And now for something completely different …

Plodding along as I do with my various projects, I am frequently struck by novel inspiration as work becomes tedious. Thus, while immersed in painting my 54mm artillery, I suddenly became quite certain that it was the perfect moment for me to finally try Blood Bowl. Now, as with everything Games Workshop, those box games run a little pricey. Alas, inspiration had not chosen a pecuniarily prudent moment to appear …

However, I’m usually pretty skilled at converting lemons to -ade. I had simultaneously been hankering to try some of Matt “GrayMouser65” Kirkhart’s 28mm fantasy wooden craftees, as featured on Dale Hurtt’s blog Wooden Warriors.

Now inspiration had foundation — I could craft as many Blood Bowl teams as I like using little wooden bits. I had to scour Matt’s posts to determine what he used and where he got ’em. I then had to find a source for everything — both Michael’s and AC Moore seem to have cut back on many of these items. I relied on the internet and patience.

I elected to do goblins first, being particularly tickled by Matt’s latest “hunchback” brutes. Construction followed his guidelines, with tile spacer feet (barely visible here), spool torso, half spool for the shoulders, half bead for the head, and tile spacers again for ears and arms. A few chaps got adornments, such as toothpick spikes, and one poor fellow had a hook hand. Another got a “saw” hand, fashioned from a bead. I sanded the torso spool of my two running backs to give them a feeling of motion, despite their feet being together.

I’m not at all familiar with the Blood Bowl rules. After making my team, I was dismayed to discover that, apparently, the goblins don’t have quarterback or receiver types. I may be adapting the rules, or else using the Monsters of the Midway fantasy football rules from Dragon Magazine #65. For example, I may use Heroscape hexes for the playing field rather than a squared grid.

The final step will be to paint numbers on the boyz. I’ll be using the “classic” system from the 70s, with 1-20 reserved for the quarterbacks (and kickers, I suppose) and wide receivers wearing numbers in the 80s, as is right and good.