XIII league champions: Mückenhof Ravens

NABBO League Champions XIII 

- Mückenhof Ravens -

Picture of both teams in the end of the match: the Ravens (left) next to the Spyrer's Biohazards. 

Reporters on site wonder: is this living-dead proof that painted teams actually play better?

In a very intense Final against the skaven Spyre's Biohazards, the undead Mückenhof Ravens managed to grab a very tough 3-2 win.

After starting their first turn already behind by 1 (courtesy of Mus musculus, the one-turn-scorer from the Biohazards), the shambling hordes of the Ravens managed to equalise (1-1), right before the end of the drive, and prepared to receive the ball in the second half.

 With the second half came a lot of unusual Kick-off (and weather) results - including a Pitch Invasion, but in retrospective none of those influenced any of the game play of either side: the Ravens got the ball, and with an unusual undead fast pace, scored (2-1), around turn four of the second half.
The Spyrer's set Mus musculus once again for another fast score, and the 2-2 came soon after.

With another four turns to go, the undead moved the ball up field, trying to hurt as much of the opposing players as they could (with hopes to get their hands on the "one turner", but to no success), and scored their third TD, in their last turn.
The last skaven turn would mean either a win for the Ravens or a tie, and yet another 8 turns drive (as finals cannot end in ties).

This time the story was very different, and without any rerolls left to back up his actions, the one-turn skaven Gutter Runner saw it's dodge skill painfully countered by Rudi Shaft - the "Tackle" zombi of the Ravens -. The player fell, and the score remained as it was, (3-2) giving the championship title to the Mückenhof Ravens!

A very close and hard fought final.
A.

New season, new team... (pt.2)

Back for more!
As promised earlier in the week in the first part of this post, here are the pics of my new undead team, the Mückenhof Ravens.

These are the Mummies of the team (they do have bandages so...).

They will also do as Flesh Golems too if the need arise. 

Wights!

The workhorses of the team, specially early in the season as the only positional starting with "Block".

 Ghouls, fragile ghouls...

For now these werewolf's are just cheerleading for the team...

Zombies (and Skelie)!

They don't move much, you can't trust them to reliably help on any picking up, passing or catching the ball, and it's a formidable pain to manage to skill them up.

The perfect piece to tie down that pesky Ogre in the LOS!

Family photo!

And if you have no idea where Mückenhof is, cheer up, here's Ostermark map!

Comments and questions are welcome!

Cheers,

A.

Double posted on Merry Mayhem News blog.

New season, new team... (pt.1)

With the new season of the NABBO League well on it's way (XIII by the way), I finally get some free minutes to write a few of lines about the new team I'm playing this season...

Since NABBO League early days, and in order to cope with the limited availability of time to play that a good part of our coaches always had/have, we decided that a perpetual format would suit better our interests, allowing even the most busiest of the coaches, to drop by less regularly, and still have a team to join the fun with the rest of the crew.
Obviously, along the way, many coaches decided to pull the plug on their teams for plenty of the usual reasons (untimely death of team stars being one of the main), and so, with very few exceptions, every third or fourth season the teams ended up being "naturally" renewed.

In the end of the last season (while commemoration the 15 year anniversary of the league), it was decided to "reset and start over" the perpetual format, and with it, make some changes in the league rules, namely the MVP given in the end of the game (it used to be a coach choice, and became random).

Now, I always try to grab these opportunities to either start something new, or actually complete one of the projects that I always seem to have going on, and so, after some thought into it, I opted for this Undead team that I had converted a couple of years ago, but never got the chance or time to paint.

Most of the positionals are converted from leftover bits (from different GW sprues) and some green stuff to tie all together. The Ghouls are from GW fantasy (straight forward weapon snip), and the Werewolves are from West Wind  (that I decided to include to allow me to change the team from Undead to Necro, if wanted in the future).

Here are the photos of the team positionals, prior to their paint job:

Both Flesh Golem and Wights

The (four) Ghouls

The Werewolves, a bunch of zombies, and the odd skellie

 (beware, he's got the fouling boots on!)

This is it for today, hope you liked them.

If time allows, I'll be posting the pics of them painted later this week.

Have fun,

A.


Doubleposted on the Merry Mayhem News blog.

Tipus Minimus makes it into the first team!

Tipus Minimus, the mutated gobbo, finally made it into the first team of The Pitch Praetorians!


After an rough start at the NABBO League pre-season coupled with a few injuries in some not-so-friendly matches, he managed to prove it's worth (ahem.. stabbing the competition) and was accepted into the first team.

Tipus Minimus came from a land far (very far) away, to play in the NABBO League after the 2012 draft of the "GHAG overdrive contest".
Cheers to Tristan for it!

Zharr Kongrul Kaisers

Team colors: Grey and yello
Owner: Fahzurr Fireale

Coach: Master Engineer Rakron Goldshaft

Players: Chaos Dwarfs, Bull Centaurs, Minotaur and Hobgoblins.

Sons of the volcanic forges of Zharr Krongul (ZK), both Kaisers players and staff have always been adepts of violent competitions, and mechanized extreme sports such as 24 hours Xazam (24h speed driving in the narrow tunnels of Xazam mining complex),  Elgi-Zank Baraz (roughly translated as "Elf Maiming Machines" ...you figure it out!), or even the notorious Deathroller Race 2000 (too famous to need further explanations).

As Chaos Dwarves by nature, Kaisers players tendency to pay little to none attention to the ball - while getting very intense in the brawls, meant that big companies sponsorship never knocked on their door, thus keeping them away from the big league and tournament scene for many years.
However, a new and aggressive advertising policy of a notorious brewery lead to a serious contract with the Kaisers, sponsoring a tour to the Old World and their participation on the NABBO Tea Cup V, which despite the fierce competition and disbelief of a few, they've end up winning...

Team honors: NABBO Tea Cup V champions.

Hall of Fame: Not Yet

Team photos

Chaos Dwarf: #1,#2 and #3

The core players of the team seem to have a very different approach at the game: forget the ball and obliterate the opposition!

More Chaos Dwarf:

Positional #4,#5 and #6

Yes, if a line of scrimmage with three Chaos Dwarf annoys the heck out of a lot of people, a LoS with three more...

 

Positional #7 and #8: 
Bull Centaurs "Mono-wheel" version!

Chaos Dwarfs are well know for their outstanding skills building mechanical devices and all sorts of machines. The Kaisers proud them selves for using these skills for fine tuning some of their players!

Positional #9: The Minotaur ...err what?

Who's to say an overgrown and mechanically augmented hobgoblin cannot take the place of a darn Mino? Not only hobs eat less (even mutated ones), but also they don't complain so loud!

Hobgoblins...
Positional #10, #11, and #12
What's to say about them?
They're noisy, run a lot (at least more then Chaos Dwarfs do), and seem to fancy to play with the ball...

More hobgoblins ?!? 

A necessary evil as they break a lot - at least the ones that don't run away. 
And one more thing: they are not that tasty. It's like bland rubber chicken, and if cooked taste even worst. Foul things.

   

Rashnak Backstabber - the Star Player, occasionally joins the ranks of the team for an extra layer of finesse mayhem and cruelty...

The NTC'15 Champs: Zharr Krongull Kaisers 

Team Sponsor

 

 HOBGOBLIN: Food you can drink!

Brandenberry Braves

Team name: Brandenberry Braves 
Motto: "Soft berries, iron bellies!"

Team colours: Yellow and Green

Owner: Mintos Berrybreath

Coach: Tripin Thornside
Master Chef: Kayme Appelier

Players: Treemen, Halflings, more halflings, and even more halflings.

"Soft berries, iron bellies! Soft berries, iron bellies!"

...and that's what Tripin Thornside kept shoutin' right in his first day as the new coach of the Brandenberry Braves, for he knew there wasn't much time to make a proper team out of that rowdy bunch, and the clock was certainly ticking with the approaching of the tournament day.

There was that initial mess up with the order of the new equipment and protective gear for the team, with the first shipped batch being almost perfect - for a team of Ogre's and Snotlings!
Of course there was no way any of the halflings would ever managed to get inside those jerseys, let alone the funny if a little awkward look of the trees inside those completely out of proportion equipments.
When finally the right sized equipment arrived the Master Chef was nowhere to be found - and everyone knows there's no way to make an halfling team go around without his Master Chef right there where they can see and smell him!
Turns out he had been invited to a Cabal Vision TV show for an one-off episode of The Moot Master Chef featuring the delicacies of Brandenberry Town!

Eventually every piece got into place again and when finally the training seemed to be able to start, it was time to pack things and go - the tournament was scheduled for the next day and the few hours left where certainly needed to regain strengths sitting at the table having a go at the new signature dishes of the Master Chef Kayme Appelier...

Team honors: NABBO Tea Cup VI Most Violent Team

Hall of Fame: Not yet.

Team photo

 

Brandenberry Braves preparing for their next "Master Chef" training!

Trophy Hall

 

Most Violent Team NTC'16

NABBO Tea Cup 2015

  
The Wizards Challenge

" Wizards are well know for their innate tendency to meddle in other peoples affairs.

Despite having no particular interest in Blood Bowl as a sport, it's always a great opportunity to show their pairs a new trick, even if just to impress the common folk watching the match.
Of course as in most Wizard business, things not always work out exactly as planned, and sometimes it's the crowd that decides to do a 'magic trick' and vanishes with the Wizard himself... "

In this tournament, each team had a free wizard at the coach disposal.
Each turn, before starting any action with the team players, the coach could try to activate the Wizard (aka "check if the wizard was paying attention to the game).
To do this activation, the coach would have to roll two d6: on a result of "8+", the wizard would be active, and could try to cast a spell. Other results ("7" or less) would mean that the wizard was distracted and would not participate that turn. On a double "1" (snake eyes), the wizard would miss the following turn too.

An active wizard could try to cast a spell (for the sake of fun, the wizards decided that they would try to transform the players into frogs), and to do so the coach would roll one d6: on a "1 to 3" nothing would happen, on a "4 to 6" a random player in the opposing team would transform in a frog. In this roll, a result of "6" would allow the wizard to go a bit further a try to transform another one (i.e. roll the d6 again).
Note that at all times, there could only be a maximum of three frogs in each side of the pitch.
Also the wizards could decide to revert the spell of one of his players instead of transforming an opposing one.
Whenever a drive ended, all the frog-players would return to normal as if nothing happen.


Frog

Each frog-player would beahve like a any other player, with following profile: MA 5, ST 2, AG 4, AV 6* Skills: No Hands, Dodge, Side Step and Right Stuff.

*The frog-player was considered to have a special magical protection, which granted that after an broken armour, any 8+ injury roll would only result in a KO.

[Update: If you feel like giving these "Frog rules" a try and don't actually have frog miniatures to use, please have a go with our proxy PAPER FROGS. Print, cut, fold and you're set with as many frogs as you'd ever need!]


Wizards Challenge: Aside from the TD's and Cas inflicted during the games, the coaches were to take note of the number of frogs his wizard would transform in the opposing team, as well as the number of times he missed the opportunity to do anything altogether (double ones in the activation roll, and single ones in the second roll). The top in each of these wizard categories were rewarded in the end of the tournament.

Games

Rankings

 

Awards

The Goodies

League background

The League background
Once upon a time there was a miserably poor, rural community where most crops kept being lost or destroyed by endless years of invading Chaos or Orc raids, only halted when really, but reeeeally bad weather settled in! Only the toughest, the crippled or the stupid remained in those harsh border lands, fighting to survive each day.

It's not difficult to understand that the once beautifully cultivated fields got left in complete neglect as other far more important issues (such as running or fighting for their life's), came up.
Hunger was almost a constant and as the years went by, both men and beasts left behind in the aftermath of the invasions, struggled to find something to eat.
And that is when it all comes together: One foggy afternoon, while going back to the settlement empty handed, a team of human scouts decided to shortcut through an open uncultivated field, when one of them spotted a huge turnip just a few meters ahead.
That would mean a very welcome meal when they got back to the camp, so obviously they went for it, but just as they got hold of the tasty vegetable, they realised they were not alone in the field...


Suddenly the fog seemed to have disappeared and there they were, standing right in the middle of the open field with of a bunch of orc's just a few feet's away, apparently as surprised as they were.
After the initial moments of surprise for both sides, they soon realise that neither were actual war party's, but light scouts looking for the very same thing - food, and as far as both could tell the only thing eatable out there (without too much of a trouble). was that tasty looking turnip!

And the story goes on, stating how both sides slammed into one another, using whatever skills they had, sometimes running and passing the turnip amongst them selves, other times just tackling and blocking, in an attempt to grab or keep hold of the turnip, that annoyingly kept changing sides...
No one really knows for sure in which side's soup that turnip ended, as nowadays both races have slightly different endings for the story, but for what it's worth, similar brawls kept happening in that same field, long after any turnip sprouted there, turning it into a festival (food, drinks, and brawls), and later into a real event (brawls, with drinks and food)!

That huge turnip was never forgotten and earned its place in the shield of the organised league that "a simple brawl" had turned into, pictured in gold and soaring high over the stripes that represented the once cultivated fields.

So what about the name of the league?
Oh that was an homage to that turnip since the very start, as "nabo" is the word for "turnip" in the native language (Portuguese), therefore the acronym N.A.B.B.O. would have a double meaning, also translating as Neglectic Agricultural Blood Bowl Organization.