Blood Bowl – Preparing for match reports

I've written multiple times about my love for Blood Bowl on here, and I want to move the coverage into a nostalgic driven direction. We did game reports in the past, Dino did so with his Maulers, but I want to pick something up in a style, that I grew up with.

To give you an idea, what I am talking about, these are pictures from tactic articles from the very first German White Dwarf issues introducing Blood Bowl.

What would I need to produce something like that? First of all, painted miniatures. This is in the works, my Chaos Team, the Mordheim Marauders are painted, the next one, the Caledor Dragons are in production, with 12 more teams to follow. Covering the tactical movements isn't an issue as well, as that is easily done with Photoshop. I already have a template for that.

But what about the background of the pictures from the actual pitch? While it might look familiar to see the dugouts, drinks and snacks, I want to create a bigger immersion. For the other systems, I printed some backdrops, but in case of Blood Bowl it should properly look like a stadium.

The part in the background would be covered with the Renedra Castle walls, in front of which I would like to add bleachers and bill boards. For that I printed a few of the Billboard by 13BadLuck, and the Chaosbunker Blood Bowl League (CBBL) obviously needs a trophy, that I repurposed a marker from the Bloody Goons by Punga Miniatures. As for the bleachers, those are to intensive for resin printing, so I'd source those out in PLA, and I'll most likely go for the Wooden Bleachers by Kraken 3d Studios.

I thought about putting stands in between the walls/bleachers and the side line, but that is not a priority. Much more important for the middle of the side line, where it would look amazing, if there would be the hosts of the game, Jim Johnson and Bob Bifford. Still, both STL Miniatures and the Terrain Essentials by CastnPlay have very impressive craft men sets, that would work very well within a stadium, from money lenders, to various doctors and outfitters.

There are multiple companies offering the duo as either physical miniatures or STLs, I got Vampire J and Robert Paulsen by UGNI Miniatures, and once again noticed to not use pre-supported files and do that on my own. Not sure if I should reprint him in that pose or go for the sitting variant of him.

And you have to sit them somewhere, so I build up a nice setup for the two, using the Commanders Table from the Bite the Bullet - Command Room set, adding two chairs from the Vampire Hunters Set by STL Miniatures, and to round it all up the Book from the NUFFLE Altar again by Kraken 3D Studios.

I am already looking forward to clean up the print and paint all the gubbins on their table, like a tactics map of the pitch. This setup might be missing some coins and Bugman beer mugs.

And for the end zone I went once more back to Kraken 3D Studios and printed their Stone Field Goal and Grass Field Goal. Quite massive pieces, each filled a whole print bed on the mono and I had some slight warpage due to their size, but due to the wonky comic design, nothing to worry about.

In addition, I printed various balls from different teams, just for fun. I want to add more banners, some generic and some swapable in the team colours, so I can use them according to which team is playing. Kraken 3D Studios has some Side Posts for that purpose, but the Command Room set by Bite the Bullet has a great banner as well, as does Vae Victis with their Banner set.

But as Blood Bowl is something that goes for 16 turns per player, my suggestion would be to keep the turns on the tactical top down display, with some highlights captured in pictures with the miniatures. Beyond that, I have to flesh out the CBBL more, with advertisers, logos and such, and most obviously get more miniatures painted, to at least have a conference of 6 teams.

Beyond that, let me know, what do you think about the format? Do you like having suggestions for STLs (many of those have commercial partners, where you can have them physically printed if you don't have a printer yourself)?