The Krushems are an Orc team that featured in the Dragon Bowl League (DBL) 2018 competition, this coach’s first Blood Bowl league (mis)adventure.
“Klarg, a Black Orc of some renown, led a band of Orc raiders in several raids and skirmishes through the mountain villages of the north east of the Northern Wastes. Klarg’s signature was to chug down a frothy keg of light mountain fresh ale before each raid to put himself into a drunken frenzy.
A wandering scout for a famous pit fighting league run by Western Wizards Entertainment (WWE), formerly the Wise Wizard Fighters (WWF), encountered Klarg during one of the orc’s raid. Seeing great potential in Klarg’s mighty blows, a WWE talent scout cornered Klarg, cast a powerful binding spell, and dragged him off to the fighting pits. To maintain control of Klarg and to enhance is natural rage, the wizards cast a spell giving Klarg permanent brain freeze. This bored into Klarg’s head like butchers nails and he found the only way to dampen this pain was to fight in the pits, and fight hard he did! Klarg became a famed champion of the pits and maintained a healthy rivalry with an elven fighter who wore white and black face-paint, and went by the name “Stab”.
After 10 years of fighting in the pits, a devastating storm required the wizards to turn all their power and concentration to protecting the WWE broadcasting towers. This gave Klarg the opportunity he needed to break his binding spell and escape the fighting pits. He wandered the wastes for weeks until he came upon a huge clay cave in the desert. There he met a rag-tag bunch of orcs, leaderless and brutal. They covered the walls of the cave in crude drawings of white lines, arrows indicating directions, and circles, that they hoped would please a primordial force present in the cave. Klarg identified this force as an agent of the God Nuffle, and that the lines represented a sport that the WWE had been trying to break into for some time: Blood Bowl. He seized the chance to lead these orcs, training them to form the most brutal Blood Bowl team that the Northern Wastes had ever seen. Here he found that the games they held in their cave stadium both calmed the brain freeze in his head, and pleased Nuffle’s agent still stalking him. Acting as player-coach Klarg has now entered his team, The Krushems, into the bloodiest Blood Bowl league around, the DBL.”
The Krushems were the first Blood Bowl team I had painted since the 3rd edition starter box teams. I used the same red and Black scheme I used for the 3rd edition orcs. For the Black Orcs and the Blitzers I decided upon four different colours for their shoulder guards and hair respectively to allow me to distinguish between the models easily on the table top. The basing I originally themed around clay tennis courts like Roland Garros using Games Workshop’s textured paint, however I wasn’t very good at this at the time, so I have since rebased them using some Vallejo European mud that I’ve weathered to look like clay.
The Krushems did reasonably well in the DBL, finishing with a record of 1-4-3 after the group stages and placing 42nd out of 50 teams. Memorable moments included: two line orcs killing dead two Dark Elf lineman with sequential one dice blocks, and a solitary victory against an Amazon team at the death of the season. They could not make it past the first round of the Cucklberry Cup, but their coach had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
“After a visit from the roving DBL reporter Borish Johnson, the Krushems were lauded for the beer served at their home games. This led to the Krushems setting up an onsite brewery staffed by goblins, and releasing a Kool Krushems Ale. They managed to secure a lucrative advertising deal in the DBL’s own magazine The Backbreaker. Rumour has it though that since DBL18 Klarg has gone teetotal and moved back out west to find himself…”