WHAT'S-A MATTER YOU EH?

Well apparently the Striker orders are hitting Kickstarters so hopefully some new toys early next week.

In the meantime I've been pondering the Veer-myn, the last of the Season One Dreadball teams. With the Corporation having a nod to England, the Forge Fathers Germany and the Orx the Soviet Union, I think that the rats will have an Italian flavour - a nice blue and white kit and some mafioso inspired name (will have to ponder that, the Cosche Soprano Pallaterrore Squadra maybe?).

I was hoping to get the Wessex Supermarine Spitfires and Blitzschnellen Körperhammeren painted before Christmas so I could give my son the game and two basic teams painted as a present, but seeing how quickly the holiday is rushing upon us (and still waiting on delivery) I'm not sure whether my hope will become reality.

Fingers and tentacles crossed...

++ We must have had 99 per cent of the match. It was the other three per cent that cost us ++

DGB RELEASE RULEBOOK...

Woo hoo! My PDF rulebook has arrived. I may be gone sometime...

++ I'm sure they'll be quite happy with it but not too pleased ++

THE RED REVOLUTION...

Out of all of the Season One Dreadball teams, the Orx have been for me the simplest to come up with a team for. My 40K Orks have always had a Soviet theme, first with my Epic army, then with the 40k one itself. I always thought that militarily the concept of quantity having a quality all of its own and human wave tactics was so Ork that I could not help but adopt it.

The 40K background postulates that the Orks in deep space have picked up 1930/40/50's radio and TV signals from Earth and adopted the maxim "all property is theft, so I'm taking yours..." I intend to continue this background into Dreadball and I'm planning a very Soviet military looking Orx team, probably in Russian uniform brown with red stars and white numbering. Team name wise I'm working on something like тех победивших рабочих тракторного завода войны советские (The Ever Victorious Workers War Tractor Factory Soviet) or similar...

++ Half this game is ninety percent mental ++

NO DWARVEN BOMBERS IN THE AIR...

Real world work (boo!) has meant little DreadBall pondering of late, although a few nights in London did allow for the drinking of some welcome pints of real ale and slight hilarity at Polish stadium roof design! :-)

I did though begin to finalise my pre-season ideas for the Corporation team: the Wessex Supermarine Spitfires! 

Sticking with national themes for the Season One teams, if the Dwarves are German, then the humans are going to be English, with echoes of 1966 and all that...

Whilst some of the Iron Man inspired paint designs are pretty cool, I'd already decided to go with a red and white armour design as a homage to the Boys of '66 and the name came to me as a kind of extension of that. 

The Germans may not get the ongoing English fixation with the war, but I thought it amusing to keep the link ("ten German bombers" song etc) and the Supermarine Spitfires does sound likes a top  DreadBall team to me.

++ If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again ++

BLITZSCHNELLEN?

"The survey (which originally had 160 questions!) will be with you next Friday, and we will be shipping your first teams and the games shortly after!"

I may be reading too much into Update #89 from Mantic, but that sounds to me that we might get the basic game sooner rather than later, here's hoping! Whatever, I need to put my thinking hat on regarding the Season One teams, especially the Corporation and Forge Fathers teams in case them turn up before the Orx and Veer-myn.

For the Season One teams I have decided that the team colours will be inspired by national team football (the proper one) colours and as for me Dwarves means Germans (from a gaming point of view) I am leaning towards a white and black colour scheme with touches of red and yellow (there is also a little devil on my shoulder suggesting I replace the helmets with plastic WW2 ones...). I haven't settled on a team name yet but am leaning towards something Germanic that rolls off the tongue like the Neu Berlin Blitzschnellen Körperhammeren...

Background wise I will be playing fast and loose with the Mantic Warpath background and adding in elements of other backgrounds I like from Judge Dredd to WH40K and others. I don't want to get too stuck with the official world but have fun with it.

++ You got one guy going boom, one guy going whack, and one guy not getting in the endzone ++

TEAM COLOURS...

"DreadBall – The Futuristic Sports Game is the hyperkinetic sci-fi sports game of unparalleled speed and ferocity..."

I've been giving lots of thought towards painting my DreadBall miniatures and the "look" I want. After many decades of painting historical, fantasy and science fiction models (you have a look at the 'home' blog here) I feel I want to do something different, one might say unique (in the terms of my miniatures collection anyway).

The most distinctive look in future sports surely has to be that of the Tron franchise and the fluorescent lines would be an interesting look (and how cool would it be to have my miniatures glow in the dark!). I don't think that the basic uniform need be black either, it will all depend on the fluorescent colour bought.

Humbrol produce some fluorescent paint, a couple of tins which will be useful for fluorescent lines and also manufacture some day-glow sprays which could prove interesting if I want an entire teams armour to be very bright (it may be counter-intuitive for me to work from the basecoat up and down rather than the undercoat up but I think the end result may be worth giving it a crack).

Humbrol also produce some tins of Clearcote, a semi-translucent paint that goes over metallics and light colours to produce some snazzy effects. I've seen this done of model cars and think DreadBall player armour could similarly benefit. Tamiya also do an interesting range in "clear" colour paints that could also be well worth investigating and the new Citadel Glazes may also be worth checking out.

Whatever paints I end up using I suspect my miniatures will be very colourful and quite shiny, just what is needed for a sports game of unparalleled speed!

 ++ DreadBall is the ballet of the masses ++

COUNTDOWN TO KICK-OFF!

I wasn't going to do DreadBall but...

I wasn't going to do Season Two but...

I certainly wasn't going to do Ultimate DreadBall but...

Sound familiar? Yep, another gamer here seduced by Mantic's excellent DreadBall Kickstarter campaign with a badly hit credit card and itchy palms waiting for the shed load (literally) of goodies to arrive so I can get painting and playing.

So, to help salve my need for DreadBall (right now) I've set up this blog to help get me (and hopefully you) through pre-season and then see how things go as we launch into Season One of "the most popular sport ever devised..."

Hot diggity damn, I am sooo excited...

++ Some people believe DreadBall is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that ++