Blood Bowl

[Lucus009]

Have you guys ever played this? It is fantasy football, literally.

[IBBoard]

It's nothing like fantasy football, what with them playing rugby/grid iron/American Football and not football

I've played it once as a demo game in-store, and lost to my brother because I hadn't realised we were playing for a single touchdown and so I didn't push one of my players.

It always seemed like a good game to play as something quick yet fun, and you could really go to town on a great stadium if you wanted, but I've never got a team because not many people seemed to play it.

[Lucus009]

That’s odd a lot of people play it here. If you were to play a full game it would take an hour or two, depending if the players know what their doing. I got an Elf team (noticing a pattern?).

[IBBoard]

It might have made a come-back, but when I started gaming (mid-90s) through to going to Uni in 2002 then most people played WH or 40K.

I'd always thought Bloodbowl games were shorter than the main TT games. It'd only be a small game (~1000pts) but I'm sure we could sometimes get two smaller games in to a games night in a store.

[Acheron143]

We had a fairly healthy play group down south. The average game runs 90 minutes, baring riots. One game had two riots the end score was like 14-2 or something nuts. The skaven had a field day. I've never seen so many one turn touch downs.

Riots can reset the turn clock back turns... or forward turns so it can get messy but thats a low odds things.

[IBBoard]

Sounds like I missed out on some fun. I started Warhammer with High Elves, but then moved on to Orks in 40K. If I ever went back to Warhammer or took up Blood Bowl I think I'd go for Orcs there as well. There's something that just seems to fit between Orcs and a game that involves pummelling your opponent in to the floor as one of the main tactics for succeeding

I knew Blood Bowl could have riots from the old days (around WD issue 170s where they used to include match reports), but I didn't know what they actually involved. Extra turns or fewer turns must really throw a match up in the air!

[Acheron143]

Extra turns can turn a game into a rout. I had a team actually set up with my skinks as my 3 linemen, and on my turn run backwards away from the opposition in an effort to perserve some of my squad for a following match in a multiple round tourney. A Undead team just took me apart.

The orc team last I checked was very, very competitive, with a decent throwing, running, goblin tossing, and heavy hitting front line. I change back and forth between chaos and lizardmen, but I think I want a team with more than 2 model choices so when I head to spike next I'm probably going as an Undead team or Chaos United which gives you a bunch of weird 1 choice players.

There are a number of strange effects that can happen, the worst is bad weather match, icy was always an unfavourite of mine, making the game essentially one of who ever picked up the ball would try to run forward, not risking a hand off or pass because of the negatives involved.

To me blood bowl is a better game in that there really isn't anything broken in it. (Thats not saying its balanced) But usually every team has a draw back or advantage.

[IBBoard]

Some of the original races did seem reasonably balanced in terms of player types in earlier Blood Bowls, but I do remember seeing the arrival of races like Lizardmen and thinking that they seemed like a cheap attempt to get Lizardmen players in to the game. Yeah, it might be a bit more difficult to come up with good styles for the different players for some of the races, but I'm sure they could manage something better than a "Skink linesman, Saurus blocker" kind of arrangement.

In terms of the Orks, I wasn't thinking competitively, I just like Orks now When I started playing Warhammer I tool the High Elves while my brother took the Goblins. Then we got the 40K 2nd Edition boxed set and he took the Marines while I took the Orcs. I might not do well on the winning front, but I just find the Orks a fun army to play with. Yes, you have some tactics, but mainly you play as an Ork and try and bludgeon them with brute force and ignorance F'rget da dead boyz, dey woz just wimpz!

[Acheron143]

I'd argue about the choices available to the lizardmen I like my only two choice list. Mean one box set lets me play instead of everyone else's where they have to bits order the stuff they need to play. However after about 50 or 60 games you want to shelve them for a team that has more depth. *shrugs* Same issue I have with Chaos being Beastmen or Chaos warriors... now thats an army that COULD have had some serious depth not just two models.

The only four models I can think of in a lizardman army are Slann, Krox, Saurus, Skink. So to me getting three of them sounds pretty reasonable. and some new 5th edition team has a Slann on the lizardmen list BUT they don't make a Slann bloodbowl model. Thats life though.

[IBBoard]

Slaan on the Blood Bowl field? That sounds a bit worrying!

Yes, there are only two types of model, but at the "Skink or Saurus" level then the human teams only have one type of model - a human. Everything I saw of Chaos and Lizardmen was (as I said in my last post) "linesman" or "blocker", or something like that. At least with the human, elf, dwarf and other teams they've re-styled them a bit so you get obvious "catcher", "blitzer", "linesman", "thrower" etc who look like they're specialised to do that kind of job.