Blood Bowl and I

Damn, I meant "of all time".

What a great read! I have a lot of awesome memories with both the 2nd and 3rd edition. Did you ever get a copy of the 1st edition?

I look forward to hearing your opinion about DreadBall.

JW,
Could you give us a run down of the "screwing of Tom Anders?" I'm familiar with GW's C&D and the Specialist line death sentence - but not so much on Anders
-AW

I remember ordering from GW mail order years ago when they had crazy clearance sale on "random" blood bowl blisters. I ordered I think 50 packs and got 50 blisters of Skaven mutants!

Also: Someone find me a job in Austin!

Dr. Mabuse wrote: Umm....that logo is fucking fantastic Metal.

The Talent is strong in this one.

Haha, thanks! I kind of cheated, the dragon head is from shutterstock, I downloaded it on our work account and modified it. I've painted maybe two minis in my entire life, it's not my strong suit, so making logos, advertisements and what not are how I participate in making the game look better.

Here are my BB spoof ads











Jeff's season 1 chaos dwarf logo


Any my winning team's logo


And a logo I was commissioned to do by somebody on TFF

As for buying new BB teams, www.comixininos.com is pretty good as your one-stop shop, but they don't have everything.

Blood Bowl Blog has a good list of makers/retailers at the bottom of this page as well as a link to some Swedish forum where people have alternative models for each team.

www.bloodbowlblog.com/buy-figures/

I currently do not have the time to discuss at length everything I want to share about my long running BB league, I will revisit this thread when I can. But I do want to at least share one of my favorite pre-season posters I make every year to get the coaches excited about the upcoming season.

I have two a couple of problems with Dreadball:
1) The rules are scattered through several books so finding the right rule is a pain
2) The game takes itself too seriously whereas BB is a parody of the real world
3) Blood Bowl needs both good tactics and overall strategy. DB is just tactics.
4) The game sucks Sure, dice can (and will) screw you in BB, but BB is still a chess match compared to DB. A card that steals you a ball and throws it again in the middle? WTF?

I really tried to like DB but couldn't bring myself to finish a season. And other coaches are disappointed too now at the end of the season. Sure, it's shorter than BB but that is no concern to me as I like long games as long as they are good.

sydo wrote: I have two a couple of problems with Dreadball:
1) The rules are scattered through several books so finding the right rule is a pain
2) The game takes itself too seriously whereas BB is a parody of the real world
3) Blood Bowl needs both good tactics and overall strategy. DB is just tactics.
4) The game sucks Sure, dice can (and will) screw you in BB, but BB is still a chess match compared to DB. A card that steals you a ball and throws it again in the middle? WTF?

I really tried to like DB but couldn't bring myself to finish a season. And other coaches are disappointed too now at the end of the season. Sure, it's shorter than BB but that is no concern to me as I like long games as long as they are good.

I don't wanna curve too far away from Jeff's awesome post, but as FATie's unabashed fan of DreadBall - I'll offer a few counterpoints.

Firstly, I should state that I love Blood Bowl. I always will. But at this point in my life - DreadBall is a better fit.
1) DB rules are poorly laid out, period. I've read worse from GW and FFG (that's not an excuse). However, additional/optional DB rules are laid out via season alongside new teams. Everything someone needs to get started can do so with the first book. If a coach wants to play with a team beyond season one, they'll need the accompanying season rulebook. Blood Bowl is no holy grail of rule lay out either. Whereas BB has had 29 years of development, DB has had 3.
2) The DB rules are a bit dry. There's flavor text, and it tries to be humorous (increasingly) - but it's not as overt as BB. I think part of this is due to the poor lay out.
3) I just can't agree with this statement at all. In our league's experience, the "meta game" is just as important as the individual match. Ex: Do I resurrect a dead player, buy a coaching die, hire an MVP at the expense of not leveling a team player? How do those decisions effect my team ranking and my next opponent's underdog bonus?
4) I'd suggest DB is more like speed chess. Is the DB 'The Ball Shatters' card all that different from a BB ball going off the pitch? There's only one of those cards in the deck of 52. Referring to tactics, it's a fun ruse to bluff your opponent into believing you have the card in your hand.

The shortened game length is imperative for my league. I'd love for everyone to experiment with a BB season. But with several news fathers in the group; cost of entry and length of game is big deal.

Dreadball - I do plan on writing up an article on it, but it'll be at least 6 months out. I'm in the process of collecting/painting what I need and reading through the league rules. I've got another BB season to run after this current one is done, but yeah, I'll get to Dreadball. It'll be more of a 'Starting a League' article though as I'm coming to this new. I have no history with it, missed all the kickstarters, etc. It already has me wanting to make a small cosmetic change to my XBBL league, but I'll have to see if coaches are receptive.

Tom Anders - The brief version is that during the GW corporate hammer dropping (the C&D era) they realized Tom was doing all this free work. Well, if he's doing all this BB work free...why is JJ around? JJ didn't want to lose his position due to redundancy, so all communications with Tom were dropped. I've also heard that Tom's name was scrubbed from any BB related document per GW legal, but can't confirm that. I still see his name on the Living RuleBook 6, but maybe I have an older edition? I dunno, I use that 'competitive' ruleset, so maybe LRB 6 is outdated and GW doesn't care? There was talk about it over in the TalkFantasyFootball forums if you dig back to around 2009 or 2010.

Da Bid Dabid, Metalface, I'd love to read y'alls experience with the game.

It's funny to think that BB's heyday was back in the late 80's or 90's, I guess we'd only feel that way because that's when product was being produced by the parent company, but really it's heyday may be closer to present time. I feel like I know far more active BB coaches now than I have at any previous time over the past 25 years, there were those somewhat recent comics, BB:TM, and that cyanide videogame. BB's brand as a whole may be stronger now than it's ever been.

One of the guys in my league has talked about running a tournament under the XBBL banner, but I dunno. Most cities have one league and their league name involves the city. I kind of like how we're this rogue league in Austin with only allegiance to ourselves. I feel we're sorta like the NWO in a way. Plus, I'd really rather support the current Austin tournament organizer rather than potentially fraction his coach base. I've read that in Europe attendance at BB tourneys is dipping, but that's most likely because the number of tourneys have gone up. The league and tournament scenes are both strong in our area. So, in regards to tournaments, my argument has been to support what exists over create another. Who knows if it's the right call or not.

We managed a mini season here ending in a four way game on one of the Comixinos boards. I can recommend their service, although being in the EU they might not be so good for those based outside of it.

Sam

Jeff, I like how you say you feel like you're playing an "underground" game. I'd never really thought about it before but it's true, the current rules are governed by a body of fans rather than a publisher and free and available to all. You can use models from pretty much anywhere, old official GW models, conversions and all these new third-publishers with new sculpts. Add to that all the tournament support that again comes from fans and not publisher support, it really is like a grassroots movement.

But funny that you're also right, the Blood Bowl brand is stronger than ever. It's kind of confusing to see those two things happen at the same time including Cyanide getting the reins to make changes to the rules and create new teams to their video games.

This is one of the best "Tell us a little about yourself" type of post. Cheers!

Jazzbeaux wrote: We managed a mini season here ending in a four way game on one of the Comixinos boards. I can recommend their service, although being in the EU they might not be so good for those based outside of it.
Sam

Noble Knight Games here in the US seem to have a pretty good selection of them

www.nobleknight.com/ViewProdLine.asp_Q_M...ID_E_5_A_GenreID_E_0

If i recall correctly, that four-way board is a variant called Death Ball. I remember reading about it as a featured article in one of those little Blood Bowl Magazines GW used to put out that contained fan material. I cut up two of those 2nd ed 'astrogranite' boards (wouldn't do that now!) and made a four-way Death Ball board in about 2002 and we tried it out. Pretty chaotic.

Other BB variants I've played are Dungeon Bowl and two designed within our league:

All-Star game - We had 6 coaches at the time and we split the races into what we thought would be a best order/chaos alignment, so three teams a side. Each coach brought their top 4 players based on SPPs and one re-roll (plus, any Leader re-rolls a player would have). This gave each side 12 players and about three re-rolls. Each turn, the three coaches would play their teams' minis in random order...that is, between a ork, undead, and skaven coach the order they would play would change, but on his sub turn that team's coach could move his 3-4 minis in any way they saw fit. Actions such as passing and hand-offs between players would involve an animosity roll as these players would rather grab the spotlight for themselves or their real club over their all-star team. This was fun and chaotic as well. Some coaches enjoyed it for grins others weren't impressed as they didn't want their stars taking casualties in this gonzo 'side' game. Much like real life coaches...ha!

Hell Game - This was a match another coach came up with that we'd do for the two last place teams. Basically, they'd get a ton of sponsorship money to 'test out new footwear'. Each side would also get three wizards and play under a pretty harsh water chart to test the durability of these shoes. The idea was to play a brutal game but reap a lot of money in the end to help bring the teams' ratings up a little for the next season.