Bloodbowl board

[Redrobes]

I know that its been done before and there was a real nice one from Neon Knight a long time back but I am making a blood bowl board for a mate of mine and we have both agreed that the pic here is great for what we want. Now the colours are garish but don't be alarmed they are just markers and he is real bad colour blind - not kidding either... So the pink is a cut right through the board so that the edge of the board is blue with a hole in the bottom for a carry handle. Then the blue is the main board, the green is recessed down from blue a few mm and then red is recessed down from green a few mm more. The whole board will be painted green with the lines of white needing to be painted on at the end. So the red recessed dimples are the size of the character base so they fit into the holes.

Were going to use some bits of card or something with numbers on and a character base stuck to them for keeping the score. A double digit score is slightly optimistic I know...

Were not sure if were going to flock the green pitch or whether the board will have some texture to it after being painted.

Now, any suggestions that I might be able to do at this stage or do you guys think its fine. The board for the reserves and dead dudes will be separate but if there is anything I could add that might be useful at this point then ill consider it. My mate plays a lot but I have only had one match so far.

[timallen]

No advice as I don't know the game. But wow that board is sure Loud! I can still see the colours after I navigate away from the page; it's like they are burned into my retinas. I am assuming this is better for your colour blind friend that just, say, a black and white board?

[Redrobes]

Were going to make it in wood so it will all be one colour (goblin green with luck) plus the white lines and maybe the end zone for the touchdown might be a bit different but this is the pattern not the board with colour. That would be a bit over the top.

[Redrobes]

I cut a test bit of the board and we tried out some paint and stuff on it today - plus had a game which I lost... tsk...

Anyway - maybe these pics will show it a bit better what we want. We were not sure whether just painting some MDF would be ok or whether it would be ok after routing some away and then painting it or whether we need to flock it. The consensus is that that it looks so much better flocked with the standard Warhammer flocking stuff that it looks like real grass when done. So were going with the flocking. I think I need to recess those dimples down a few more mm so that the character bases are flush with the pitch. We have decided to ditch recessing the touchdown and score text and spray it on over the top of the flocking like real paint on grass at soccer / football pitches. So were going to do just the touch down text in white with the lines and leave off the score and put that on the reserves board instead. You can get green MDF but its dearer than the normal brown stuff but it might make it easier to make. Will investigate this aspect. So I reckon the next board will be our proper one.

In the meantime here are the test cut and test painting pics.

[timallen]

Heh....I had to Google the term "Flocking" before I knew what you were talking about!

Looks real nice so far.

[NeonKnight]

Looking good. Are you doing anything special for the Dugouts, turn and rerolls?

[Redrobes]

We haven't gone into too much discussion about those yet. I believe the idea is to use a similar technique and have the 1" dimples to contain the turn counter and rerolls. There was a mention of using extra models like cheerleaders or characters from a spare team to do the rerolls. I expect the dug outs to be a similarly recessed set of character bins, flocked again, but without the dimples so that it contains miniatures lead down. I think we decided on having the score as part of the dug out board now instead of more traditionally part of the main pitch. The score counter is going to be one dimple and were going to print up a set of cards with the numbers 0-9 on them twice and affix some character bases to them. We don't think its possible to get a score of more than 9 in a game. Would you agree on that ?

[NeonKnight]

Of course, while the 1" dimple etc is awesome cool, what do you do about the pieces like the Troll, Ogre, Kroxigor, & Treeman (as well as others) that are on a 1.5" base?

As to scores higher than 9, no, never seen that.

The following link is to our Vancouver Thunderbowl League (and we host the Official GW Sanctioned SPIKED BOWL here every Spetember ): http://thunderbowl.ca/tbsn/

(P.S. My current Team is the Dark Elf Team: Lipstick & Leather

[Redrobes]

Now your getting to the edge of my blood bowl knowledge here but when we talked about this he said that the rules have changed and that once a big guy used to take up a 3x3 set of squares or have influence over them or something like that but now there is no difference rule wise between big and small characters except for stats. So the bug guys need to stand on one square. So I think he is either going to mount his bigger guys on the same base size even if they hang over the sides a bit or else were going to have a 1" base stuck to a 1.5" to 2" square flocked bit of card or plastic and then place them on the top of that. We were originally going to have the dimples of 25mm on a 30mm spacing so there was 5mm between them but its making the board quite big so we have dropped it to 28mm so it doesn't leave a lot of extra room around each for large models.

If its true that the big guys have no special space rules for the board then what do people do right now with the existing board when a bunch of small guys pack around him or two big guys get onto adjacent squares ?

We like the idea of the dimples cos he has children who come in and start moving all the pieces about or knock the board and we want them quite well fixed down in play. Do you think the dimples will cause some problems for some situations ?

BTW Lipstick & Leather is a great name. I also liked the Wights in Night Satin too.

[NeonKnight]

well, it could as the Larger critters (trolls, ogres etc) are actually larger and have a larger base because of that. There is no actual rules difference for the larger base/monster, beyond just being bigger (i.e. still take up only a single square, no reach, etc). Our Thunderbowl league actually uses a board with 40 mm squares for just this reason. Now if you are simply using the board for games between you and your buddy only, then should not be an issue, but if you start to include others, you will find there is a difference between bases from one player to another i.e. Some use the Warmachine sytle 'lipped' base which is 1.25 inches, some use square bases (I am painting a team right now with square bases, and frankly, it makes the minis' easier to lay on their backs/fronts for knocked down/stunned designation).