{"id":216,"date":"2013-01-15T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pagan-gerbil.net\/?p=216"},"modified":"2013-01-15T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T08:00:00","slug":"dreadball-catchup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/?p=216","title":{"rendered":"DreadBall Catchup"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got my first DreadBall<\/a> package a couple of weeks ago, and I calculated that it contains over \u00a3150 of miniatures \u2013 an incredible deal, when you also consider that I\u2019m getting another two packages next year.<\/p>\n

So far I\u2019ve played three games with the unassembled Marauder and Corporation teams (luckily, even without arms and heads their poses make the positions clear enough). The first was a half-game against Jen where she beat me with 3 points, in which I played the Marauders and tried to smash the humans into a fine paste.<\/p>\n

The second game went better for me \u2013 I played against Lord Scree<\/a> (one of our roleplay group, who plays a human Tollkeeper in the game I\u2019m running and once used a Sunspear<\/a> to devastating effect) and scored 3 points myself early on. Unfortunately, his Corporation team got two 4-point strikes thanks to awesome passing and learning to smack Orx in the back of the head (although this might have been helped by my misreading that Orx guards only have a speed of 5+). It might have also helped that I got excited on threw a strike with the first action on my turn, and in DreadBall when you lose control of the ball (including throwing a strike) your turn is over and any remaining actions that turn are lost, wasted, unusable. So again, playing as Marauders against the Corporation, I lost by 5 points.<\/p>\n

My latest game was against Jen again, and I got to play as the Corporation. I won for the first time, but I can\u2019t remember by how much. The extra power that Strikers have over Jacks is pretty impressive, and now that I have the Veer-myn team assembled, it might be a bit of a fairer fight in our next game until we work out how best to use Jacks (especially Goblin Jacks, who are next to useless at slamming). She had some terrible luck, missing throws and catches with her first couple of actions, or tripping up with the ball while evading,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve definitely got the bug, and my two test opponents love the game too. My next mission is to make sure that the models get assembled and arrange a games night to show it all off. Once they\u2019re all assembled, I can get them undercoated at the first opportunity, then I can begin painting in the evenings again. As they\u2019re all nearly finished, I can be sure that they\u2019ll be assembled by February although I\u2019ll need a good day\u2019s weather (or borrow my in-law\u2019s garage) to spray-undercoat them ready for painting.<\/p>\n

I originally hated the colour schemes in the book, but they\u2019re actually growing on me. I think I\u2019ll skip on the Corporation scheme of silver and blue, but I haven\u2019t come up with anything else just yet. I think I\u2019ll stick with the Marauders scheme exactly as is since red goes well with greenskins. I had an idea of reverse-shading on the Forge Fathers, where the deep recesses are white hot and the armour appears to cool as it gets nearer the edge. It might be difficult to pull off, but it\u2019ll be very Forge-y and intimidating in a sports-team style of thing. My Veer-myn definitely won\u2019t be orange and white, I don\u2019t like the clean look for rats at all. I was considering a plaguey green and brown, but the concept art in the book with yellow armour covered in dripping grime and slime, oily and mouldy, also appeals to me. I\u2019m not quite ready to make my mind up yet anyway so I can mull it over, get some feedback, and see what more motivated players are getting up to on the forums.<\/p>\n

When the female Corporation team is released next year, I will probably paint them in the same colours as the male Corporation team (when I decide what colour scheme) so I can mix and match the models. I\u2019m not a fan of gender differentiation, and one way to get my attention for an hour or more is to talk about girl toys and boy toys. Just don\u2019t expect to get a word in yourself while I rant. I\u2019d like to have two mixed teams \u2013 one using the Season 2 Corporation rules with whatever special agility rules they end up with, and one using the vanilla Season 1 Corporation rules. Perhaps, if it doesn\u2019t look too discordant, I can give them a mix of Star Trek uniforms from Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, where some have a black uniform with coloured shoulders and others have coloured uniforms with black shoulders and trousers. Maybe I\u2019ll try and get a picture editor and experiment before I crack open the paint pots.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the MVPs revealed so far, I am tempted in most cases to paint them the same as the team they can play for. In cases like Buzzcut and John Doe who don\u2019t have a single team restriction, I’ve not made my mind up. Even Slippery Joe, who can only play for Marauders, I may end up painting the same as the \u2018official\u2019 paint job because he looks pretty cool. Wildcard looks like she\u2019ll have a different uniform to the Season 2 Corporation team, so I can let my imagination fly there. Buzzcut looks to be mostly undressed so he\u2019ll stand out even if I put him in the Marauders colour scheme \u2013 he\u2019ll be green where everyone else on his team is in red armour.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a fan of the colour schemes used for John Doe and Number 88 \u2013 they both have the same grey uniform, which for Number 88 means it\u2019s almost a completely grey model. For such a sleek model, I\u2019m thinking about trying some freehand designs on the armour. My favourite idea at the moment is a sort of swirly, sketchy blue \u2013 a bit like tribal tattoos but more flowing and less sharp \u2013 on a plain white. Now that I come to describe it, a little like a china plate pattern. The flowing pattern matches the \u2018Mind Like Water\u2019 skill that the character has, where it can use martial arts techniques and is difficult to really smash. The plain grey armour seems to fit with an assassin on the battlefield, but not a showy bright sports game, televised, vid-casted and advertised all over the place.<\/p>\n

For John Doe, I think the deep purple colour is too dark and cartoony-alien coloured. I\u2019m going to experiment with Earth octopi, with some fleshy-orange skin with a cream-white underbelly. It\u2019ll be a nice test of my painting ability, and hopefully when I see the sculpts for the rest of the \u2018Nameless\u2019 team (though this won\u2019t be until Season 3) I\u2019ll see if it will still work. The armour I might try and do a slightly metallic blue-green to evoke the sea and marine colours. I\u2019d like to save purple for the Asterians in Season 3 (incidentally, I really want to give them a Green Goblin style with metallic purple and green armour).<\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t tried a game with the ref or any event cards yet, since we\u2019re all still learning but I\u2019m looking forward to introducing them soon, in one of the coming games \u2013 perhaps after we\u2019ve exercised all the teams a bit more. I\u2019m definitely hoping to get better at the game and at least one team painted before another parcel of models arrives in May next year, with another 50+ models in it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got my first DreadBall package a couple of weeks ago, and I calculated that it contains over \u00a3150 of miniatures \u2013 an incredible deal, when you also consider that I\u2019m getting another two packages next year. So far I\u2019ve played three games with the unassembled Marauder and Corporation teams (luckily, even without arms and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “DreadBall Catchup”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,9],"tags":[96,111],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pagan-gerbil.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}