Let's Talk Blood Bowl / Elfball / Dreadball / Etc.

I haven't played any of the games in the title except Elfball, but now I'm interested in hearing more about the others and what makes them good/bad. I tend to favor shorter games like ScrummBrawl or BattleBall, but then I played Elfball and decided that maybe my tendencies need adjustment.

So I'll start this off with a recap of my first real Elfball game, and I'd like to hear about whether I should take a better look at some of the others sports games out there, if there are more Elfball players out there, etc.

Also: Elfball is a terrible name.

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Elfball. I played this one a year or two ago and didn't like it. It had too many roll tables and the rules really needed an editor. I think I was just kind of grumpy about it because because they took a relatively simple game and made it difficult to learn by crapping out a poor rulebook. So I dropped it off at an FLGS's consignment program and never sold in all that time. They asked me to come pick it up as they're clearing out old stuff that nobody buys. Since it was back in the house I figured I'd give it another shot, a really fair play, and so I'm considering this my first real play of Elfball.

The game is pretty good. We had a lot of fun just playing until first score. I've never played Blood Bowl, but there's a comparison chart here for anyone interested. You can find some of the justification for the rules changes here . The key difference in game play is that in Elfball each person only moves/acts with one player per turn, and a player can't move/act in consecutive turns. This brings up some pretty interesting situations. Say there's been a fumble, and your defender manages to run and pick up the ball. Well he sucks at throwing but he's pretty strong, so rather than pitch it to another player who would be able to move next turn you have the defender hold it. Now you can't move that defender with the ball next turn (if he still has the ball) so you need to figure out how you're going to use the other players to maintain possession, which usually involves lots of hitting and attacking other players in the vicinity.

Most things in the game work pretty intuitively: Your players have stats which determine how many dice they roll for things and how many successes they need, if you roll more Xs on your dice than successes you flop and it sucks and there's nothing you can do about it, players get knocked down a lot, etc. During our game I had a really bad stretch rolling the dice and just could not take or maintain possession of the ball so I started bringing my heavy hitters out of their defensive stances in the backfield and just started hitting everything. The game turned into a slugfest for a while; my players knocking my wife's out of the game and hers doing the same to mine. She managed to come out of the scrum with the ball in her Thrower's hands but not many good options to throw so she tried running around the outside towards my goal why getting one of her better scorers in position. I put an end to that by pulling my big goalie/defender guy and drilling her scorer into the turf before he could get the ball. After that it was a matter of tackling her Thrower, regaining possession, and running it in with some blockers to keep her Ice Troll away from my scorer. Hate that troll. I won with the first score in about 90 minutes, which wasn't bad considering that we were looking a lot of stuff up.

I ordered the 2-minute deck of cards for Elfball, which increases the randomness a little bit and limits the number of turns between scoring. Basically at the start of each players' turn the player draws a card which may give them a boon or penalty or just be a numbered value that serves as a tiebreaker if nobody scores before the deck runs out. I'm hoping this increases the urgency of scoring, even though I did have fun in our slugfest game.

I have been wanting one of these type of games; my collection lacks one. I almost snagged Dreadball but honestly, Mantic's kickstarters are so overladen with options that I usually just say screw it. I'm really hoping Bloodbowl gets a new fancy edition. I realize it's still available but my friend already has it and I am hoping a new edition would streamline it a bit. So on to my meager experiences:

Bloodbowl. Played once, and loved it. Yes it can go a bit long, but it's just cool, and GW always nails the "world" better than anyone.

Kaos Ball. I've played twice. It's better with 2 players, and this one feels a lot more like advanced chess than a football variant. Each team is generally good at one thing, and you may find yourself in a situation where actually trying to score is not your strong suit. The game is fun to play but as mentioned, it really doesn't have a sports vibe to me.

I've tried Dreadball, two or three times. It's a pretty good game. I don't expect to play it again (the guy's gone abroad), but I think I'll like it more with more plays. Feels fast paced, and I like the opposed roll mechanic.

I play blood bowl and I've demoed dreadball. They're very similar systems for somewhat different sports. BB is a mix of football and rugby, DB is more like basketball and powerball (from American gladiators). DB is more fluid/actiony, BB is slower and more of a grind. I'm pretty sure they both take a couple hours to play. If you're getting into BB you want the competition rules.

Nice thread. I've never seen anyone else play Elfball or Dreadball so they've always sort of been a mystery to me.

I've played Blood Bowl off and on and in various incarnations for the past 16 years. It's one of my all-time favorite games, but by no means without its flaws. It's very rules dense for one, there's tackle zones to keep in mind while making dodges, assists, picking up the ball etc. And add a ton of different skills to the mix and it makes for a difficult game for a new player to learn. Oh yeah, you have to roll dice for everything picking up the ball, throwing the ball, catching the move, moving away from another player, etc. There are no freebies and it very much becomes a game of risk management.

What I love about Blood Bowl is that it is so DEEP. The guys from the Austin Blood Bowl league pretty mostly play Blood Bowl and nothing else. There are a ton of teams and they are not all created equally. Some are good for beginners while others should only be played by experienced players (halflings and vampires, I'm looking in your direction. Where the game really shines is in league format. Your players get injured, skill up and even die over the course of a season. It really is a unique experience.

As for game length, a game usually takes about 2 hours. But with experienced players who make quick decisions it can be a lot shorter.

hotseatgames wrote: Kaos Ball. I've played twice. It's better with 2 players, and this one feels a lot more like advanced chess than a football variant. Each team is generally good at one thing, and you may find yourself in a situation where actually trying to score is not your strong suit. The game is fun to play but as mentioned, it really doesn't have a sports vibe to me.

My FLGS just put a copy on the shelf and it caught my eye, I know nothing about it, but that makes it sound a little disappointing.

Blood Bowl I have a love/hate relationship with it. It really is a fantastic game and has tons of variety and character. But the game of risk management frustrates me to no end because for whatever reason the dice hate me in the game, even low risk stuff, I fail and if I reroll it fails still.

So it is a very good game and the community that is keeping it alive has come up with a lot of really awesome and different teams. A very good game, and one I love and hate.

I could never get in to Bloodbowl, but it's my friend's favorite game. We tried Dreadball, and we both think it is fantastic. It is faster than Bloodbowl, and the rules are consistent and easy to understand. The biggest problem it seems to suffer from now is that the teams can be unbalanced, but it's not like that isn't a problem with Bloodbowl. The designer has released periodic tweaks to the teams to address the issue. If you're interested in a Bloodbowl/Elfball type of game, I'd give Dreadball a try.

I'm a huge Kaosball fan. One of the few games where I wasn't interested in it, then played it reluctantly, and was blown away.

It's not really a sports game though as you don't make any big plays or pull off any crazy passes or anything. It's more of an area control game where you may or may not go for the ball. You have to realize this going in so your expectations are aligned.

Why it's awesome is that it has a unique mechanism for combat where you play a card which is added to your figure's innate ability score. Both players play their cards simultaneously so you're attempting to outguess the opposition. The real hook here is that if you play a card with a value equal to a card you already played in the period, it's a dead card and you auto-lose. So you have to be very strategic in how you pick your fights and what cards you use. Getting your opponent to play a high card on an inconsequential conflict is huge.

It also launched with like 20 teams thanks to stretch goals, and there's some strong variety in there.

One of the elements I love most about the game is it's a bit crazy in a Wiz-War sort of way. You have some pretty wild powers such as placing walls down on the field, placing fire tokens that burn people, racial abilities like Ogres stomping and knocking figures all around them back a square. It gets a bit off the wall in a good way. It's not quite as creative as Wiz-War, but it's close ,and I love it. It's the only sports game in my collection besides Battleball.

Does Dreadball have a league format when your guys can level up?

Blood Bowl is salvation. Go with the original not the pretenders.

One of the things I really like about Elfball is how the challenges (dice rolls) are resolved. You roll a number of dice equal to your stat value in a category (for example Skill when picking up the ball). The dice have X (bad), bullseye (good), blank sides, and star (good but also add another die roll). If I roll 3 dice to pick up the ball and get two successes when I only need one, I get +1 Momentum which is marked on a track on the side of the board. I can later use my stored Momentum to reroll dice or do a couple other neat things. If I get more Xs than successes I Flop and I can't use Momentum to reroll any dice. Flopping is generally funny and bad, and your player usually ends up fumbling or down on the field.

The build up of Momentum and being able to use it (when you don't Flop) is fun and risky. When you use Momentum to reroll you often still have a fair chance of rolling yourself into a Flop. Sometimes failing spectacularly via Flop causes a Shift in Momentum where your turn ends and the other player takes any remaining Momentum you had left and begins his turn.

Facing matters in Elfball, which is probably necessary due to the "move 1 player at a time" aspect. A player with an adjacent opponent facing him is engaged, and needs to make a disengage challenge to move. If you move through an opponent's forward arc you have to disengage for each hex. This makes positioning important; I spent some good effort trying to lock up my opponent's players by engaging them where I could with my defender-type players. It also means, if you have the speed, you can get behind a player and get a bonus when hitting him.

Generally, if opposing players are facing you you need more successes to do something, and if your teammates are facing you they help and you need less. Facing also matters for hitting other players and stuff like that.

If all that sounds complex it shouldn't, because it isn't. You just run around, hit players, shove players, try to grab the ball, throw the ball, and get it into the goal. You get to roll a bunch of dice but there's a lot of room for strategy. There are also a bunch of teams in the rulebook, league rules, skills, player advancement, etc. Haven't gotten into that yet.

Has Games Workshop completely disowned/abandoned Blood Bowl? I was going to go find the CRP rules, which I thought were free on their website, but it looks like they're gone without a trace.

I see a lot of community support for BB, and I was able to find the rules, but GW's practice of pretending products never existed bothers me. I just ran into the same issue when I found out they had put out some additional PDF material for Dreadfleet and now I can't find it or get it anywhere.

let me know if you need the latest living rulebook

wadenels wrote: Has Games Workshop completely disowned/abandoned Blood Bowl? I was going to go find the CRP rules, which I thought were free on their website, but it looks like they're gone without a trace.

They've more or less tried to forget the existence of all the Specialist Games line. Someone decided they weren't actually acting as gateway games to the 40k/Fantasy treadmill and instead worked as standalones, and that was deemed unacceptable.

I haven't played any of them, and I have no problem believing that Blood Bowl is the best "fantasy football" game, but it's hardly easily available nowadays. Yes, I can buy someone's badly painted team on eBay, but I can't buy new, metal, Specialist Games minis. So which of the currently-available-at-retail titles is the one to get? Or is BB really THAT much better that I should buy those hideous Impact minis?

I am under the impression that Dreadball does have a league format, but I've never played so I can't say for certain.

I've played in several BB leagues and played lots (and lots) of Fumbbl about 6 or 7 years ago. Blood Bowl is best in league format where your players progress and gain skills and injuries. There are also so many different races and teams, that there is a lot of opportunity to try new things. The way the turnovers work, where you miss a roll and then it becomes the other player's turn, adds a fir amount of tension and gives the feel of a real sport, where your plans do not always work.

Necromunda and Blood Bowl are by far the best games GW produced.

Even though GW is too stupid to support them, there are plenty of third party miniatures out there to create just about any race. Blood bowl teams Just cut some swords off your D&D guys and your good to go.

Wadenels- I also have a copy of the newest living rulebook that I could copy for you. I live in Minnesota so we could even meet-up somewhere and play a game.

I have never played any of the others, so not sure how much my opinion counts. I have played and own Crash Tackle. It is a Rugby board game made in South Africa.