan, cos I just love slamming the hell out of the opposing team. The Forgefathers seem like a good team, but the minimal movement really does make a huge difference to there effectiveness, especially with ball play and making it to a good location to score a strike. I’ve heard playing a passing game is the answer, so would be interesting playing them when that approach is being kept in mind.
As I’ve said we have the first round of our league kicking off this Sunday, so I’ll let you know how we get on and try to take some notes and decent pictures this time.
Began painting the first of my Dystopian Wars fleet this afternoon, and thought I’d start of small with the few Galen class escorts I have. I knew straight off the bat that I wanted to stick to fairly cold colours across the models (they do hail from Antarctica after all), and that I wanted the main hull to be dark blue with a whity/creamy camo stripe effect. So set about getting some paint on these to see how it looked (I’ve had a few colour schemes in the past that looked great in my head, but in reality sucked big time), and was so pleased with the first one I got the others up to the same stage…
Galen class escorts WIP
I really am chuffed to bits with how they turned out, and am glad I’ve got the main colours down so early as it usually takes a whole load of mmmm’ing and aaah’ing before I settle on a colour scheme.
Not quite as exciting due to yesterdays update, but I have got all the robots up to the same stage now:
Chromium Chargers WIP
These guys have been fairly simple so far with just the metals that where there when I got them, which I believe to be leadbelcher, with a nuln oil wash. Then a coat of fortress grey (leaving the recesses dark). Simple 😀
Today I started work on the first batch of Robots, starting off with just a basic basecoat…
Chromium Chargers
To be honest this gives a clear indication of what the team will look like in the end, as the next stages for the main colour is just highlighting up to white. Beyond that is just the team colour stripes and the blue glowy bits.
One of my mates also gave me a team name for my Marauders, who shall now forever be known as…
and in addition to receiving a cool name (Thanks Neil), I also managed to paint up some reinforcements for them over the weekend in the form of another Orx, Goblin and Slippery Joe:
With a league kicking off this weekend I thought it would be a good idea to have some extra players to hand, and the excitement of some hardcore Dreadball meant I couldn’t put the brush down 😀
Now this one isnt exactly a new game, as I have been getting on with this for a few weeks ago. I have however got some new goodies for it, and also managed to get 4 games in over the last couple of days, so I thought I’d show you where I’m going with it next and how the games have been.
I’ll start things off by saying that this game is freaking awesome! All of the games I’ve played have been an absolute hoot, and I think that comes down to the simplicity of the rules. It’s a very easy game to pick up, which means your not constantly bogged down with double checking rules, stats, etc. This coupled with the fact the game is incredibly fast paced just creates a great buzz when playing, especially when you’ve got the right opponents. As I’ve said I managed to get in 4 games with the Marauder team and luckily won every single one :D, I didn’t expect this team to be up to scratch and the original plan was to ebay them once complete, but I’m gonna stick with them for at least one league and see how I get on.
In between games I did manage to get the ref painted up, and also invested in the acrylic token set to replace the fairly crappy ones from out the box. These are well worth the money, they are good solid tokens and with the use they will see the card ones just wouldn’t last:
Dreadball Refbot
Acrylic Tokens
Up next will be a new team, the Z’zor…
Z’zor Team
I really like the design of the models, and think out of all the current teams these ones will offer the best oppertunity for a funky paintjob. Seems I got a bonus box too, as I had one extra guard in there. Score :D. I’m gonna go for a really bright green scheme on these guys, stupidly bright I think, but that will be after a commission for these guys…
Robot Team
The Client is looking to have them done in the same scheme as the Chronium Chargers, so will be going along the same sort of lines as the ref above, but with some additional embellishments to help ’em stand out.
Been distracted from my painting this week by a combination of new toys, no deadlines, and more gaming than usual. Managed to get one game of reffing which helped me nail down the rules to a good degree, and played a game against a mate, his first game. Made all the more better as it took no time for him to learn what he was doing and gave me a more challenging game, in the end beating me by 2 points. All this confirmed that Dreadball is indeed an awesome game and I can’t wait to play more. Gonna try and get more games in this week, and get a we write up of what went down 😛
In the time I did get to some painting I finished of the Marauder team, although I still need a name for them(any ideas folks?). Can’t say I’m not happy with the way they’ve turned out, but I’ll let you judge ’em for yourself 😀 :
Marauder Team
Marauder Team
I decided to stick with the green displays on these guys, but inspired by sho3box, will be using a different colour on each of the teams I do (I have three planned). The plan is to use a colour that compliments the main scheme I’ve picked for the team.
In other news I’ve decided I need to diversify and get some models from some other ranges on here. I’ve always been stuck into 40k and would really like to try different aesthetics in sculpting and fluff, whilst also showing I can paint more than just grimdark sci-fi :). Over the next week I’ll give you a taste of whats in the works…
DeathWatch Studios 