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I know that 99% of the talk in this forum is either hu-man sports or video games, but I just spent a pleasant Easter Monday afternoon reacquainting myself with the joys of, er, Blood Bowl.
Which I thought I would hate when introduced to, but it turns out I like rather quite a lot indeed.
For those of you not familiar with the darker corners of Games Workshop, far from the bright lights of WFB and Warhammer 40K, Blood Bowl could be best described as "Warhammer Ultra-Lite" for those in the know re. miniatures gaming; those totally unfamiliar with war games, well, imagine a cross between American football and Lord of the Rings, but with more lowbrow humour and loads of violence.
In Blood Bowl, you're a coach fielding a team from a variety of fantasy races and a couple of "theme" teams. Orcs and Humans are the two fundamental teams, but all the WFB races put in an appearance, with a few other specialty teams beside. Skaven, three flavours of elf, dwarves, Nurgle, Chaos dwarves, Chaos warriors... all of them put on helmets and grab the pigskin under your watchful eye.
The game mechanic is remarkably simple (compared to most GW games) -- two halves of eight rounds each, each round composed of a turn for both players. You play a turn until all your players (you field 11, but you rarely finish a game with 11 on the field -- injuries are frequent) have played or until you screw something up. If one of your players enters the opposing endzone carrying the ball, he scores a touchdown. The winner is the player with the most touchdowns at the end of the second half.
It's goofy, but it's also got ludicrous strategic depth. The point of playing isn't to play one-off games but to get three or four (or more) people and coach a full season; players get "skill points" for things like touching down, catching or throwing the ball, and injuring opposing players. There's a list of about forty skills players can acquire that affect what they're capable of doing.
All the action is governed by six-sided dice: regular six-siders, used for all ball-related actions, and "blocking dice," used for when players collide.
Ultimately, it's a dice game -- but one with a remarkable array of strategic options and depth, especially once your team starts picking up a few skills. It's hard not to get attached to certain players, but unfortunately death is common, as are injuries, and the team awards benefits to lower-rated teams in matches to keep the more experienced teams from overdogging the newer teams consistently.
So, yeah. Blood Bowl. I've spent a couple years away from it -- since my local league dissolved -- but I've been feeling the itch again. If anyone else is inclined to revisit the game, or give it a whirl, there's a handy (and massive, massive, massive) Web site that supports an online play application: FUMBBL. I'll probably be dusting off my account and running a few matches (it works using a Java client) this week. Username Shepherd, if anyone's looking. |
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