Blood Bowl in a Weekend

Well, I've done it. I've finally played Blood Bowl. And you know what? I really like it. Granted, I lost as my wife crushed my undead team with the Dwarfs that I will be using in the Block'em Blood Bowl League this Fall, but fun was had by all. I have to imagine it plays faster as the rules get to be better known too. It took us about 3 hours to play a game, including numerous kid interruptions and rules look ups.
We played on the Skaven pitch I made (which still lacks a score board) despite the fact that the Skaven team was left out of the game. They hosted I guess. The Dwarfs received first, marched relentlessly down the field and scored on turn 7 of the first half. With only 2 turns to go in the half, I didn't have the time to even the score. Second half I was able to score fairly early with the swift ghouls, but my attempt at an aggressive blitz to cause a fumble and score a second time were thwarted by the stalwart Dwarfs. Taking advantage of my over-commitment on his end of the field, Stef created a path through what little defense I had and ran through it to score again. Dwarfs win 2-1.

I was inspired enough to paint up the undead I had put together for the occasion. The skeletons are a box of Wargames Factory Skeleton Warriors, a bargain at $20 for 30 models. Unfortunately they are some of the fiddliest models I have ever worked with. Femurs would break on the sprue, and there was only the tiniest of contact points for the arms. Even the process of trimming the mold lines or the sprue connection points routinely ended with a broken piece. I resorted to chemical methods (solvent glue) to do most of that work after breaking one too many bit. Frustrating. I know I had a "version 1" box, so I'm hoping there are some improvements to the current version 2 models. I understand version 2 comes with bases too, which would have been nice.

To represent the 2 Wights the team can have, I modded a couple of the skeletons to include head spikes and a cloak made from paper grocery bag with a little freehand. Nothing spectacular, but an easily identifiable model.

The Wights

For the Mummy I used one of my recently acquired Reaper Bones models. It works fine, but is a bit small for the supposed strength 5 this model has.

The Mummy

The ghouls are your garden variety GW Vampire Counts ghouls. I am quite fond of this model, as they are an interesting mix of human and animal, bestial yet adorned with gruesome decoration.

The Ghouls

Finally, the bulk of the team, the skeletons. The undead team can have 0-16 skeletons and 0-16 zombies, but I figured I'd just stick to skeletons (mostly since I owned them already.)

The Skeletons