Clash of Kings! (Part 1)

Huzzah!  The family have been packed of to the Abyss for the weekend (Mersea Island...) and so I think it's high time I actually got around to painting my Orc army for Mantic's Clash of Kings tournament which is coming up in February.

Now, let me start by saying this:  The tournament requires a fully-painted 1800pt army.  I currently own around a hundred and fifty un-painted plastic orcs (unassembled in some cases!) and this will take me to about 1200pts.  Not a problem though because Mantic's minis are, despite being fantastic, some of the most inexpensive wargaming miniatures on the market.  I thoroughly plan on buying lots of Gore Riders soon to bulk up the rest of the force, but at the moment I only have foot troops.

But anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that this will be a big job to get them all done.

Now, the orc Flagger you see above took about two weeks to paint, but there is no way I can spend that much time painting rank and file to this standard.  Instead, I will be trying out The Army Painter's dipping method.  Obviously, for a gamer whose first love is painting, this may seem anathema to their hobby principles, and it is.  But this isn't an exercise in fine painting, it's an exercise in army painting.

My plan is to basecoat and dip the entire army (excluding characters, which will be painted to somewhere resembling the Flagger's standards) and then, should I have the time before February, I'll go back and improve on the detail, beautify the front ranks, add weathering to the metallics etc.

I'm going to dedicate pretty much 100% of my hobby time to this project from here on in, and the plan is as follows:

Today I hope to finish assembling the troops I currently have, and gravel the bases.  From tomorrow, I will basecoat all of the miniatures (testing the first few with the dip to see how they look).  If I can basecoat ten orcs a day, then in theory my current horde will be ready to dip in less than three weeks.  Hopefully, having a full day to paint tomorrow, I'll be able to make a significant dent in the numbers.  After that, I'll finish the bases on all of them before buying the remainder of my force.

Simple!

So, onwards and upwards and all that...

Wish me luck!

The Pink Horrors 0 - 0 Da Turf Trashers

Coach Lysenko roared expletives, but they were all drowned out by the crash of splintering wood as the Turfinator brought the subs’ bench crashing down onto the top of the minotaur’s head.  The beast went down like a sack of steak and the coach knew that he could well be out cold for the rest of the match.  The black orc cheered gleefully, dancing on the spot for a moment before realising that he’d forgotten what he was so happy about.

The match had only just begun and this was not the start that Lysenko had wanted.

The Pink Horrors faced an insurmountable wall of green muscle and teeth in their opponents, Da Turf Trashers – a far cry from the delicate elves that they had crushed just days earlier.

Receiving the ball at the kick-off, the Horrors huddled tightly around the Drowned Lover – ball clutched in-hand – and proceeded to march in a cloven-hoofed phalanx down the pitch.  Frustratingly, several fierce attacks on the orcs who stood between the Pink Ones and the endzone barely knocked the greenskins back more than a few paces, let alone slammed them to the turf and, half-way through the first half, the Horrors had barely managed to advance more than a few steps.

The situation was worsened, noted their coach, by a suspicious-looking old man with grey robes and a pointy hat standing casually on Da Turf Trashers’ side-line, absently twisting his beard around a heavily-engraved wand.  Every now and then, he would look across the pitch and smile pleasantly at Coach Lysenko.  This was not a comforting sign.

Lysenko hadn’t mentioned the potential for a searing bolt of lightning to roar out of nowhere and rend any one of them into a steaming pile of scattered limbs to the players, but by their nervous offense, Lysenko could only assume that they had worked that out for themselves.

In a final push to take the lead, the Drowned Lover broke free of the cage of man-goats which protected him and pelted down the pitch in the last seconds of the half.  With the rest of the orcs tied up in furious melees, there was no-one to stop the Horrors’ star from scoring.  Cursed by fate however, the Drowned Lover spent so long looking nervously up to see if the dark clouds overhead had in anyway thickened or ‘turned lively’, that he tripped over his own hooves.

The rest of the half was spent scrambling the ball between green players and pink players until the final grains of sand in the hourglass ran down.

By the start of the second half, both sides were down two players – the Blushing Doxy in fact requiring urgent help from the apothecary to set her smashed limbs – and still the minotaur Ermintrude Gayhammer was unconscious.

The orcs wasted little time in starting their sluggish yet relentless advance.  Now it was time for the Horrors to form an impassable wall of their own.  Wave after wave of charges crashed against the Pink Ones, but – many times only by sheer fortune – the man-goats managed to fend off each attack.  Time ground on and the Trashers pushed closer and closer to the endzone.  Finally, in the dying seconds, the ball was slipped to the Lawn Ranger who made a final dash for glory.  The Silent Blade reacted instantly, darting away from several opponents, barrelling towards the orc Blitzer.

With a deafening clash, goat struck orc and the ball was sent spiralling into the air beyond the reach of either player.  Before anyone could scramble their way down to scoop it up, the referee blasted his whistle and signalled the end of the game.

Both teams trudged back to their dugouts, heads hung, knowing that they should have won the game but silently thanking Nuffle, sure in the knowledge that they were both damned lucky not to lose it.

Coach Lysenko looked across to the wizard, but he was gone.  It just went to show, sometimes you could earn your money by doing absolutely nothing at all...

Hello Boys... It's the Iron Ladies!

It's a very rare thing to find miniatures that are not only beautiful, but also a complete joy to paint so it's a good thing that Warlord Games have managed to produce one of the most unique and visually arresting fantasy football teams I have seen in a very long time.

These rather short, large-chested ladies are the 'Sister Sledgehammerers', part of Warlord's growing range of fantasy teams and, though certainly not marketed for any particular game, when I saw them, I felt that they would be ideal for a certain popular little game called Blood Bowl.

The set comes with enough variety to be able to create the perfect starting line-up for a dwarf team of two Blitzers, two Runners, two Troll Slayers and six Blockers.  Though the pose and style of each miniature makes it a very easy job when playing to differentiate between the various playing positions, I decided that when painting them I would also use hair colour as another visual signifier of player-type.

For the Blockers, who would form the bulk of the team, I chose blonde hair as this fitted with the Nordic look of the miniatures better than any other colour, while going for brown for the Runners, and the ubiquitous red hair for the Troll Slayers.  Seeing them as being the more mature and experienced players, the Blitzers left the salon with a nice blue rinse.

Just to try something a bit different, and knowing that it was probably the largest area of colour on the miniatures, I decided to paint the skin first.  This is quite unusual for me because I tend to always paint skin last - as this includes the face of the miniature, it is easily the most important part of the finished piece so doing the skin last allows me to make sure that the skin stands out and is the most striking part of the model.

This time, I didn't do that and I have to admit, that meant a lot more work at the end to get things just right.

I used one of my favourite techniques for skin which I often use when painting my Space Wolves.  It generally gives quite a dark and ruddy shade to the recesses while being quite bright at the highlight stage, fitting these dwarf ladies perfectly, I felt.

I began with a roughly 1:1 mix of Vermin Brown and Scorched Brown as a dark base and then added an extra two parts of Dwarf Flesh to this to make a 2:1:1 mix.  Afterwards, I applied a layer of pure Dwarf Flesh for the first highlight.  Further highlights were then done by adding some Skull White.  The final highlight was then a 1:1 mix of Bleached Bone and Skull White.  The final stages, to give the skin a little more depth and colour were to firstly glaze all over with a thinned 1:1 wash of Gryphonne Sepia and Ogryn Flesh, before washing thinned Regal Blue into the recesses.

When it came to painting the clothing on the team, I decided I wanted to go for the classic Viking-maiden look, using mainly white with very light blue detailing.

For the white areas of cloth, I built up to a Skull White highlight from a Codex Grey basecoat, up through mid-tones of Fortress Grey.  This was a little too dark for my liking at first, so I applied several very thin glazes of Skull White to all but the deepest recesses to bring up the brightness a little.

The colouring of the blues were kept equally simple. I began with a basecoat of Enchanted Blue and followed this with a wash of Asurmen Blue with a touch of Leviathan Purple added.  Once this had dried, I worked all of the blue areas excluding the recesses back up to Enchanted Blue.

To build up the highlights, I repeatedly added more and more Ice Blue to the Enchanted Blue until I was eventually highlighting with virtually pure Ice Blue.  For the final extreme highlight, I mixed in a fair amount of Skull White to thisfor the very edges and topmost of the creases.

For the metallics, I chose to go for a gold / bronze tone rather than silver in order to contrast the relatively light colour of the uniforms.

I began with a 1:1 basecoat of Shining Gold and Scorched Brown before washing the entire area with a 1:1:1 mix of Scorched Brown, Chaos Black and Badab Black.  After this, I worked up the highlights in three stages, firstly with Shining Gold, followed by Burnished Gold, with an extreme highlight of Mithril Silver.  Finally, to darken the metallics slightly, I washed them with a thin layer of Leviathan Purple.

I often find hair rather difficult to paint, so I think I put off doing it for as long as I could.  In the end though, I think it worked out quite well.

The red hair of the Troll Slayers was once more painted using an old Space Wolves method.

I began with a basecoat of Bestial Brown before layering on a highlight of Blazing Orange.  This was followed by two Ogryn Flesh washes.  Following this, two simple highlights of, firstly, pure Dwarf Flesh followed by an extreme highlight of Bleached Bone were applied.  To bring out the redness a little more, a glaze of thinned Baal Red was washed over the area.

The completed Troll Slayers.

The brown hair for the Runners was probably the simplest of all the players.  I began with a Bestial Brown base and then worked it up by adding more and more Sunburst Yellow to the mix.  For the final highlights, touches of Bleached Bone were also added to the mix.  The recesses were then shaded with a mix of Scorched Brown and Badab Black.

The completed Runners.

For the Blitzers' hair, I began with a basecoat of Enchanted Blue, with a touch of Codex Grey added.  I then washed the hair (no pun intended) with a 1:1 mix of Asurmen Blue and Leviathan Purple.  I then re-applied the basecoat before adding more and more Fortress Grey to build up the highlights.  Two final extreme highlights of Fortress Grey and the Skull White were added before a glaze of very thin Asurmen Blue was used to finish off.

The completed Blitzers.

Finally for the Blockers.  I began by basecoating the hair with Bleached Bone before adding a Lamenters Yellow glaze.  Once this had dried, I followed it with a thinned Gryphonne Sepia wash.  I then worked the raised areas up, starting with Sunburst Yellow before mixing in more and more Bleached Bone until I was finally highlighting with pure Bleached Bone.  A final extreme highlight using a 1:1 mix of Bleached Bone and Skull White was used on the very tips of the hair.

I really enjoyed painting these miniatures and hope that you all enjoyed looking at them.

Keep an eye out for more exciting projects soon!

And don't forget to...

The Pink Horrors 3 - 0 Vitesse Arnheim

The usual cheers and roars from the packed stadium of the Vitesse Arnheim fell abruptly silent as the home team sheepishly crept out onto the pitch.  The Pink Horrors’ players were forced to stare at their hooves, desperately trying to hold back fits of giggles as the minotaur hid its face and swallowed down the last of its mouthful.

It began with a single chuckle from somewhere at the back of the stands, growing into a smattering of guffaws from several small groups of supporters throughout the crowd before swelling infectiously, slowly spreading to all corners of the stadium until it became a howling roar of laughter from fans both elf and beast alike.  The crowd were shrieking hysterically by the time the elf Marko van Ginkel had stormed naked to the scrimmage line to face off against the newly-promoted captain of the Horrors, the Spry Butcher.

‘WHERE IS IT?’ the elf spat through gritted teeth.

‘Where’s what?’  The Butcher fought to keep a straight face.  ‘You missing something?’

‘You know exactly what we are miss–‘ van Ginkel  looked down.  ‘Your legs are glowing!’

‘Aye, sonny.  They do that now.’

‘Where is our kit?’

Behind them, the minotaur belched loudly.  The towering creature made a lunge for the elf but the Butcher raised his arm.

‘Easy, Ermintrude.  Pointy’s lost his trousers, haven’t you, Pointy?’

‘Just give us our kit back!’

Lost in daydreams of violently hitting small furry things with sticks, the orc referee obliviously raised the whistle to its lips.

‘Wait,’ cried the elf, ‘we haven’t got our uniforms.  Or our armour!’

The orc shrugged its swarthy shoulders.

‘You not bring kit,’ it slurred, ‘you play in your pants.’

The orc blew for the start of the match and that was the highlight of the elves’ game.  Without any armour and being forced to protect their dignity with at least one hand at all times, things went downhill pretty quickly...

The Horrors had won the toss and, the Drowned Lover having expertly scooped up the ball, the Pink Juggernaut marched its way down the pitch as any man-goat and warrior with a free fist proceeded to punch the elves into the middle of next season.  The lack of armour was obviously hampering the efforts of Vitesse as one by one they were ejected from the game and piled in a bloody heap by the side of the pitch.

The elves’ apothecary was forced to watch one of their journeymen bleed to death after being gored by Ermintrude Gayhammer – who was on astonishingly violent form, taking out no less than three opponents.  Even when the apothecary did spring into action, the absence of armour on thrower Eloy Room meant that though almost certainly saved from a horrible death, his resilience had been as diminished as his once flawless (and now shredded) face.

While Gayhammer, the Butcher and new goat the Silent Blade tore their way through the poor elves, star scorer the Drowned Lover thought he’d have a crack at getting some more of those touchdown things that seemed to please the crowd so much.  By the middle of the second half, the elves were so outnumbered that both he and the Murdered Maid found that they could score almost at their leisure while the rest of their unscathed team were urinating on the prone bodies of what was left of the elves.

By the final whistle, the surviving elves barely had the strength to breathe a sigh of relief.  In fact, as the departing Horrors set fire to the stadium on their way out, most of Vitesse Arnheim barely had the strength to escape the raging inferno...

The Pink Horrors 2 - 0 The Drakkenhoff Ravens

The Grinning Butcher raised his right arm, flexing the muscles in his hand.  As he tried to clench his aged, calloused fingers into a fist, bolts of pain shot from his wrist to his shoulder and he knew that his best Blood Bowling days were behind him.  He snarled, spitting hatefully onto the pitch before wiping spots of stray saliva from his pink beard.  It would not be a good day.

He looked around the stands.  The roar of the crowd was somewhat muted today, the ferocious brays of the home fans tempered by the ragged groans of the rather ill-looking Ravens fans.  Necro supporters certainly weren’t what they used to be.  This once-mighty Warrior of the Blood God would at one time have relished sullying the virtue of countless necromantic fans, with their faux-black hair, their heavy eyeliner and – most importantly – their voluptuous chests that could smother the life out of a randy Bloodthirster.  But those were the good old days, before the fads changed, the girls got fat and the vampire teams lured them away with their moping lamentations on the miseries of an immortal life.  Now all that sadly remained were hordes of mindless zombies who, if they had the faculties at their disposal to be completely honest with themselves, didn’t have the faintest idea where their own feet were, let alone any sort of clue as to what everybody in the stadium was cheering about.

Indeed, the Horrors fans found plenty to cheer about as their newest signing, the minotaur Ermintrude Gayhammer, roared onto the pitch, scenting the blood of a werewolf.  As soon as the ball was kicked-off to the Pink Ones, the Gayhammer thundered across the turf, tearing out chunks with its great hooves, straight for the wolf-man.  While the minotaur pounded his way through the necromantic front line, the rest of the Horrors huddled around the ball and waited to see how the situation would play out.

The Ravens fans groaned as seventeen tonnes of angry bull managed to catch ‘Howling Mad’ Murrdok Von Drakk by the tail and launch him flailing across the pitch.  The snapping of broken bones as the werewolf landed was drowned out by the ferocious brays of the man-goats.  Their celebrations were quickly silenced though as the wolf-man defiantly stood, his bones mending themselves before their very eyes.  Von Drakk was alive and well, though thankfully out for most of the rest of the first half.

With the wolf out of action, the Horrors decided it was time to make their move.  Sadly, getting carried away while clutching the ball, the Drowned Lover ran in completely the wrong direction in order to lay a heavy punch in the face of an ambling zombie who had ‘looked at him funny’.

Once they had calmed down, the Horrors succeeded in forcing their way down the field with the ball, managing to whittle away most of the first half and denying the Ravens any hope of an equalizer before half-time.

By the second half, the Horrors had grown in confidence; they were leading by one touchdown, they had the entire team still alive on the pitch and Ermintrude was proving to be a fine investment.  But as the Ravens lurched onto the field for the second half, the Horrors realised to their dismay that the necromantics had been keeping a little something back...

The crowd was silenced by the roar of a chainsaw as Hack Enslash marched out to join the Ravens on the pitch and it was clear from the start that his churning blade had the minotaur’s name written all over it.  Barely a second had passed after the whistle blew before Ermintrude was nose-down in the turf being dragged bleeding from the field on a stream of his own blood.

In a rage of blood-lust, Hack Enslash ploughed on into the rest of the Horrors, lopping off the arm of the Oozing Gash with one wild swing of his chainsaw.  Luckily, the warrior was tough enough not to need too much attention from the Horrors’ apothecary, who managed to successfully sew the limb back on.

The real controversy of the match came when Me? the zombie laid an apparently foul block against the Weeping Widow.  After some violent protestations to the referee from the Horrors coach, along with many cutting insults from the players, the official resolved the situation by holding down the wronged man-goat while the offending zombie stamped on his head until he stopped twitching.

That was the last time anyone argued with the ref.

Aside from the Weeping Widow’s unfortunate death, the rest of the match seemed to go completely in the Horrors’ favour.  Despite the Ravens taking possession at the start of the half, and then being particularly vocal with their fists throughout, their game plan fell foul when the wight carrying the ball was tripped as he tried to dart away from a scrum of man-goats.  The Blushing Doxy, Concubine of Slaanesh, easily scooped up the flailing ball and threw it to Grull-Maggath, the Drowned Lover, who scored a second magnificent touchdown in the final stages of the game.

Their chances of victory evaporating before their glazed and vacant eyes, the rest of the match became an exercise in vengeance for the Ravens, who took every opportunity to try and kill off their opponents.

The Grinning Butcher was sent hurtling backwards through the air by the fist of a flesh golem, landing face-skywards in the dirt.  Before his hand was destroyed and the subsequent foul infections of Nurgle had taken their toll, the blow would barely have tickled him.  Now he lay staring at the stars which wheeled overhead, a weak and crippled old man, all use having abandoned him.

But as he stared upwards, the moon above grew red and something in the air changed.  Thunder cried out, though the sky was cloudless and, from nowhere, a searing bolt of pink lightning pierced his chest.  All was blackness and agony and the scream of tortured souls.  And then there was stillness.

He awoke at dawn to find the rest of the team looking down at him.  He was still lying in the middle of the pitch and, but for his team-mates, the stadium was empty.

‘We thought you dead,’ grunted the Drowned Lover.

‘Aye,’ he agreed.

‘What with lightning and all,’ explained the Broken Oath.

‘Aye,’ said the Butcher.

‘And your legs,’  he added.

‘Aye.’  The Grinning Butcher sat up.  ‘What?  What you sayin' 'bout my legs?’

The team shuffled nervously, staring at their hooves.

‘What’s wrong with my legs?’

The Butcher looked down.

‘Oh,’ he said.

They were glowing.

The Pink Horrors 1 - 0 Astun Killa

Night-time was falling fast around the Pink Pyre Stadium and - as he was being dragged through the dirt by the chains around his ankles - Coach Lysenko couldn’t help but notice that with daytime’s thick pall of black clouds shrouding the sun, there was very little difference between the two at all.

The coach had become used to travelling around on his back and, if he were honest, the ground had been so worn by his prone body eroding its stony clay that his journeys were now almost what he’d call comfortable.

The Drowned Lover, probably the most proficient of all the man-goats, barged the stadium’s rotting wooden gates open with a pink-furred shoulder.  Coach Lysenko didn’t need to trouble his neck to see where he was being taken as his head bounced off each and every one of the six-hundred-and-sixty-six stone steps leading down from the Pink Pyre.

Today had been Match Day, which meant only one thing.

Lysenko was being taken to He, the thing in the skin-tent.

At the foot of the almost-sheer slope of rock which ascended jaggedly towards the clouds, cradling the Pink Pyre Stadium at its peak, there sat a tent; an old tent, worn and weather-beaten, erected before the time of any now living.  From without, its walls were hued a pale and ghostly blue by the flames which roiled inside – but those walls, at first glance ragged sheets of heavy cloth bound tight with twine, were not in fact what they seemed.  Every inch of leathery material which sheathed the crudely-hewn wooden frame was all that remained of the coaches who had displeased the thing which dwelled within.

Whatever it was which resided beneath those tanned flaps of skin, its form shrouded in heavy, mouldering robes, had no name of which the coach was aware.  ‘He’ was all anyone said; ‘He wants to see you,’ or ‘He is angry,’ or ‘You must go to He and hope him not want to skip with your gizzards.’

The Drowned Lover threw back the entrance flap (Grolgar Mittenfeugen, Head Coach, circa I.C. 2168-2173...) and slung Lysenko inside.  The coach scrambled  to his knees and stared across the sapphire-blue flames.  The form opposite was unmoving and the tent fell silent as the grave.

Seconds passed, dragging into minutes, and Lysenko began to sweat.

The creature, He, neither mover nor spoke.

The silence was unbearable and Coach Lysenko broke it before he was driven mad:

‘So... Not a bad result today, then?’

No reaction.

‘You know what they say,’ the coach tried to force a smile, ‘it’s not easy being green.’

Indeed, today  it hadn’t been.  In a rare show of skill, the Horrors had managed to convincingly keep their orc opponents at bay.  Astun Killa had put up a ferocious fight, to be sure, leading with their fists the way that only an orc team can do, but so furious were the Pink Ones after their defeat to the Jagermonsters the week before, and so determined were they not to be humiliated in that manner again, the Horrors came out punching from the kick-off and didn’t stop until the last dregs of the crowd had begun their dismal walk home at the end of the match.

The war-master Khorne, fortunately for both sides, had been slumbering for much of the match and the most serious injuries suffered were knock-outs and bruised pride – though he did open one sleepy eye in time to see Baa-Ram-Ewe of the Horrors disembowelled by Jow Hurt of the Killas; but both orc and Chaos cheered his death in equal measure as nobody likes a journey-goat.

In the end, it had been a close game, the Horrors managing to cling to the narrow lead they had secured early in the first half.  The orcs had put up a fine fight, but in the end the Horrors simply had to wait for the clumsy greenskins to do what they do best – drop the ball at every opportunity.

It wasn’t a comfortable win, or a glorious one, but it was at least a win which Lysenko felt merited him keeping his skin.

As if reading the coach’s thoughts, a finger – long-clawed and bony – appeared from beneath the creature’s robes.

‘...You... want... keep... nanny-jabber?’ asked He.

‘What?  I don’t follow...’

The finger gestured towards the coach’s groin.

‘Oh.  I understand.  Yes, yes please.  I would like that very much.’

There came a snort from somewhere inside the robes.

‘Then...’ He said, ‘Someone you need to meet...’

Lysenko heard the tent flaps thrown open behind him and felt hot breath as something large and foul sniffed the back of his neck.  He slowly turned to see the unmistakeable form of a minotaur trying to untangle its horns from the guy ropes.

The coach sighed.

‘Alright, if you insist.  But the bell has got to go.’

The Pink Horrors 1 - 2 The Jagermonsters

The burial was at dawn, but there was no colour in the morning sky, just a pall of iron grey.

A keening wail pierced the mist, a mournful ballad butchered by a foul tongue as the Murdered Maid sang the eulogy.  The funeral, if that it could be called, was in stark contrast to the graceful farewell bid to Twister Pine-Cone of the Green Glade Hackers.

Coach Lysenko remembered that occasion well; the scattered flowers, the silver-grey shroud that was intricately, lovingly, embroidered with the tapestry of the wood elf’s proudest achievements.  And the words.  The words which, though foreign and beyond the grasp of his human understanding, filled his very soul to the brim with sadness.

As the Drowned Lover and the Broken Oath dumped the smashed body of Ug-Gruff-Gaw, the Darkling Heart, into the shallow and hastily scored out pit, Lysenko realised that this burial would be something completely different.

The game had been a blood bath.  Even now, in the healing-dungeon, the Grinning Butcher lay bandaged and bloody – and as he slept in his sweat-soaked bower, the nightmares made him scream as over and over again in his fever, the Jagermonsters came for him.

The nightmare for the Pink Horrors began at the outset. The Jagermonsters surged forwards on the whistle and the butchery began in earnest as the Repeated  Scream was bludgeoned from the pitch.  The Horrors tried to match the Norse-men’s ferocity by removing one of the fat-bearded ones in response, but the humans maintained their advantage shortly afterwards when the Oozing Gash was brutally removed from the game.

Thought the Horrors initially managed to stand firm in the face of the false-horns, scoring the first touchdown of the match, the Norse-men easily equalized in the remaining seconds of the first half, and a knock-out from the humans meant that the Pink Ones were a player down on their foes at the beginning of the second.

The whistle blew, the Horrors kicked, and then the slaughter began.

The Darkling Heart was the first to fall, killed mercilessly as the team’s apothecary tended the wounds of the Grinning Butcher, who barely survived a ferocious Yhetee-mauling.

By the end of the match, barely two players were left on the pitch for the Horrors as the Jagermonsters sat the ball beside the endzone and proceeded to foul the prone man-goats into oblivion.  The Norse-men, drunk on dishonour, waited until the referee raised his whistle in preparation for the end of the match before easily stepping over the line to score.

It was the second loss of the season for the Horrors, but for Coach Lysenko it was a loss counted in more than touchdowns.  It was a brutal loss that may well have taken his team out of contention for the league title.

Though the coffers had only swelled slightly after the game, the Horrors coach had already planned a mid-week pilgrimage to the local livestock auction.  He was starting to think that he might need a minotaur after all...