This week we sit down the worst human being in the league. Mainly ‘cos he uses a Deathroller! It’s the lovely, Jemar!
1) What’s your name and where do you come from?
I go by Jem, which is short for Jeremy (only work people call me Jeremy) and I live in Corsham now but in Blood Bowl terms you could say I was born at 23 East Street in Southampton.
2) Tell us a little about how you came to play Blood Bowl and your experience in with the game and wider hobby.
Well if you’ve put that unnecessarily specific address into a map somewhere, you’ll find the Warhammer shop, formerly Games Workshop store in Southampton, which would be where I’d have first seen all sorts of weird tabletop games including this thing called “Blood Bowl”. I remember seeing some of the older customers doing some second edition on the styrene astrogranite pitch but got sucked into it along with my older brother when the third edition came out in 1994 or whatever it was. I dabbled in it a little but none of my friends really got into it, so I enjoyed it but really I was a 40k player until third edition (1998? Really?) launched and the cost of overhauling my massive Space Wolves army got silly for a newly minted teenager. That and, you know, the idea of dating stopped being totally weird and so being a colossal nerd who played with toy soldiers stopped being a thing I wanted to be known for. Fast forward a couple of decades (during which I’d played a little Blood Bowl 1 on PC) and a new colleague for mine (who still calls me Jeremy) got chatting and we realised he had just started playing a little Blood Bowl league down in Taunton. I kept asking after the misadventures of his Chaos team and he kept regaling me with tales of inept beastmen with weird mutations. Anyway, then the whole pandemic and fatherhood happened and I needed a hobby with fewer screens and more tactile feedback and through Reddit I ended up watching some Bonehead Podcast on YooChoob on (I checked this) 9th Feb 2023. Now I largely over-think the game, spending too much time on Discord and Reddit, but if I’m honest with myself I probably enjoy the modelling and painting more than I often enjoy playing BB.
3) What Blood Bowl achievement are you most proud of?
I’m not sure I have any? I’ve not played as much as people seem to think. Probably stopping Jay’s all-conquering Chaos Dwarfs last season, that was a great game and a real brain-melter. Getting to know you lot? Maybe that.
Wait, no, I have thought of something but it’s hard to explain to anyone else. Basically in a massive scrum (Dwarfs vs Orcs) I managed to chain-push a Guard lino and a prone Slayer all the way on to the Orc ball-carrier and get the 2D/2D Frenzy blitz from a situation where I shouldn’t have been anywhere near sacking the ball. That was pretty cool.
4) What’s your favourite team and why?
I don’t think I have one, they’re all terrible. I think I enjoy playing a fairly hybrid style, so I’m keen to play some more of Humans and Dark Elves, maybe some Undead too.
5) Tell us about the team you’ve brought into Season III. Did you select it for purely competitive reasons, or were there other factors involved?
I brought back the Galacticos for the same reasons I brought them last year: firstly my wife bought me the Realm of Paths minis because the Deathroller looks hilarious and secondly Deathrollers are hilarious. Once they’ve had a full season though I don’t think we’ll see them again for a while.
6) What was your thought process behind your roster selections, skills taken and how would you describe your playstyle with this team?
Deathroller go BRRRRRR.
It’s Dwarfs, Dan, what do you expect me to write here? Dwarfs take Guard, then line up and attempt to smoosh the opponent into the turf. There’s not much more to it.
Molly the Deathroller successfully arguing the call. Horrific
7) What are your expectations for this season? Do you have any particular goals you’d like to achieve? Who are you backing to win each division this season?
Expectations? No idea. It’s Blood Bowl, expectations are for the deluded.
Goals? Just play and have some fun. Genuinely, I think the biggest goal for me is to get out of my own head and just enjoy the moments rather than trying to win.
Division winners are a crap-shoot. In Div 1 the Hjarta Foundation look good but they’ve got some tricky matches to come and Norse are a glass cannon; a few big hits and they might shatter. George’s Sylvanian Calamities might well take Div 2 – they’re very good and dodged the other Dwarf team just because Mark was struggling to find a time to play. Div 3 could go to anyone in the top half frankly; but watch out for next round – those top two Dark Elf teams face-off…
8) What’s one thing you’d change about blood bowl?
Just one? I could talk about this one for hours. Let’s go with something simple: kill off the Prayers to Nuffle; they’re too much book-keeping.
9) What Pitch is your favourite (rules, artwork, whatever)?
Plain and simple is best in my opinion; the flagstone one from the starter box. Although when I played Chris’s Orcs he had a beautiful neoprene mat, from Patriot Games I think…. that’s very tempting.
10) Outside of Blood Bowl tell us a little about your life and main passions?
As I said previously, I’m quite into the modelling and painting side of the hobby more than I love the gaming – you might be aware that I came second in a painting competition recently…
Otherwise I’m a pretty generic, boring, sort-of-geek – a bit of computer gaming (hence the Deep Rock Galacticos) and a deep rooted spreadsheet fetish (ooooh baby, give me that XLOOKUP action, oh yeah, show me those array formulae….)
My three-year-old daughter is my main time-sink – she’s great and all that but I won’t lie, Blood Bowl is in part an escape from “just” being Daddy.
11) Pirates or Ninjas?
I’m pretty non-committal on this one, both are good in their own place. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun was an excellent game, I haven’t gotten round to Shadow Tactics: The Cursed Gambit just yet, but I don’t think I would want a cross-over.
12) What’s you favourite film?
Many years ago my brother wrote a navel-gazing blog post about the nature of a “favourite” piece of media so this sort of question always gets weird.
Most watched comfort food films: The Transformers: The Move (the 1985 animated one), then Ocean’s Eleven (2001), then probably Thor Ragnarok.
Most memorable cinema experiences: the first Deadpool and a back-to-back midnight marathon of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (both next to the same woman, happily).
Most impactful as a piece of art: Downfall – it’s the source of those Hitler rant videos which went a bit viral in about 2012 but it’s fascinating and harrowing in equal measure. I recommend it to everyone. Then maybe American Animals, which does a fantastic job of showing unreliable narrators and jumbled accounts of how a true story played out. It should be compulsory viewing for anyone making a film based on a true story.
Thanks Jem, fab answers! 😀
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