Blood Bowl
This game was created by Jervis Johnson. 'nuff said.
Blood Bowl is a game set in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe. In-universe, it is a sports game somewhat like American Football but with a level of violence more akin to Canadian Ice Hockey. The in-universe explanation of the game is that during a battle between Dwarfs and Night Goblins, they found a chest of rulebooks, magazines, and brochures detailing "Amorikan Footbowl" and after the Dwarf sage interpreted them (going mad in the process) they played the game to settle the battle, the game then growing in popularity and entirely replacing war in the Warhammer universe during seasons. Otherwise it's the same setting as Warhammer Fantasy, and may even be the exact same if you want to think that it is. It is played by teams from each of the major factions who set aside their differences for the duration of the season. Out-of-universe, it is a game where each player manages a Blood Bowl team as they accumulate experience and injuries.
During seasons all wars in the world stop since Blood Bowl takes precedence above all other facets of life, even in the Warp. There used to be multiple leagues, but now only one survives. High Elves and the wizards of the Empire maintain crystal ball networks similar to television stations that show programs filmed with Campaigns for Real Arcanery (or Camras) with recorded images and sounds sent via a spell called Cabalvision. Each station is named with the same acronyms as real world stations with them meaning more humorous things (NBC=Necromancers Broadcasting Circle, Channel 7 CBS=Crystal Ball Service, and so on), although only one (ABC=Association of Broadcasting Conjurers) has the rights to broadcast Blood Bowl games. The announcers of all league Blood Bowl matches are a vampire named Jim, and an Ogre retired player named Bob Bifford. In the vidya the two talk CONSTANTLY to the point of annoyance. On the tabletop, they do absolutely nothing but had little minis you could buy to make your playing table look more complete (although with the advent of the vidya players sometimes imitate them to mock the opposing player, resulting in a well deserved mini down the windpipe).
It was produced by Specialist Games for a long time, but now like all the other Specialist Games it is on Games Workshop's back burner. Thankfully, there's a couple of computer games based on it (with a sequel to the most recent in the works!) that is almost the exact same as the tabletop (going as far as to use the Blood Bowl tabletop handbook for the rules in the vidya), and a card game by Fantasy Flight Games.
Video Games
In 1995, an MS-DOS version of Blood Bowl was released.
In 2004, a French vidya company made a game called Chaos League which was a real-time ripoff of Blood Bowl. Games Workshop sued them, as GW is wont to do from time to time, and they settled out of court for GW to have partial rights to Chaos League, making it an official Blood Bowl game. It was re-released in 2009 as Blood Bowl officially and used a turn-based system.
In 2007 the Chaos League turned Blood Bowl game was released for Nintendo DS, PSP, and Xbox 360.
In 2010, Chaos League turned Blood Bowl was re-released for computers only as a legendary edition on Steam and had all the races of the tabletop game. It was then re-released on Steam (so the 2004 game Chaos League is now up to 7 re-releases if you were keeping track) as Chaos Edition which brought non-tabletop teams of Underworld, Chaos Dwarf, and Khorne teams as well as having a graphics bump.
In 2013, a sequel to the game was (finally) announced. Graphics are HD quality, the Bretonnians have their own team, and the animations are beautiful while Jim and Bob get much less repetitive. The single player campaign is also now fun rather than a chore, and involves taking the Reikland Reavers on a comeback (which Bob joins, in his enthusiasm). While many were butthurt disappointed by the lack of races at launch, people who aren't looking for an excuse to bitch are better informed were quick to point out Blood Bowl 1 is a heap of former DLC and Expansions bundled into the main game now while 2 is just starting out how 1 did.
Blood Bowl: Kerrunch is an iPhone and Tablet game, which is like Blood Bowl 2 with only five players on each team and unlockable player rosters.
The Great Backstabbing
Way back in the early 90's, Blood Bowl 3e was released, the first recognizable edition from today's point of view in terms of mechanics, teams and RPG elements. Shortly afterwards, we got an expansion box called Deathzone (back in the days, GW in its unending wisdom made their players pay twice for stuff one would consider optional essential corebook material today, like magic rules and wargear). And for a while everything was good.
Some time after 2000, with the introduction of the eventually doomed Fanatic section, 3e was updated and JJ announced that from now on, Blood Bowl's rules would be constantly updated and optimized with significant player input in the form of the Blood Bowl Rules Committe (BBRC), consisting of JJ himself, Doubleskulls and GalakStarscraper among other neckbeards. Many brix were shat in face of the sheer awesomeness of this decision. The Living Rulebook (LRB) had arrived and for a while everything was awesome.
LRB 5 came and went, LRB 5+ came and went, FUMBBL came and stuck around even in times of Cyanide's vidya, Galak had taken over the de facto role of Blood Bowl's lead designer without pay in his spare time, when in 2009, with the long anticipated release of LRB 6 (lots of players were unsatisfied with LRB 5+) suddenly this:
Oh my God ... that is what I gave up 5 years of my life for ... wow.
Werewolves with 2 different stat lines (they could have gone with a Bear ... they still sell bear figures)
Page references where the pages are not present.
The Rat Ogre one was my typo ... and damn I really thought I had triple checked all of that ... have no idea how that got through as a typo ... so don't blame GW for that one.
The credits page is gone ... so GW won't even acknowledge the folks that gave up so much time to bring this.
And the idea that folks should play LRB 1.0 because its less cut-throat ... that's lawyer speak for Jervis being told that we don't want to push these rules over the ones printed and in the boxed set (so all you should feel free to go back to LRB 1.0).
Jervis should be ashamed (I have no other word) for what he's allowed legal to do to him.
Galak
GW, big lying megacorp they are, had stabbed everyone in the back: Promises of including LRB 6 in the base game box were broken. No credits for the actual game developers (ie Galak, who also got kicked out later, and the BBRC) to be found anywhere. Waterboarding and blackmailing JJ with threats of giant dildos until only an empty husk was left. And worst of all, a LRB 6 that was merely a skeleton rulebook without everything that made Blood Bowl awesome - no fluff, no Did You Know... boxes, no artwork. Of course, players instantly realized the huge amount of fail that called itself the Competition Rules Pack and immediately saw to it that a proper LRB 6 was made available but the damage was already done.
The Card Game
Oh and Fantasy Flight Games released a card game called "Blood Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game". Its not bad if you think of it less as an adaptation of Blood Bowl to a card game format and more of a game based around the concept of being a weekly wrap up and/or highlights of the week kind of sports show and the coaches are able to decide what kind of amazing plays of sporting prowess happen on Cabalvision. Only the sport in question is Blood Bowl and the highlights are considered brutal acts of (mostly) unarmed assault or murder in most sane legal jurisdictions. Very true to the humour of Blood Bowl and more inviting for newcomers, play a few games with them and they are much less likely to be put off by the steep learning curve and random fuck you nature of actual Blood Bowl.
Glossary of Blood Bowl Terms
- Bashy/Bashing Teams: All Blood Bowl teams can be described as existing on a specific place on a spectrum of combat focused to ball play focused. The term "Bash" is used to describe teams that are closer to the combat side and frequently when two of these teams are matched an important distinction is which is the better bashing team as the other will have to play around the fact that they are not hitting as hard or taking hits better than the other team. Bashing teams tend to be very intimidating for teams that are ball play focused like Elves as they have lower AV and ST which means they cannot deter Blocks and are more likely to suffer injury rolls from successful armour break rolls.
- Cage: A very standard formation play to protect a ball carrier, the cage is organized with the ball carrier in the centre and friendly, preferably beefy, player standing on each square diagonally adjacent to the ball carrier. No other players should be adjacent to the ball carrier to avoid chain-pushes opening cage and the cage should not end its turn with enemy players adjacent to the corners. This formation is popular because opponents must waste time taking out the corner players or try and blitz the ball carrier by moving through the tackle zones of two players and being forced to make a dodge roll.
- Chain-Pushing: When during a block the attacking player chooses a result that pushes an opponent (Defender Pushed, Defender Stumbles, Defender Down) and there are no free spaces for them to be pushed into, the attacking player may choose to move them into an occupied square and then they may choose to move the occupant of that square into any available squares in the direction of the push. If there are no free squares, the chain-push continues until a player is moved into an unoccupied square. Chain-Pushes punish players who just blob around their ball carrier instead of spacing players and using proper caging formation, as with correct placement, the opponent attacking the blob can expose the ball carrier or get their own players adjacent to the ball carrier which is a very undesirable result.
- Stunty: An Extraordinary Skill (that means you can't take when you level up but players can start with it) that makes players adept at dodging and avoidance but suffer with passing or throwing blocks, it also describes teams where all or the majority of players possess this trait and how it defines their playstyle where they can no longer make standard plays and instead need to play very specific strategies to win or at least draw (All Stunty teams are joke teams).
- Surf: As in to "Crowd Surf", to knock an opposing player off the field and into the crowd removing them for the drive and having the crowd beat them (sometimes to death) for their cowardice and unamusing play.
Obtaining Miniatures
Since Blood Bowl, like all of Games Workshop's GOOD games Specialist Games, is out of production. The first advice for someone wanting Blood Bowl minis is to check eBay and Bartertown, but many model companies have stepped up and produced various "fantasy football" lines.
Just kidding, Blood Bowl will be released in a month, with Orc and Human teams. Dwarfs and Skaven will follow, and then other teams will be made (though not in plastic, but resin.)
External Links
- Blood Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game, by Fantasy Flight Games.
- [1] The rules