I’ve been interested in this game since it first appeared as a liftout in a holiday edition of White Dwarf magazine – way back when it was still owned by Steve Jackson Games and not an in-house advertising vehicle for GW. The game is basically a parody of American football played with fantasy races. Of course, given my Flintloque proclivities, I’ve settled on a team of elves.

Elves, being what they are in the Warhammer universe, are agile and graceful. In game terms, this means they are fast and can throw the ball about quite well. Hence, the strategy for my team it to split the defense by running deep towards the goal line and make long passes to the receivers. Two turn touchdowns will become my team’s speciality.

Also, to highlight the prissy nature of the race, the team refuses to cheat or foul against other teams, indulge in “rough-house play,” or any other form of nastiness. They are here to play the game and show that beings who understand bloodbowl at infinitely deeper levels than any other Warhammer race is capable of are inherently superior. They are frequently know to launch official protests at “ungentlemanly conduct” and other such infractions of the spirit of the game.

In the first league game (last week), the Angels played Peter M Ball‘s Underhill Maulers, a team of halflings and were mauled. We launched the first of, I’m sure, many official protests to the league management. If including ten foot tall treeman on a team of halflings doesn’t go against the spirit of the rules, then using them to throw halflings at the opposition surely must be.

Last night’s game, the Angels lost in a complete whitewash against Nic’s Dwarf Warhammerers. In their turns, they grabbed the ball, placed the guy carrying it in the centre of an armoured mass and slowly marched forward into the end zone. In the Elves turn, they rolled ones. For every dice roll which could have affected the game, they rolled ones. You can’t argue with fate.

I’ll post some photos when I get a minute to myself.

What we did on Friday night was the initial pre-invasion preparatory raids with the aim of securing objectives in order to make the beach landings easier when we fight them out on the table top. If we were doing it again, we’d set up specific objectives such as coastal gun batteries, railway bridges and the like rather than trusting to the rather abstract victory rules in the rulebook.

We played two games of 750-odd points each played using the Seize and Hold mission from the D-1 sourcebook. One game represented the British pre-invasion raid and the other reporesented the same event in the US sector.

The British attack stalled and was eventually repulsed by the Italian defenders. This was unfortunate and was caused primarily by dicing for where the British platoons entered the board. One British platoon came on right where Italian armour reinforcements turned up the next turn. That one event was largely responsible for turning the tide against the ever valiant Brits.

The US attack went better. Two platoons of US Rangers infiltrated through an orchard and some monastic buildings and went straight into hand-to-hand combat with some very surprised Italians. After they were taken care of, the Rangers turned their attention to the artillery sitting on a nearby hill. The Italians real problem during this game was the non-appearance of their reserves.

The next game is going to by the British landings just south of Syracuse using the Assault the Beach mission from the D-Day supplement. Because of British failure to take their objectives, from memory, we’re playing that the Italians can use the naval gun boambardment rules to simulate the intact coastal guns and the British only have 1500 points rather than the standard 1750 points for their army. (I’m sure I’ll be corrected if needs be.)

I wanted a different look for the Rangers as opposed to my 82nd Airborne company in Normandy (one of my other Flames of War armies) so they traipsing through the rubble of a bombed out town. I’m about 80% happy with the results. I would have liked to have put more bits of junk in the rubble such as bathtubs, furniture, bits of cars, etc but I couldn’t find anything in the right scale except the couple of push bikes and telegraph poles.

These pics are of B Company only. A Company looks pretty much the same so there’s no need to duplicate the images just for the sake of completeness. The bases in the photos look much redder than they do in the flesh. The last picture seems to capture the colour of the bases much better. Let me know what you think.

And just because they were teamed up during the brief existence of the 6615th Ranger Force (Provisional), here’s a pic of a platoon from the 83rd Chemical Mortar Battalion. I think this gives a better idea of the colour of the rubble bases.

I’m not sure I’ve got the bases right, though. Have a look and let me know what you think. Do they look OK? What can I do to improve them?

(The figures themselves look pretty poor close up like this but look fine when you apply the ‘two-foot‘ rule.)

Previously posted on the Battlefront Flames of War forum