Around the Sphere - Wk Commencing 23/09/13

Welcome to a weekly round up of the all the Dreadball comings and goings that we at the Daily Punter have discovered, stumbled upon and sometimes made up.

Big news this week is this little picture above, which was sneaked out in a recent and cryptic post by Jake Thornton on his blog. Very little was given away, but that hasn't stopped wild speculations from the masses. These include:

• A Card game version of Dreadball
• Mantic are planning up to SIX Seasons plus Extreme.
• Jake and Ronnie were just playing a game of poker

I'm hoping for option two - 6 seasons of Dreadball would be great! What would you like to see in new seasons? New teams? What types? I would love to see a Yndij, Sorak or Plague team, also some more giants as they look like fun. I also think some more skills as I felt a bit disappointed in the lack of new skills available to level ups in Season 3. Tell us your thoughts in the comments. [Holy cow, you sound like a kid making a Christmas list!! - ed]

In other news, the Outpost, in Sheffield held its 3rd single day event last Sunday. It was a great success with 12 players involved in a full day of Dreadball, plus a slap up Mexican lunch! The Mighty Dorks took the win in flawless fashion as well as coming away with the prize for the best uniform (Best Painted). We'd like to say a big thanks to The Outpost Wargames Store in Sheffield for being a gracious host providing food and a heap of prizes. Look out for more Dreadball events happening there soon including The Outpost League Season 3 starting in November. As always the Daily Punter will have all the news and hot gossip.

With all this news of Martians invading its easy to miss that Season 3 is about to be released and the new stuff looks great. I love the pitch, both design and material and cant wait to get some games on it. Also the Giants are some of the best Dreadball models Mantic have made. In addition to these, Mantic have the new prone markers, keepers and alternative sculpts for Season 1 and Season 2 teams; these are great and I cant wait to add them to my teams just for the difference in models. I was however, slightly disappointed that the robots don't get a keeper but hey ho the robots prone counter makes up for that; he [it - ed] is brilliant. [Mantic advise that you use the robot MVP as a keeper model - ed]

What's in a Name?

Hi sports fans, Garry "Golden Boy" Walker here to talk about names, team names in particular. In my time as a world class Dreadball striker I have seen many a team name. Some good, others great and a fair few ugly. After some careful consideration, my feeling is that they fall into 5 main groups:

• Witty Puns
• Favourites
• Generic Fierce Animals
• Tedious links
• Everything Else

Lets look at each one and some nice examples.

Witty Puns
These are some of my favourites and if pulled off well can be great. Subtlety is the key, a few word changes here and there and if you add in a common-ish theme they produce great names for team that people will remember. Some of my favourites are Ctrl Alt Kill, Manrattan Project and Mahatma Pacifists. Can you guess what type of team each of these is? Mighty Dorks are another good example but we cant always say they are the best on this program can we? [Yes we can!! - ed] One distinctly shady team name I've seen is 'Anusol Avengers' I don't know what the image is that these guys want to show, but I want no part of it! [tee hee - ed]

Favourites
These are any that try to recreate the coaches favourite sports team, TV characters etc. With a bit of theme, good painting and modelling you can create wonders. This can tie in well with witty puns, like the SCHI Cargo Spares and E.V.A Packers - I love them! Brings back fond memories of the sports of old. Well, the sports I've seen on the Holo-Vids anyway. There is a trap you can fall into though if your not careful though, and that's carbon copying. Its just a bit lazy in my eyes, put a spin on it - it goes along way!

Generic Fierce Animals
Pretty much sums it up but they have got to be fierce otherwise they are just an animal. Like the ill fated Titan Sparrows... poor beggars...

Tedious links
Some can be great like last Season's winners, the Tuscan Swordfish, or the Not So Pocket Monsters but these names are generally a little more tricky to get right and require quite a bit of creativity. It also helps if you have a good theme and back story to get the record straight - the trick is to use the right amount of poetic license to tie all the components together. Be warned that these team names can sometimes sound awful until the credit drops and then its amaze-balls time.

Everything Else
Go wild make your own stuff up. If you make the link so thin that no one will every get it apart from you, then maybe the joke will be missed - but hey, its your team and you'll name it what you want!

Just some pitfalls to avoid:

• Don't copy - Its plain lazy and rude
• Don't call the team the "Red Giants" when they're green [Especially because the Green Giants would be an amazing Zee team name! - ed]
• Spell it right
• Don't take them too seriously

That's all folks. I've got to go, I have a photo shoot with Tuscan Swordfish star, and slippery striker Danny Grease. As ever, feel free to share your comments and opinions with me below.

Dorks run away with PunterBowl 2013 victory

They said that an Orx team coached by a has-been human would never see glory, they were wrong! The Mighty Dorks fought their way to a spectacular landslide victory in this Sunday's PunterBowl tournament at the Outpost without taking a single casualty. That's not to say they had an easy run, during the group games the Dorks were matched step for step by last seasons winners, the Kilika Beasts. Unfortunately for the Beasts, they went down in the quarter finals to a landslide victory to the Dorks and finished up in a respectable 3rd place. Despite a win percentage of just 66% the group game underdogs, Veermageddon made a meteoric recovery - fighting their way to a close 2nd place in the finals and narrowly missing out on the title by a mere 2 strikes.

Perhaps most surprising of all was a mid table finish for The Law. A team typically characterised by their epic fails, who's only record to date has involved shoe laces tied together and two left feet. Perhaps this signals great things to come from The Law, or maybe Digby need to investigate claims of match fixing. Only time will tell. The final tournament standings were as follows: Gold - Mighty Dorks Silver - Veermageddon Bronze - Kilika Beasts 4th - Bugsby Beatles 5th - The Law 6th - Ulfgars' Granite Hearthguard 7th -Antillean Angels Wooden Spoon - Roaring Riptides

The Mighty Dorks

Coach: Gordon Bomb-Bay Team: Dug "Wildwing" Smasha Len "Nosedive" Smasha Da Duke Check Out-My-Fist Gustav Vanderflock Buzz Termove Danard Canard Fleb Mallory Thrash n Throb  Species: Marauders

The Daily Punter Returns

After a lengthy hiatus everyone's favorite hard hitting Dreadball news resource returns courtesy of a timely buyout by controversial Digby exec Gerald Dorksworth. Fans of the Mighty Dorks will recognise Dorksworth as the affluent benefactor who bought them out two seasons ago, transforming the teams fortunes within a matter of weeks. As readers will be aware, the Punter ran into legal difficulties during the Season One Outpost league, where it incorrectly reported the death  of ARC Assets striker Vasquez. ARC Corporation demonstrated their famous ruthless attitude and the following law suit funded by the ARC Corporation crushed the Punter in the courts, and the resulting 60 Bzillion Credit fine left us lying in the gutter. Fortunately a last minute buyout by Mr. G Dorksworth proved to be a timely intervention.

Asked about his recent acquisition, Dorksworth had the following comment to make: "The 'Punter has always suffered from a sort of amateurish feel to it. Now with my help, and my mega creds, I can finally turn this holo-paper into the cash cow it was supposed to be." When questioned about the ethics of a DGB executive owning not only a team, but also controlling the news Dorksworth replied: "I've never forced anyone into anything. I didn't expect any breaks in life, nor did I ask for any. I have never pushed my commercial interests onto anyone." Dorksworth's other recent acquisitions include the 80 Bzillion-Squillion Credit Gerald Dorksworth Community Dorkadium.