Third edition box art |
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| Manufacturer(s) | Games Workshop |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Jervis Johnson |
| Publisher(s) | Games Workshop |
| Years active | 23 |
| Players | 2 |
| Age range | 10+ |
| Setup time | 1–10 minutes |
| Playing time | 45-150 minutes, depending on rules version |
| Random chance | Low (Dice) |
| Skill(s) required | Strategy, Probability |
| Website | GW Website |
Blood Bowl is a Fantasy Football game created by Jervis Johnson for the British games company Games Workshop (but now under the aegis of their Specialist Games division) as a parody of American Football.[1] The game was first released in 1987 and has been re-released in new editions since. Blood Bowl is set in an alternate version of the Warhammer Fantasy setting, populated by traditional fantasy elements such as human warriors, goblins, dwarfs, elves, orcs and trolls.
The most recent purchasable edition of the game contains a printed copy of Living Rulebook 1.0. However, the most up-to-date version of the game's rules is the Competition Rules Pack, which is available as a downloadable file from Games Workshop's website (formerly known as LRB6 or Living Rule Book 6.0).
Contents |
Blood Bowl is a two-player, turn-based board game that typically uses 28 mm miniatures to represent a contest between two teams on a playing field. A board containing a grid overlay represents the field. Using dice, cards, and counters, the players attempt to score higher than each other by entering the opponent's end zone with a player who possesses the ball.
The "Blood" in Blood Bowl is represented by the violent actions available to players. Game play is based on a hybrid of American Football and Rugby. Players may attempt to injure or maim the opposition in order to make scoring easier by reducing the number of enemy players on the field.
The player races are drawn from the ranks of fantasy races and have characteristics that reflect the abilities of those races. Elves tend to be agile and good at scoring, while Dwarfs and Orcs are more suited to a grinding, physical style of play. Players are also divided up into positions suited to their role on the field, including Throwers, Catchers, and Linemen.
In league play, players gain additional skills and abilities based on their accumulation of experience points. Players face potential injury or even death on the field throughout their careers. Teams improve by the purchase of off-field staff such as cheerleaders, assistant coaches, and apothecaries.
Teams consist of eleven to sixteen players, of which eleven are allowed on the pitch at any one time. Each player is represented by an appropriate miniature and has statistics and skills that dictate his or her effect on play. There are four player statistics:
In addition, players may have special skills that affect any number of circumstances in play. Some of the more commonly used skills are Block (for fighting), Dodge (for dodging out of an opponents tackle zone), Sure Hands (for picking up the ball), Pass (for throwing the ball), and Catch (for catching the ball). These skills are not necessary to perform their corresponding actions, but will give the player an advantage.
In his or her turn, a coach may have each player take one of the following actions:
In addition, the following four actions may be taken by one player per team turn:
Some skills also allow for special player actions.
If a player action fails, the team turn ends immediately (with some minor exceptions). This defining game mechanic is called the turnover rule. The turnover rule makes every action tense for the coaches, and together with the four-minute rule (a team turn must be completed within four minutes) it can make the game very fast-paced. Some rules such as the eleven player limit may be broken as long as the opposing coach does not notice; other rules are strictly off-limits. (For example: Failing to move the re-roll counter in order to get a free re-roll)
Each team represents one race (with lesser allies) typically equivalent to the armies in Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The game box supplies the coaches with players enough to field Human and Orc teams, which are also the teams recommended to newcomers for ease of learning.
The different races progress at different rates, so not all teams start at equal strength. Some become more dominant only after they accrue some experience. Certain teams, such as the Halflings and the Ogres, are designed to provide more of a challenge for experienced players due to their built-in weaknesses.
The Blood Bowl universe has its own fictional background story which establishes the tone and spirit of the game. Additional background exists to describe the demeanor and character of the Blood Bowl players with frequent reference to rule breaking and excessive violence in a lighthearted manner. The over-the-top nature of the game is reflected through the game's mechanics, including the use of stylized secret weapons, the ability for large teammates to throw small teammates down field (even while they possess the ball), as well as in-game effects like fans throwing rocks and injuring players prior to kickoff.
Blood Bowl includes numerous tongue in cheek references to real life products and companies. The deity overseeing Blood Bowl is Nuffle - a pun on the pronunciation of NFL. The game spoofs at least four real-world trademarks, including McDonald's (McMurty's), Budweiser (Bloodweiser), Adidas (Orcidas), and Gatorade (Kroxorade). Many team names in the game's background are spoofs as well such as the Orcland Raiders (Oakland Raiders) and the Darkside Cowboys (Dallas Cowboys). Famous sporting personalities are parodied as well, with the most famous (and oldest) coach in Blood Bowl's background being Tomolandry the Undying (Tom Landry), and one of the most recently added stars being the Ogre thrower, Brick Far'th (Brett Favre).
With the advent of the 3rd edition, Blood Bowl moved closer to the traditional Warhammer Fantasy Battle world by changing the miniatures to look more similar to their Warhammer Fantasy Battle counterparts. Jervis Johnson, designer of the game, has admitted this was not the best direction for the game, and has since stated that the Blood Bowl world is similar to, but definitely not the same as, the Warhammer world.[2] Recent changes to the rules reflect this, and newer miniatures for the game look more sporty in nature.
Blood Bowl has evolved through a series of rules revisions, boxed set releases, and electronic media.
Released in 1986, the first edition of Blood Bowl was a simple game that used many of the elements of Games Workshop's existing tabletop games. Players in the first edition boxed set were represented by small pieces of cardboard illustrated with their likeness. Citadel Miniatures did release metal miniatures to represent players for 1st edition.
In 1982, TSR published a game called Monsters of the Midway which was very similar in concept to Blood Bowl but significantly different in-game play. Discussions with Jervis Johnson at the Chaos Cup tournament in 2006 revealed that he had never seen Monsters of the Midway until after Blood Bowl was published and that the concept of a fantasy football board game was simply a concept whose time had come in the 1980s.[3]
The second edition of Blood Bowl, released in 1988, began to move Blood Bowl away from the battlefield mechanics of other Games Workshop systems and toward more brutal sports-oriented play. The game was played on a pitch represented by a polystyrene board, and the boxed set included plastic 28 mm miniatures of Orcs and Humans, with another set of metal miniatures available from Citadel Miniatures to represent most (but not all) of the other races. Games Workshop later provided a boxed supplement Dungeonbowl, dealing with subterranean play and dwarvish and elvish teams, and, later, two source books, Blood Bowl Star Players (1989) and the Blood Bowl Companion (1990), which added to the basic rules, creating games with greater variation which could easily last several hours.
In 1991, Games Workshop released Kerrunch, a light version of Blood Bowl, developed by Andy Jones. It was released along with Mighty Warriors, Ultra Marine and Space Fleet, and was predominantly aimed at the younger gamer as an introduction to the Games Workshop hobby. The rules are a simplified version of those from Blood Bowl's second edition. The game came with 24 plastic miniatures, and is considered a collector's item.[4]
A new edition was released in 1994, radically changing the game play from the complex, lengthy second edition game to the simpler, more dramatic third edition game. Key changes were a set number of turns and the turnover rule. These changes increased the pace of the game and allowed it to be played within the span of around 2 hours.
The third edition also featured a completely new range of miniatures, including new versions of plastic 28 mm humans and orcs in the boxed set. The new range closely resembled Warhammer Fantasy Battle miniatures. Combined with the newly-available races mirroring Warhammer armies, Blood Bowl moved much closer to Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In 1995, the Third Edition Blood Bowl won the Best Miniatures Rules of 1994 Origins Award.
Jervis Johnson produced a new official Fourth Edition of Blood Bowl and presented it in the Fanatics Game's Official Blood Bowl magazine issue 1,[5] with follow-up rules presented in issue 2.[6] The new rules were a large departure from the previous edition with numerous changes, and Johnson later admitted that, "some of the changes would have benefited from rather more rigorous playtesting".[7] In 2001 the 4th edition rules, with corrections and retitled 4th Edition Gold, were placed on the Games Workshop website as a downloadable pdf file, and Johnson announced that the rules were now "experimental"[7] and announced the creation of the Blood Bowl Rules Committee (BBRC), a group of Blood Bowl players, some GW staff, most not, that would look at the rules once a year and produce new official rules changes and experimental rules for possible inclusion in the future rules changes.[7] The BBRC would meet in October each year, and their first release was the Living Rule Book 1 (LRB1).
Since its release, the third edition of Blood Bowl has experienced many changes, largely driven by the large and vociferous player base. These changes have been combined into the current version of the rules, known as the Living Rulebook. The majority of Blood Bowl is now played by these rules, though variants do exist due to house rules or the transition to online play.
The Living Rulebook, currently in its sixth edition which is said by the BBRC to be the final version, is available from the official Blood Bowl site under the name "Blood Bowl Competition Rules Pack" or "CRP". Originally there were plans to release a printed version for Blood Bowl's 20th anniversary, but this has since been cancelled.[8]
League play is the foundation upon which Blood Bowl games are based. There are many kinds of league activity, but they all tie in to a general campaign where teams battle each other over a period of time, developing new abilities and suffering injuries or worse while attempting to earn the crown of league champion.
Tournaments are one-off events where large numbers of Blood Bowl teams gather to play against each other and try to become the tournament champion. This form of play differs from a recreational league. Games Workshop holds four major tournaments across the world each year. The Blood Bowl was held at Warhammer World from 2003 until 2010 at Games Workshop's HQ in Nottingham, England in the spring and attracted around 200 players to play in the two-day event. The Dungeonbowl is held in Germany, the Spike! Magazine Trophy is held in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada in early September,[9] and the Chaos Cup is held in Chicago, Illinois, USA in late September. Numerous other events are held throughout the world at Games Workshop stores and events or independently. In January 2003, a website was opened for the purpose of helping people organize their own Blood Bowl tournaments, to promote Blood Bowl to the wargaming world, and to rank players' performance at tournaments. The organization took the name NAF, after the fictional rules body in the Blood Bowl history.[10]
In October 2007, the NAF held a "World Cup" Tournament in Nottingham, England over three days, with teams coming from as far afield as the United States and Australia. 272 players attended, making it not only the largest Blood Bowl event ever held, but the largest Games Workshop related event in history. In the end, victory was awarded to a team from France, whilst a German coach won the individual coaching award.
In 2010, GW announced they were going to stop running the Blood Bowl tournament, but allowed the NAF to take over the running of the event, renamed as the NAF Championship.[11]
Games Workshop first announced a series of video games based on their properties in 1990, to include a conversion of Blood Bowl by UK company Tynesoft. However, Tynesoft went into bankruptcy before the game was released.[12][13]
In 1995, an MS-DOS version of Blood Bowl was developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc. and released by MicroLeague, featuring the base teams as well as many of the free agents.[14]
In 2004, French-based Cyanide Studios developed a game called Chaos League (and, later, a subsequent expansion Chaos League : Sudden Death) which bore a heavy resemblance to Blood Bowl in its style and rules, even though it was a real-time game (rather than turn-based, like Blood Bowl).
Games Workshop sued over the similarities, but later announced that Cyanide Studios had been granted a license to create computer games based on Blood Bowl,[15] and that "Any differences between Games Workshop and Cyanide have been amicably settled for an undisclosed sum, and as part of the settlement the Chaos League title has been assigned to Games Workshop".[16] This settlement led directly to Cyanide's release of an official new version for Windows computers on June 26, 2009[17] (with both "classic" turn-based mode and real-time mode). The playable races in the original video game version of Blood Bowl included Dwarfs, Wood Elves, Humans, Goblins, Orcs, Chaos, Skaven, and Lizardmen. With a subsequent patch, Dark Elves were added to the game as a playable race.
On November 14, 2007, the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox 360 versions were announced. These were subsequently released, and followed very closely the tabletop rules at that time.[18]
On October 28, 2010, Cyanide Studios released the Legendary Edition of Blood Bowl for PC only. The game includes a reworked interface in the menu screens and a large number of new races added to the game, including Undead, Khemri, Norse, Elves, Halfling, Amazon, Ogre, Necromantic, Nurgle, Vampire and High Elves. This brings the total races represented to 20,[19] meaning the digital game is only missing the Chaos Dwarf race from the list of teams available in the CRP.
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