Dreadball Spring Clean Hobby Challenge 2022

The Premise

A long long time ago when I was still kinda new to the hobby and shiny syndrome was in full effect a friend pointed me towards Dreadball and expressed an interest so I bought in (2013).  There was more talk about it a while later, so I went all in on the Xtreme kickstarter when it came out (2014).  In all the years since then I’ve played Dreadball on maybe 3 occasions.  My group never got on board with it, although a few others picked up starter teams.  The earlier Mantic sculpts and resin were not the best to work with or paint so it’s all mostly sat on a shelf unpainted.  I’ve even tried selling it all off a few times.  Some parts of it were bought.

Over HERE I count down towards being 100% painted, but that total is a lie.  It ignores what I’ve been calling my Box of Undesirables.  The stuff I don’t particularly want and haven’t sold along.  Its mostly Dreadball in there.  My Spring Clean Hobby Challenge is to deal with this dirty little secret, and then see if I can tempt my group in to a (bi)monthly league day.

A dumb idea?

During lockdown I was also toying with the idea of a 1.5 player league hosted over the internet.  It’s probably a dumb idea, but it might work with a game like this.  Here’s my idea:

• Every player uploads their current team roster to a shared google spreadsheet, and keeps it updates across the season.  On your roster sheet you can include standard deployments, possibly even conditional based on what type of team you’re up against.
• The TO draws opponents for the round and everyone has 2 weeks to play their games and update the Google Sheet with the outcome and update their roster. Then the next round match ups are drawn
• No one actually plays against a live opponent.  You play the actual games running both sides in your own house, using the updated rosters and deployments from the Google Sheet.  You are expected to play fair.  If you cheat you’re only really cheating yourself.  There’s no real prizes.
• This means both opponents can report a win, so tiebreaks of some sort would also need to be tracked.  (I’m open to suggestions)
• If anyone drops out of the league their team can still be used and be managed by whoever they’re playing against that round.  The TO should feel free to remove unmanaged teams when they can do so without leaving someone opponentless.  Active players should be drawn against active players wherever possible.
• You don’t actually need the correct minis for your opponents faction.  Just make sure you can keep track of who is where, even if that’s by sticking labels on to coins.
• A 1.5 player league means that while you are playing against yourself, there are still consequences and you’re not in charge of who or what you’ll be facing next, hopefully adding a little of the challenge back, while allowing everyone to try different teams and experience other aspects of the game.  You’ll also clearly have the team you’re routing for.  Hopefully this will get around some of the “fun sinks” of solo play.

Is this a dumb idea?  I’m not sure I’d stay interested after the first couple of games.  If it works, it would allow us to have an OTT league without anyone leaving their houses and definitely removes the issue of finding a time when both players are free at the same time.

The Pile of Shame

So what do I have to contend with?  Here is a list of everything I think I have, and then just the stuff I think I have left to paint.  I was given a goody box by mantic a3-4 years back which I know contains a few more models.  I need to go through everything and confirm what I have and add the extras to this list.  It’s currently February 22 and I’m in the avoiding-work-by-planning stage so I’ll update this later at my convenience.  The header picture was taken a few years ago.  Some of it has been sold, but a few other bits have turned up since, although I haven’t bought any more in many years.

According to these charts I’ve 54 models to paint, along with Xtreme terrain pieces.  I know I’ve some more elsewhere to add still.

Prelude

According to google Spring is 20/3/22 through to 21/6/22 so I think I’ve 5.5 weeks until the Challenge starts.  I’ve painting my way through Kingdom Death right now.  I hope to have that done before this starts, with enough time to do a full inventory, wash clean up and prime everything that still needs it.  Most of it is built.  I cannot remember if I washed or cleaned it all up.  There’s no harm in washing everything again, just to be safe.  Dust may be an issue anyway.

Quick Questions

1. I haven’t played the game since Sponsors were added.  I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough bases to go around.  Do they need hex bases?  Can you see anything else on my list that doesn’t need a hex base?  If I can save a few that’d be great.
2. Is there a good app for Dreadball that’ll manage your team and handle rolling for new powers when you level up?  When I had a league day we had one set of books to fight over between games, and looking up all the different XP tables at once took multiple books.  It would be good if we could avoid this by doing it all with a few touches of our phone screens.  I own the 2nd ed rules, but I’ve not read them or looked at the current state of the game so I’ve no idea how many books have XP tables in them for the current edition of the game.