I’ve just finished painting up my 3rd edition Blood Bowl human team, The Mordheim Double Glazing Company. They’ll provide some solid opposition from my other teams, AFC Wimblegnome and Real MovChaos.
These are mainly original models from my 3rd edition set back in the 90s with the exception of a couple of star players.
‘Wullie’ is a converted Wargames Foundry pict, and the big tanky lad whom I’ve named ‘The Gaffer’ is from an even earlier edition of Blood Bowl. Big thanks to Ed in our Discord community for very kindly sending him to me.
I’ve been playing a mini-league with the good lady, and these guys have been dominant so far. They beat Real MovChaos 3-0, then followed it up with a 2-1 victory over Wimblegnome.
Wullie scored four of the touchdowns so far, and he’s certainly catching the eye of fans and opposition players alike.
Thrower Chuck (the other is called Chuck’s brother) and catcher Hans (the other is called Hans’ brother) have been integral in these matches, too. The lads will get a rest and a few beers now, as the next game is between Real MovChaos and AFC Wimblegnome.
White Dwarf readers of a certain vintage will undoubtedly remember Fred Reed’s iconic Howling Griffons space marine army. Then-Games Workshop store worker Fred showcased the stunning force in issue 179 (November 94), and it had a runout in the mag’s battle report a month later.
Fred’s army was a source of inspiration to many young hobbyists in the mid-90s and is still talked about more than 30 years later. One man who’s gone above and beyond in his nostalgia, however, is Jonny Watson of the Jonny Watson Gaming YouTube channel. Jonny did the ultimate homage to Fred’s Howling Griffons by assembling and painting his own tribute act:
Jonny Watson’s Howling Griffons
I had the pleasure of chatting to Jonny about this project and the opportunities it brought him, from interviewing Fred Reed himself to being featured on the hallowed pages of White Dwarf. We covered his origin story, returning after the inevitable deep freeze, and how running a YouTube channel can supplement and enhance your hobby when you’re not playing the algorithm game.
When Rick Priestley casually says, “What you’re doing sounds entirely normal to me,” it becomes clear how strange modern wargaming culture has become.
On a recent two-part episode of the Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast, Priestley, co-creator of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, listens as Jason and Mark describe big tables, no points, Games Masters, imbalance by design, and campaigns driven by story rather than symmetry.
To him, none of this sounds radical. It sounds familiar.
Narrative wargaming is often framed as a niche revival or a reaction against competitive play. Priestley rejects that outright. Narrative play is not a rebellion. It is the foundation modern wargames were built on.
Before points values and mirrored tables, games were shaped by scenario and judgment. Sieges were unfair. Last stands were desperate. Balance was not calculated. It was agreed.
Early British designers such as Featherstone, Grant, and Young did not rely on points systems. They assumed good faith, shared imagination, and players who wanted the game to be interesting rather than optimal.
So what changed?
When Balance Became an Ideology
Points values began as a convenience. They helped players build collections and find games quickly. Over time, that convenience hardened into expectation.
Modern balance culture assumes that a properly designed game should resolve to a near-perfect 50/50 outcome between equally skilled players. The result is list optimisation, meta-chasing, and games whose outcome is often decided before the first dice roll.
Priestley does not condemn this approach. He simply questions what it produces. Efficiency, perhaps. Predictability, certainly. But not always joy.
The Games Master We Lost
One of the clearest casualties of this shift is the Games Master.
In the episode, Jason describes running vast multiplayer games overseen by a GM who introduces events, resolves disputes, and keeps the story moving. Priestley immediately recognises the model. This was early Warhammer. Early roleplaying games. Early wargaming.
The GM was never a workaround. They were the engine.
Attempts to replace that role with campaign books and flowcharts were understandable, but limited. You cannot automate trust or improvisation. A referee works because everyone agrees they are there to make the game better.
As Priestley puts it, the only rule is that the Games Master is always right. Not because they wield authority, but because the group has given them responsibility.
Another striking thread in the conversation is how casually the group ignores rules.
Forgotten mechanics are handwaved. Unclear outcomes are resolved with a roll and a decision. Priestley admits that even with systems he helped write, momentum matters more than correctness.
This is not carelessness. It is confidence.
Narrative players are not anti-rules. They simply refuse to let rules dominate the experience. Systems are scaffolding. If something blocks the flow of the game, it is removed.
In a hobby obsessed with precision and FAQs, this mindset feels quietly subversive.
Not a Rejection, a Reminder
Priestley is not calling for the end of competitive play. He is arguing for memory.
Narrative gaming never died. It was crowded out of the conversation. What groups like Jason’s are doing is not inventing something new. They are remembering how the hobby once worked and choosing to make space for it again.
The most radical idea in modern wargaming is not breaking the rules.
I’ve just finished setting up a game of Hobgoblin, which sees the debut of my recently completed 15mm Chaos army. They’ll be allying with Grabbum’s greenskin horde to lay siege to the small but mighty forces of Lord Marshall Longfellow.
Evil warlord Baron Gibb leads the chaos host on Wyther Spune the manticore.
The baddies are a very Battlemasters-esque alliance.
I launched my 15mm collection with a bunch of monopose units, which I have great nostalgia for. But I added this dynamic mob of shieldmaidens recently. They were a lot of fun to paint, and I’m chuffed with the outcome.
Likewise these beastmen. A very characterful unit.
Their allies, Grabbum’s greenskin horde.
And the vastly outnumbered Order of the Morning Glory. Can they possibly survive this sweeping tide of Chaos? We’ll soon find out!
This year, I got back into Blood Bowl after a 30-year hiatus. I even bought a modern Games Workshop kit to build my AFC Wimbelgnome side.
Of course, they needed some worthy opposition, so here are their bitter rivals – Real Movchaos.
I actually owned the Chaos All Stars in the 90s, including star player Lord Borak. But only the beastmen survived the great hobby hiatus. I painted those up back in 2021.
Those gave me a great basis for a squad, but I wanted to add the Chaos Warrior players to the roster.
I picked these guys up on Ebay, but they were in pretty bad nick. Fortunately, I managed to get them cleaned up and painted, and I’m quite happy with the outcome.
I’m looking forward to getting them on the pitch against AFC Wimbelgnome. It should be a real culture clash, for sure!
Finally, I painted them up and put a gloss varnish on the caps. They’ll be ideal for 28mm skirmish games in either sci-fi or fantasy settings, and will also make for handy ‘fungus forest’ features at 15mm scale.
Photo dump incoming. Seeing as I am talking about my hobby progress for the next Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast episode, it feels long overdue. Where to start.
I suppose with these £1 wooden mushroom decorations I found in The Works.
I thought they’d make for handy fungi forest terrain features which would work at any scale.
Elsewhere, and I’d been looking to add these guys to my Real Movchaos Blood Bowl team. I owned them in the 90s but they got lost somewhere. I still have all the beastmen. Big shout out to Stuart on the Discord for finding the Chaos Warrior players on Ebay (there’s another one, not pictured). When I got them through the post, it was evident they weren’t in the best condition. But I’ve cleaned them up as best I can and they’re now primed up, ready to paint.
I also dug out my old 90s Blood Bowl plastics to see if I had enough for a couple more teams. Dettol bath time for the painted ones. I had exactly 11 orcs and 10 humans. Who could make up the numbers?
What about this Foundry Pict?
Yup, he’ll do.
All primed up, alongside another one of the 90s Blood Bowl Chaos Warrior players.
Meanwhile, I played half a mini-campaign of Song of Blades & Heroes with The Good Doctor Spork.
The “Rivaly of Rot” was a story of two rival Nurgle warbands. We’ll have more on this in an upcoming episode of the podcast.
We used my nurgle miniatures. The Doctor brought terrain he’d made with his wee one during a recent Royal Orc session in the Discord.
Now for a jarring transition, Nurgle skirmish wargaming to Thundercats cosplay…
When I showed my daughter the DVDs recently, I didn’t expect her to be that into it. Suddenly, she was asking for a WilyKit costume. We did our best…
Whether or not I need to dress up as Snarf remains to be seen.
Anyway, back to toy soldiers, and here are some WIP 15mm beastmen from Ral Partha.
They’re the very last thing I need to do to complete my chaos army.
I recently finished these shield maidens from North Star Military Figures.
And these mounted chaos knights from Ral Partha.
A couple of 28mm scale guys in the bag, too. Harkel the Mad (left) is from Knightmare, and the Ettin was a generous gift from Warbases.
A couple of crackers from Bring Out Your Lead, the hive vampire was the official BOYL25 gift, and the daemonette was a generous present from David in the Discord, who made the pilgrimage over from the USA.
I finished up these Oathsworn miniatures a while ago, but I hadn’t posted a picture of them on the site yet.
I guess I have now.
And finally, a big raven mage guy, also from Oathsworn.
That’s all for now, no shortage of stuff to be getting on with.
In Blood Bowl, I really don’t like the aesthetics of turning players to face the other way to mark the fact that they’ve taken a turn. I had a huge bag of 40mm round bases in my collection, so I decided to paint them up green to act as markers.
Both teams start with the markers under every player and then remove them as each player activates. It’s a simple but effective way of keeping track of everything.
I also painted up some of the round bases red to represent prone players, and left some of their original black colour to put underneath stunned players.
And I had a larger round MDF base, which I turned into a ball carrier marker. This has been a lot better than fiddling about with the tiny ball model on its own.
Nothing groundbreaking about any of this, I know. But it has definitely improved my Blood Bowl play experience!
