Welcome to Blood Bowl (legendary edition?). This is a PC port of a classic Games Workshop miniatures game. You can pick up the actual game from Games Workshop, download this from steam, or play a java-based port for free on fumbbl.com.
I’ll be starting a campaign to show off the game a little bit. This version includes "Blitz", which takes the turn-based mechanics and turns them into real-time gameplay (with liberal pausing allowed to issue commands). I have no idea how the rules actually work in blitz, so I’m going to be sticking with classic.
To introduce the game I figured I’d play a Dwarven team. Dwarves tend to be fairly simple to play, with few exotic rules and a linear strategy. Your men aren’t agile or quick, but they sure are tough, and games are going to revolve around beating the other team into the dirt and then maybe looking up to work out where the ball is and go score. Unlike other beater teams, dwarves really have no weak point (although they also lack any good supermonster-type thing), so you’ll pretty much be doing the same thing with everybody.
Each "period" different tournaments are active. You can choose any active tournament for which your team has enough prestige points. For our first tournament we have exactly one choice.
Next up we need to fill out our roster. We start with 1,000,000 gold and no players. Another reason to play dwarves at an entry level is that 1,000,000 goes far enough to get pretty much everything you want in a finished team. If we were playing elves their players would be more expensive and we’d have to start with more linemen than we wanted and save up for the more expensive, specialized guys and girls.
My team is headed by two Troll Slayers, who are a little more fragile than anybody else with only 8 armor rating (when you get knocked down 2d6 are rolled and if they’re above the ar you roll on the injury table, so this means making that roll 28% of the time instead of 17% of the time). They make up for this fragility with massive punch; Dauntless gives them a chance to attack at the same strength as an enemy if that enemy’s strength is higher than theirs (oh hey, it’s like they slay trolls) and Frenzy means that any time they push their opponent back they will move forward and make a second block on him.
Everyone else is quite vanilla. Blitzers have one more movement and agility than regular linemen, so I’ll be a little more eager to have them picking up the ball, but otherwise do mostly the same thing. Everyone on the team has Block, making them harder to take down, and Thick Skull, making them harder to wound, so they make up for lack of flashy abilities and impressive stats by playing a war of blocking attrition until the other team is too wounded to stop them.
I’m not playing any Runners here. Runners are basically more adept at handling the ball than your regular dorks, but a little weaker and more expensive. I’d rather just have a solid lineup and worry about the ball when I need to (if I need to).
I also pick up three rerolls. Rerolls are cheaper to buy the first time you create your team than they are later as an addition, a nice bonus. Each half is eight turns long, and each rerolls can be used once each half (but only one a turn). I’d love to get up to four or five, but three will be plenty for now.
Here’s my squad, ready to beat some people up. Note that while you can have 16 players on a squad you can only put 11 on the field at once, and each extra player adds more points to the value of the team. The lower valued team in each match gets temporary bonuses for that match, so generally you will only want 11 players on your roster since the 12th (and onwards) are less likely to make an impact while costing just as much as the 11th as far as team value comparisons for pregame bonuses.
Fan Factor, Assistant Coaches, and Cheerleaders all influence kickoffs, but I’m planning on scoring one touchdown per game (maybe two!) and so kickoffs aren’t as big a deal for me as they would be for a more flashy team with worse defense. The Apothecary lets you reroll injury table results, but at the moment all my guys are fresh off the boat, so it’s not really worth it worrying about protecting them (plus they’re dwarves, they don’t need that much protecting). Once I have more impressive guys I might consider picking one up though.
Preparing for the first match I have a 320,000 team value deficit, which means I get to pick up some bonuses for the game. I grab a Wizard to smite my opponents with lightning and firebolts…
…and two Bloodweiser Babes (there are so many puns in this game) to make sure my guys are spending as little time as possible on the bench.
The camera pans in on the pitch from far up above the stadium. Tonight we will be battling against the Vampire Counts. Unlike the Dwarves, but similar to many other teams, this is a bimodal team. They have Vampires; strong, impressive, and agile players, and they have Thralls; weak, slow, and vanilla. You see a similar formula with, say, Ogres and Snotlings, Mummies and Skeletons, Goblins and… wait, no, all the Goblins suck.
The general Dwarf strategy against these teams is going to be to remove the weaker element and then turn your focus to the stronger, as it will now lack support and fall easily to your swarm of bearded potbellies. Against Vampires this is especially effective because Vampires occasionally need to feed on a Thrall or their team suffers a turnover and the Vampire is ejected from play, a pretty huge weakness if all the Thralls are taken out.
We win the toss and elect to receive. Receiving is a big deal for a Dwarf team because it means they get the first turn for blocking. As you can see from my player distribution I am not super worried about actually collecting the ball, although I do have a token Blitzer in the backfield to (at least try to) pick it up.
Each team must place at least three players on the midfield line in the central two sections, and can only place two players at most in either of the wing sections. My (AI) opponent is utilizing a fairly normal defensive strategy, spreading his players out and making it hard for me to run through without being tackled. On the other hand this makes it easy for me to gang up on his guys.
When blocking you compare the strength of the blocker to that of the blockee. You also add a +1 bonus for each supporting player on each side. I have two Dwarves supporting this block by my Troll Slayer, while he has no supporters himself. If there was nobody else on my team next to his central Thrall it would support, but it is distracted by my Linemen. This means I’m blocking 5 STR against 3. 2v3 would mean I rolled two dice and he chose the result, 3v3 has me roll one, 4-5v3 I roll two and choose the result, and if my strength is over double his I roll three and choose one.
Each blocking die has two "Push" – the defender is pushed a square back and blocker may follow, one "Defender Stumbles" – unless the defender has the Dodge skill he falls over one square away and blocker may follow, one "Both Down" – both players are knocked down unless they have the Block skill (like all my guys!), one "Attacker Down" – the blocker is knocked down, and one "Defender Down" – defender is knocked down.
For my first block I roll a push and a both down. Because my guy has Block and his doesn’t I choose both down. Since I’m blocking with the Troll Slayer and he has Frenzy I would’ve gotten to throw another block if I choose push, but why do that when I can just take the Thrall down here? (Sometimes there are good reasons, perhaps one will come up later).
The face-down Thrall represents a stunned model. I beat his armor, but didn’t roll very high on the injury table. He’s not off the pitch, but it will take two turns before he’s able to get back up.
The other two Thralls on the front line get knocked down but I don’t crack their armor. Usually players can only move or block in a turn, not both, but you do get to make one blitz move where a player is able to do both. Here I have moved up a Lineman to support, and am now using my Blitzer to blitz a fourth Thrall.
Ooof, it’s a knockout! I took him down, then beat his armor, and then rolled fairly high on the injury table. He may come back for a later drive (on each kickoff there’s a 50% chance he can return, a big reason why Dwarves don’t care much for scoring touchdowns; creating more kickoffs gives the other guy more chances to get his men back), but for now he’s been wheeled off the pitch.
The last thing I want to do this turn is pick up the ball. Any time one of your players is knocked down or fumbles the ball during your turn you suffer a turnover and your turn ends automatically. Since there’s a decent chance I fumble here (I am a Dwarf trying to pick up the ball!) I left it for last so that I could get all my blocks in, which had a much higher chance of success. Fortunately my Blitzer manages to pick the ball up, and moves forward to join up with the rest of my team.
When carrying the ball you can move AND make one more action. That could be your team’s blitz for the turn, or it could be a handoff or a pass. I am Dwarves though, there’s no passing going on here; I’m going to move him up to the line and use him to help beat up the other guys, the only reason I bothered to pick up the ball was so that they couldn’t get it.
The AI’s turn is quite ineffectual. He has nobody next to my squad, so the only block he gets to throw is with his blitz, and it only pushes a lineman back. He does manage to get around my line to the ball carrier, but that will just end in the ball carrier smashing his guy’s face in.
On my turn I get to take advantage of his Vampires spreading thin and wide to get around my lines. Vampires have 4 STR, so I need two men in support to get a two-die blitz, and then…
Whack, the Vampire is hit off the pitch and angry fans arrive to stamp on him. Models knocked off the pitch are gone for the rest of the drive and slightly more likely to have been wounded by the knockdown because of the angry fans, but this one holds up alright and will be back for more action soon.
Here you can see the AI’s tackle zones after my turn of blocking him. Each model creates a tackle zone in the squares it is touching (unless something weird is going on like it is under a Vampire’s Hypnotic Gaze or it’s a Troll who is too busy picking his nose) and opposing models who wish to move out of those tackle zones have to roll against their Agility or get knocked down (a common way to cause a turnover). My Dwarves mostly have Agility two, but on the other hand his models are mostly going to end up falling over when they are next to mine, so the tackle zones aren’t a big deal.
By turn three things are consolidating into a giant scrum around the ball, but I am already two players up on him and this means I constantly get to overlap with supporting players and get good two-dice blocks. He also has a problem with his men standing upright, and they don’t get to block if they start the turn on the ground (unless he blitzes with one of them). Mostly what happens now is I hit all his guys over each turn, they get up, then I hit them over again. This is far more tactically and strategically complex than I am making it sound, mind you.
Take this, for example. I’m blocking a Vampire and rolled a Push. I can now Push the Vampire into his Thrall and chainpush the Thrall into an empty square. This gets his Vampire next to my Trollslayer for another block attempt at it (with a Dauntless guy at that; chances are good he’ll block at STR 4 against it) and gets his Thrall next to another of my guys who would otherwise have had no blocking targets.
Blocking can get very complicated in this game. Another example: No team has any model which is fast enough to score a touchdown in one turn unaided, but many teams are able to set up first turns in which they can execute a series of blocks which end up chainpushing one of their own models forward until it’s close enough to score. Us Dwarves don’t do much of that though, of course.
Turn three I knock out another Thrall, but for the most part his team is holding together and will even get a couple of blocks back!
They don’t do much though, and by turn four things are looking very macabre for the undead.
Bam, a sickening crunch echoes throughout the stadium and one of the Thralls is wheeled off in a hospital wagon. 8+s on the injury roll (2d6) let you roll on a serious injury table, with the most common result being the player spending the rest of the game in intensive care. Any time a blocker causes a serious injury roll he also gets two SPPs – experience points.
Casualties start to pile up. They’re all Thralls, but the Vampires are much weaker without them to support blocks.
Or feed on when necessary, as happened this turn.
By turn six I’ve cleaned up completely (there are three guys on their team who are still on the field, and they’re all on their backs) and it’s time to think about scoring that touchdown.
A three-dice block on a stray Thrall along the way.
Having more guys supporting the block doesn’t make injury more likely (except insofar as it makes a knockdown more likely), but it does make it look more satisfying.
This Thrall tried to skip out of a tackle zone to chase the ball (really he should’ve just stayed down so I didn’t get to force another armor save from him). He failed his agility roll, then failed his armor roll, took a serious injury, and rolled high enough to smash his collar bone. Injuries like this have various effects, lowering various attributes on the player for future matches. If a player on your squad receives one it’s probably time to think about letting him go and buying a replacement, as he can quickly become a weak point in your line for opponents to exploit, plus he still costs just as much for determining team value.
My Blitzer gets to celebrate. Congratulations on managing to pick the ball up and then waltzing down the field without anyone even trying to block you.
As it’s the last turn before halftime, my defensive deployment strategy is fairly simply: Make it hard for them to block me. I deploy the necessary three models on the halfway line (three linemen with no experience earned so far) and hide everyone else far far away.
In the second half I’m actually going to have to defend, although only against eight players (wars of attrition can quickly snowball in one player’s favor). I set my men up in a fairly common defensive scheme; the blocks of two men placed one line off the halfway line ensure that even with a blitz my opponent cannot remove tackle zones enough to break through my line.
Things start off pretty well. I pay very little attention to the ball, as usual. Even with slow Dwarves if I control the center of the pitch it’s going to be very hard for Vampires to run past me to score.
The AI goes to grab the ball, but this just leaves his other men even more overwhelmed.
First though I’d better make sure this Vampire doesn’t get behind my lines to receive a pass, as that’s the most likely way I could end up conceding a touchdown here.
After knocking another Vampire out I continue to hold the center, as well as setting up tackle-zone blocks in front of the ball carrier.
The next turn I get a little more aggressive.
The simmering cheers of the fans eventually boil over as a particularly nasty block puts a Vampire down and he doesn’t get up again. In this game even the undead can die! Death is the only thing that will ever force the end of a player’s career, but you can never do anything to avoid risking it – even when throwing a three-dice block you can roll three attacker downs, reroll and then hit three attack downs again, get knocked down, fail your armor save, roll a serious injury, roll death, use the apothecary to reroll the injury and roll death again. Of course, it’s a lot less likely to happen when you’re the one throwing the three-dice block than when you’re the one receiving it, and having a reroll and apothecary handy will definitely help minimize the chances.
The AI decides the best option left is to run away. Fair.
I remember at this point that I have a Wizard. I could’ve used him earlier, but the need never arose. After you use a Wizard every block you succeed in causes him to recharge until eventually you can use him again, so it would’ve made more sense to use him in the first half. Better late than never though.
Guess I’ll be taking that ball then.
Players aren’t even safe if they stay on the ground. Once per turn you can choose to foul a knocked down or stunned player. This automatically forces an armor save, with each supporting model adding one to the roll (that’s a lot of supporting models!). If the roll is doubles the referee sends the fouling player off the pitch and it’s a turnover though, so keep in mind that there may be consequences. You also don’t get experience for wounding a model with a foul; if I were playing against another human I would not foul here, since the game is already decided and the only thing that can really happen is for me to hurt his team a little more – that’s no fun, and I wouldn’t want him doing it to me were the situation reversed.
At this point things get a little weird again. I have one Blitzer with 5 SPP (injured an opponent and got three for scoring the touchdown) and one with 2 and would like to get both to 6. The only other way to get experience is by completing passes. I have two turns left and am not too worried about losing the ball, plus I have two rerolls left and don’t even need to score to win the game. I make a couple of passes (one with each) to get them to 6 SPP and 3 SPP, then run in for the touchdown with the one with three.
The first thing to do after the game is roll for winnings. I roll a 3 for 40,000, then reroll it (I think you get to do this if you win?) and roll a 2 for 30,000 instead. Whatever, I don’t need gold for much anyway. I also roll three dice and if they are above my current fan factor (which is zero, so they are) I add one to it. This will occasionally come in handy at kickoff time.
Some stats in the aftermath. The possession and occupation stats make it look a lot closer than it was.
A timeline showing the game highlights. Seven casualties including one death, ouch.
Each side gets an MVP, who is determined randomly (why? I don’t know). This player gets 5 SPP. I roll one of my Blitzers who already had 6, so now he’s quite close to getting to level three already.
A breakdown of my team’s performance. That’s a lot of KOs inflicted.
When leveling a player up you roll two dice. Depending on the player you can always choose skills from certain categories, and choose skills from others if you roll doubles. Both of my Blitzers level up but neither rolls doubles.
I choose Guard with both of them. Guard allows them to support a block even if they have an opposing player next to them. Since my team is all about long lines of models blocking each other in the middle of the field this is especially important for me. The skills available are varied and quite interesting to read through. Next up I’ll probably be grabbing Mighty Blow, which adds one to my rolls to break armor or to injure (if I break the armor without it I get the +1 on the injury table).
I’ll be leaving Dwarves alone for a while now. For my next installment expect to see some Elves. Despite being wrapped up in fantasy, bad puns, and some balance issues, Blood Bowl is an exceptionally rich game as far as tactics and strategy, especially in their variety. After seeing what the Dwarves are up to, seeing Elves at work will almost look like it’s an entirely different game.