By any other name would bash as hard.
And yet naming a Blood Bowl team is a real art and helps enhance the experience.
I can't claim to be the best at naming teams, and of course everyone has their preferences of style to team names, but in having played many teams, and painted many times more teams, and thinking of team names while doing so, (and since sneezing is preventing me from painting at the moment), it seems right to put some of these ideas down.
I tend to favor team names that fall under one of these conventions, in no particular order or preference, or better yet, combining these conventions:
Alliteration.
Maybe it is the barely civilized barbarian pagan in me, but I love the sound of alliteration.
Surely sounds soothing, or so some say.
Team names like:
Picnic Pillagers
Black Bay Buccaneers
Lothern Lions (a friend's team)
Sewer City Slayers
etc.
Warhammerizing: Names of Real-World Teams done in Warhammer Style.
Take a team you like, or just like the name of, and 'warhammerize' it. GW did this for many of their 3rd 3edition box set teams. I don't tend to do this one myself, since I'm not a sports fan, though my high elf team is the Lothern Seahawks.
Team names like:
Orcland Raiders (taken: pick something else)
Greenbay Hackers
New Orc Giants
Blackmoor Ravens
Lothern Lions : Bonus! Combines Alliteration with Warhammerizing.
etc.
Puns.
A pun is supposed to be the most intelligent form of humor. Often the most painful as well.
Teams names like:
The 4-foot Miners (dwarf obviously): Bonus! Combines Pun with Warhammerizing.
Mon Amis Dauphines (if I ever do a Bret team this is them)
Marienburg Prophets
Eyes on the Pies (Halfling team apparently)
Phoenix Sons (Khemri of course) Bonus! Combines Pun with Warhammerizing.
Have a Mascot.
One thing I'm not a fan of is 'conceptual' team names.
If you can't throw a "THE' in front of the name and easily see an icon of the mascot, then something went wrong.
I feel the same way about real-world teams. Like Green Bay Packers... no wonder they just have a big 'G': they have no mascot, other than some strange cheese hat... would they really have an icon of a warehouse worker lugging crates? Yeah, didn't think so either. And there is a team named "Heat'.. really? That's the best they could come up with? Or are the cops chasing them? What is next if that continues? The Portland Rain? The San Francisco Fog? How about The Los Angeles Smog? Maybe The New Orleans Humidity? Or The Paris Ennui? How about The Brooklyn Indigestion?
But Green Bay Hackers.. ok, I can picture an Orc with a Choppa: good enough.
But a Raven, Lion, Knight, are even better... inanimate objects like a hammer, dagger or even a pie is better than something so conceptual that it's not obvious what object would represent the team.
My next team? The Chernobyl Knights. (category: Pun.)
What are your favorite team names you have used or played against?
Would like to see the mascotte of The Chernobyl Knights :D... Don't know your intention about but I hope they are a chaos team.
ReplyDeletevery nice post: now you have to show some teams of yours. :)
Love "Karak Hirn Giants" (dwarf, bonus for little pun and warhammerizing) and "Cold Blooded" (little alliteration?)for a lizardmen team. Not sure it's the same in english but in italy "to have cold blood" it's idiomatic to say you are absolutely calm and ready to react. Ok, maybe it's not so funny in italian neither...
Hi Ovo, yes, 'cold blooded' has a similar connotation in English, though maybe with a bit more of a negative feeling than you're describing the Italian phrase to have. Someone described as 'cold blooded' in English usually implies passionless & calm, and often ruthless or without mercy.
ReplyDeleteThe Chernobyl Knights are an Underworld team. If I made a mascot icon for them it'd probably be a knight rampant, crouching lance with a tentacle for an arm. Chaos may be more knightly than Underworld, but Underworld are more mutanty ;) Would be a good name for either type of team.