Blood Bowl Season is upon us!

Fall approachs and so does our annual Blood Bowl League.

My past two seasons has been dedicated to the Necromantic team with a less than great record. The only major claim the Monster Mash could taken home both seasons was the least amount of casualties taken. I have always been a huge fan of the undead, they one of the harder teams to play in Blood Bowl due to the lack of being a good brawler or a strong running team. Most of the team (about 70%) is MA 4 to start. Their armor values are good and regeneration has saved my bacon a few times making the team a good defensive team which has been my saving grace. My major obstacle has been beating other teams that were faster or stronger than my own team has contributed to many of my losses. Mind you, only a loss by one or two points on average which is the typical norm of a Blood Bowl game score. It is still a loss none the less.

So, I have put the undead to rest in the grave and I have taken up the Orcs this season as my team of choice. I plan to convert and build the team from scratch despite that I own some of the orks from the starer kit. I want a team with personality and was one of my gripes about the Necromantic team was the same poses over and over. As I only have a few short weeks to get ready, I hope my ambition does not outstrip my goals.

At first, I planned to purchase another company’s models to use as a Nippon (Oriental) themed team using the Ork team rules using the name Nippon Dragons or Tigers. To me they was perfect, the Ronin would be linemen, the Ninjas the throwers, the Sumos as Black Orks and the Samuari as Blitzers. Due to money this just didn’t materialize this season, maybe next year.

My leading build for my team is this:

2	Linemen	100k
1	Thrower	70k
4	Black Orc Blockers	320k
4	Blitzers	320k
3	Rerolls	180k
Total		990k

Commentary: This team starts with 11 members and I am going to put some faith behind the AV9 of the team to keep them intact for a game or two along with the decent Fan Factor to earn me enough gold to purchase an Apothacary and a Lineman to give me someone to bench as a reserve. Afterwards, build up the team up with perhaps some Gobbos are quick and could be useful, with a Troll they could even be a tad better. Still, this would be a long term goal as that would be at least 150k in gold to purchase those two. That is the price of 3 linemen and the winnings of at least 2-3 games! Plus the Troll is REALLY STUPID and the Gobbo has low AV making him an easy target.  Linemen are always a cheap and safe bet as always.

My key is that I am starting with AV 9, making it hard to break armor so I should only take injuries about ¼ of the time instead of 1/3 except for the thrower and goblins. 4 Blockers with STR 4 and 4 Blockers to start with and a good thrower gives me a set of skills to match with 3 rerolls. I am taking a risk here not taking Fan Factor this time around, but to be honest, it may go up, may go down or stay the same. At least with rerolls they are there for you and the team is solid as possible for this 8 game season.

Team Colors: Thinking of Blue and Grey. At least Blue as that is the Ork Color for luck and I need as much of that I can get.

Sizing up the other teams in the League:

Gobbos: Usually these would be seen as a pushover, but the commish is playing them this time and is a tough as hell Blood Bowl player. I suspect nothing less than dirty tricks and a sneaky plan to win his games.

Ogres: Tim has done well with his Orks first season, second season the Ogres did well, but they are building up from scratch that year. This season with some SP under his belt they are rounded out a bit to be a brutal team now that he has 6 big guys. The few games I played with my Undead I flattened by his team. I figure, this team may cause some issues if I am not careful.

Dark Elf or Bretts: Bretts are official this year, but I suspect Allisso will go with the Elves and take up the dark side this time. This team has several nasty suprises and I cannot underestimate his speed.

Skaven: We may have a Skaven player or two this time around. Again,  here is another team that will need to be watched and punished quickly in the first half if I am going to have a chance of winning. Skaven are only dangerous when they have a full team on the board. A handful is easy enough to deal with.

Slann: This is going to be a team from hell to take on this year. Patrick is taking the green machine to the field. Able to leap and has high AG scores are going to be a new challenge. If someone went the route of Chaos you could get tentacles and shut down the leaping merit but at that point your building a team to take out X only and would suck against another. The only way to beat these guys is to kick a few into the injured box and keep the man down.

Undead: We have a new face on the board that is bringing some type of undead to the table. This is going to be a tough team as I know from experience (from playing the Necromantic team) that it will be hard to keep them down.

I plan to update my season here on my blog.