obsidian3d's Dreadball - Keldorian Krushers Orx Team (pg 3)

[obsidian3d]

I don't think that I have a Ram Man figure in the small batch of Grenadier MotU figures I own. I do have a Man-at-Arms and a Teela, neither of whom (at this point) will be getting their own themed teams, so either or both of those might serve well as coaches for these guys.

As an aside, I do have a theme planned for each of the original 12 teams that will be released. Yep, I'm stretching the MotU theme all the way...and I do mean stretching!

[obsidian3d]

Another team painted up which gives me a total of four. A few more pictures are available on the blog, but don't bother because they're generally crappy pictures anyway)

Painting Dreadball - Female Corporation team #1

I already wrote this article once and lost it due to some very odd incident where an article I had edited just before coming back to this one overwrote all my text with its own and then saved itself. Hitting undo did...nothing. So here I am writing it again, in a much briefer form.

Here's the brief painting step-by-step:

First I primed the figure with Vallejo airbrush grey primer, then the faces were painted with GW Elf Flesh.

The rest of the figures painted grey with a mix of 6:6:2:1 of GW Skull White, water, AP Ash Grey and AP Deep Blue. I then added AP Dark Tone ink to the above paint until it was a slightly darker colour than the ash grey and used it as a wash on all of the grey base coat.

The metallic pink base colour is a 2:2:3:3:4 mix of GW Skull White, AP Alien Purple, Vallejo Metal Medium, water and AP Pure Red. Not only was this team an experiment with white, but also creating metallics out of regular colours and some more aggressive mixes to obtain unique colours.

On top of the washed grey base coat I added a first highlight of 6:3:2:.5 mix of white, water, grey and blue. At this point I had a very nice three-colour gradient to work for shadows and depth to the white armour. I finished this off with a pure highlight of white.

The pink armour looked good, but I felt it could use some more depth as it looked rather flat against the white. First off I started with a purplish colour for shadows by mixing 2:1:2:1:2 of purple / AP Dragon Red / water / black and / metal medium. At first this didn't look very good, but I was patient and didn't freak out.

Finally I added a highlight to the pink with a 3:1:1:1 mix of white, purple, pure red and metal medium.

Once all of that was done I painted the visors with some P3 blue, and a highlight of ___. I touched up their lips with a coat of ___ and the skin with a quick GW wash of Devlan Mud.

At this point I realized I had a problem. I'd painted half of the back plates pink and the other half white. That wouldn't work with my white number transfers, so I had to paint the yellow stars on their backs so that the numbers would show up. (Note: the pictures are crap. The foam I used as a backdrop picked up most of the camera's focus.)







This is the only team so far that doesn't fit my Masters of the Universe theme. Laarni wanted a pink team, but since I already had plans for my female corporation and had a second female team pack, this is what we did. She watched a lot of Jem as a kid, so I thought I might as well keep the animated references going and present to you: the Synergy City Holograms!

[obsidian3d]

I've been playing in our new league using my robot team "The Etherian Horde." So far I'm 5-0. Here's my write up for game 5 (reposted from my blog at http://obsidian3d.blogspot.ca/2014/03/calgary-dreadball-league-undefeated.html).

"Boom Can't Halt the Horde"

The Etherian Horde took to the field against Cosmic Boom in a Sunday matinee game yesterday. Being the underdogs by 28mc, the home-team Horde brought in two Orx guards from the free agent pool to bolster their ranks against the speedy and lithe Judwan team.

Having extra players was a first for the Horde, and so their coach decided to deploy the two Orx guards in his starting six. The Boom lined up in an extremely offensive stance across the launch line, obviously looking to capitalize with an early goal. When the ball launched the Horde Orx laid out some hurt to start the game, knocking down several opposing players. Transforming into striker mode, the Horde's #06, Hexatron, picked up the ball and ran in a two-point strike to end the rush.

The Cosmic Boom were unable to reply immediately, having to dust themselves off a bit in their first rush. The third rush of the game saw more slamming (and a stomp) from the free agent guards, the ref called the foul and ejected one of them for two rounds in the sin bin. Unperturbed and unopposed, Hexatron ran cross-pitch and scored another two-point strike.

This time the Boom players weren't going to stand idly around, and replied by picking up the launched ball with their second action of the rush. The carrying striker made his way towards the three-point Horde strike zone. Horde player #01, Mobil-1, ran interference, causing a minor hiccup in the Judwan plans, but ultimately failed to stop a three-point strike to put the Cosmic Boom within 1!

Rush five saw another Horde player jump off the subs bench to protect their three-point zone and help tie up the two strikers in their zone while Hexatron crossed the pitched again, scoring his third two-point strike, putting the Horde back up by three points!

In rush six the Cosmic Boom tried to regroup and cover some more of the open space, but failed to adequately cover Hexatron. In rush seven, with an extra action granted by doubling on the ball pick up, Hexatron made a beeline for the Boom's three-point strike zone. Stopping in the bonus hex and pausing to survey the empty zone, Hexatron lined up a beautiful 4-point strike, causing the crowd to go berserk with a dazzling display of scoring prowess to win the game in a landslide for the Horde!"

Post-Game Thoughts:

It was a really fun match to play. I think that without those Orx free-agents I would have been in some serious trouble trying to out-score the Judwan. I've also never played against the Judwan before, only played a few games with them before the season 3 book came out. They were too powerful then before the speed reduction. I think the Judwan made a few costly mistakes:

1) Lining up along the centre line was a huge gamble; one that ultimately failed to pay off. I had already put my two Orx guards up front, so the starting line-up should have taken that into account. It proved far too easy for me to clear a path through them on my first rush.
2) My striker was left unmolested the entire game. Locking him down with a few players should have become top priority after my first strike.
3) Defending the strike zones (especially the 1-point zones) would have slowed me down a lot.

I do have to say that I've never played a game where a single player scored that many points. I've come close with a season 1 human striker, but 10-points for a single player, in such a short period of time was a lot of fun (very lucky, but fun nonetheless).

The largest mistake I think I made was forgetting that the Judwan couldn't score bonus points on their strikes. I deployed Mobil-1 at the top of the three-point zone, which allowed the Cosmic Boom space to get in around behind, and eventually score a three-point strike.

Rolling 5 dice for income at the end of the game was really what I needed, as I *finally* have the cash in my coffers to buy a seventh regular player. While my team still isn't the one with the highest value, I'm a prime target now. I'm the only team with a perfect record, so I'm pretty sure my opponents will be gunning for me. It's good to be the king, but people do envy the crown...

I'm off to paint more robots now. That seventh player is going to come in mighty handy for the next game!

If you're interested in reading more about my opinion on the robot team go to http://obsidian3d.blogspot.ca/2014/03/calgary-dreadball-league-robot-thoughts.html.

[obsidian3d]

I finished my Orx team, "The Keldorian Krushers," last week. They're playing in our second league, but I've only played one game so far with them. Here's the full write up about the team if you're interested in more info http://obsidian3d.blogspot.ca/2014/10/painting-dreadball-keldorian-krushers.html