Dreadball: Eternian Style

When I got my first shipment of stuff for Dreadball from Mantic Games and played a few games I was hooked. It's hard to believe it was over three years ago! The models, especially the early seasons, are a little fiddly and some folks don't like them, but I do. I think they are nicely sculpted and affordable, and the game itself is very solid. If anything they're almost too detailed for my skill set to do them justice.

Of course being a sports game I needed to come up with team names and colours. They should be bright, with high contrast, and have a logo of some kind. But what to do...?

My first team didn't start out with a name, simply a couple of colours that I chose thinking they would look good. I ended up with the "Avion Yellowhawks". Why 'Avion' you ask? Well, because I'm a child of the 80s who grew up watch poor quality animation that were thinly veiled toy commercials.

Anyone remember Masters of the Universe? You know, He-Man and Skeletor and all the brightly coloured characters from the cartoon and toy line? Of course you do! Well, while working on my first four teams I got it in my head that the Forge Fathers looked a lot like Ram Man from Masters of the Universe. Although they weren't painted yet, I know knew exactly how they would eventually get painted and named them the Royal Eternian Rams.

When I came up with the Eternian theme I had already started painting the human corporation as the Yellowhawks. So I couldn't go back and use the colours for Stratos, but the name seemed to fit. I found a 'hawk' logo online that looked like something I could paint and did them on the shoulders. After a major inking mishap I ended up repainting the yellow to red and re-naming them to be the Avion Warriors. I had to paint over my shoulder logos, so they still need a proper logo of some kind.

The final two Season 1 teams were a little harder. Orks...I thought they'd make good representatives for Skeletor and they played their first season as the "Snake Mountain Smashers," but that just didn't feel right to me. I've finally settled on some colours played the Keldoran Krushers in the second season of the "Calgary Dreadball League" that I've been intermittently running.

The rats could easily be Beast Man's pets, but what to call them? I wanted to tie them more into the world of Eternia. So after some digging I found out that Beast Man originally comes from a place called Berserker Island, and thus the "Berserker Island Beasts" were born! I'll be playing these guys in season 3 of the CDBL starting up later this month, so I need to get some paint slapped on them.

Season 2 heralded the arrival of four new teams. Doubling the number of teams means the number of match ups for the game quadrupled! Naturally the problem arises again though...what do I call all of these new teams? I'm enjoying my Eternian theme, even if everyone else thinks it's pretty lame. They're my toys after all so in the end I don't really care anyway.

The Robot team was the first and easiest to paint from Season 2. There is an obvious robot character in the MotU universe: Roboto. What if Roboto was the coach and he built a bunch of robots to play for him in the Eternian Dreadball League? They'd be the "Roboto A.I.s" of course. However, I also wanted to take their transformative ability into account. She-Ra's nemesis Hordak could transform, and the robots aren't too far off in design from his troopers. As cool as a Roboto-themed group would be, I decided to give them to Hordak instead as The Etherian Horde.

I played this team in a league a while back and they are quite challenging to play due to how expensive the replacement players are.

I've got two other teams painted that break theme a bit: the Synergy City Holograms, and the Martian Manhunters, but I'm not done with my Eternian theme by a long shot. I've planned out what all of the teams up through season 3 will be, but it does become more difficult once I get into seasons 4 thru 6. I might deviate a bit as common sense and time allows.

Here are a few bullet points for future team plans:

- The Z'zor are bugs. Buzz-Off is a from a race of bug-people. Andrenos is where Buzz Off is from. Why not feed some Andrenid warriors a little specially-made ambrosia and dump them on the Dreadball pitch? The "Andrenos Stingers" will be those warriors!

- The Judwan are greys...Gray Skull! They're grey aliens, they're fast and non-violent. The Judwan team will be "The Gray Skulls." It might be a little on-the-nose, but I laughed when I thought of it, so it's going to stick. I'll have to get creative finding a Sorceress model to coach them.

- Since I already had "The Horde", why not create a rival for them from Etheria? So we might end up with the female corporation team as "Princesses of Power" with She-Ra as their coach. I might do a mixed male / female team instead though. I'm not sure at this point as another human team is pretty low on the to-do list.

- The Hsss: The Nameless are a perfect team to go with King Hsss and his serpent-men.

- The "Trollan Wizards": With the Zees' tiny stature, ability to cause havok on the field, Orko finally has a place to shine. Or tarnish.

- The "Caligar Whiplash": The Teratons are almost impossible to fit into the MotU theme, but I'll think of something. I think maybe they can all be fat members of the race Whiplash belongs to?

- The "Zalesian Mystics" - Evil-Lyn is awesome and deserves a team. With the Asterians reputation for playing dirty it only seemed fitting for her to be their coach.

If you've got any suggestions for ideas that fit into my theme for season 4, 5 and 6 teams please do leave me a comment. I'd love to hear them!