Dwarf Blood Bowl Pitch

Near the beginning of the month I posted some early pictures of my Dwarf Bloodbowl team, the Stoutheart Brewers.  I’m still working on getting the team fully painted but we aren’t focusing on the team today.  The last sentence in that update was that I’m also working on a Blood Bowl pitch for the team.  When you purchase a Blood Bowl boxed set it does come with game board.  But the Cyanide video game version has shown me that you don’t need to settle for a grass field.  Dwarfs prefer the feel of stone under their feet.  What you’re going to see below is still a work in progress.

When playing Blood Bowl each coach has a side board that contains their Reserves, Injured, and Dead Players.  Early in my design process I decided I wanted to have these dugouts located beneath the playing field.  For some reason it felt more Dwarf that way.  It was also a more complex build, which I thought was a great idea for someone who hasn’t done any wood work since my high school shop class.  Despite having to re-teach myself some basics of carpentry my frame came together pretty quickly.

The next step was to use foam project board.  Basically a piece of foam sandwiched between two sheets of poster board.  Using a rag I wet the paper down one side of the board and stripped the paper from it.  I did this for two full boards because I wasn’t really sure how much I was going to need.  That’s kind of a theme of this project, me getting more supplies than I really need.  Once the foam was cleaned I began measuring out the game board.  Using a T-Square, a pencil, and a sharp X-Acto knife I spent a lot of time creating the grid for the actual playing field.  After that I did turn trackers, re-roll trackers, a scatter template, and random stone work to fill the rest of the board. 

I purposely left some places bare.  In those places I brushed on a layer of watered down Elmer’s glue and then sprinkled cat litter on them.  Once that was they got two more layers of glue to make sure the gravel pits stayed in place.  The important thing to remember about working with foam like this is that if you use spray paint, it will eat your foam and all your hard work will disappear.  To avoid destroying my pitch I base coated it with two layers of black acrylic paint.  The picture above was taken after I had brushed on the first layer.  You can also see the glue hasn’t dried in my gravel pits. 

Once the layers of black paint had dried it was time to get some actual color on the field.  I was playing around with a few different paint options when I handed a can of Games Workshop Rough Coat and told to try that.  At first I thought that there was something wrong with the way it came out of the can, it seemed to hit the board more “wet” than the spray paint I was used to using.  It gave me a great base coat for my grey that varied a lot in how dark it was.  Once that was dry I hit it with the black patches. 

The Spring Training League I plan on using the pitch for won’t start until the end of April, so I have some time but there is still a lot more to do.  I plan on throwing a lighter grey on the surface.  After that I’ll add the white lines that designate the different zones on the playing field.  I’ll also add white text for the scatter template, re-roll counters, and turn trackers.  The big empty area near one endzone will eventually be where I build a scoreboard.  The scoreboard won’t be built in time for the Spring Training League though.  It is very likely that the dugouts won’t be finished in time for the League either.  Considering Blood Bowl is my favorite Games Workshop game every, these things will eventually be finished.  Stay tuned to That F’ing Monkey for future progress updates.