“Your match commentators for tonight are Jim Johnson and myself, Bob Bifford. So Jim, what are you thoughts about these two teams?”
”Well Bob, the human side will find that they have a tough night ahead of them, as those Orcs aren’t looking too friendly.”
”Right you are Jim, but the humans have a distinct advantage over their opposition. Namely, their speed. The Orcs just can’t keep up with the manoeuvrability of this team.”
”Very true, but as long as the Orcs remember to not let the opposition past them, their toughness should make up for their slowness. Of course, the Orcs will most likely just start bashing things and forget about the game, but that might work to their coach’s favour anyway.”
AND SO ON. I CAN’T BE BOTHERED DOING AN ENTIRE POST LIKE THAT.
Last Sunday, I got to play my first game of Blood Bowl. If you don’t know about Blood Bowl, it’s that fantasy warhammer game I blogged, but with more football.
It plays sort of like a board game. A very expensive board game, but also a very fun one. The teams are lined up on a 24*15 grid in a similar fashion to gridiron (on which the game is mostly based, but it strays far). Their are two halves (HOW SURPRISING! I WAS EXPECTING THREE!) each made up of eight turns per player. Turns last for four minutes (we didn’t use this rule, as we were still learning, but I doubt we went over four minutes very often, so its a very reasonable time limit) or until a turnover is caused through one of the moving team’s players falling over or dropping the ball etc.
The action begins with kick-off, which aside from the obvious also involves a dice roll which could lead to a number of different effects including the defending team getting a free turn before the kick happens, weather effects, riots, coaching bonuses or a team beating the crap out of the ref.
Then the ball lands, bounces a bit and the receiving team gets to do stuff like pick up the ball, pass, kick a prone opponent, move players or block opponents. All of these can be done in conjunction with moving (particularly the ‘move’ one) however a block after moving can only be done by one player per turn, and fouling can only be done once per turn at all.
(By the way, blocking is basically a tackle that can result in five different things: Defender pushed one square back and knocked prone, the same as before unless the player has the Dodge skill (in which case it becomes the next option), push the opponent back one square, the attacker falls down and both players are knocked down on the spot. And being knocked down results in a dice roll against the player’s armour value, which if beaten can lead to injury or worse.)
What comes next is lots of the teams beating each other up and hopefully some touchdowns.
SO YEAH.
Because my first games were fun, I want to list some highlights:
1ST GAME
I was humans, my opponent was orcs (these are the two teams that come with the starter box, but there are close to two dozen teams available in the game). During the first half my opponent managed to get two touchdowns, mostly due to breaking my centre with some Black Orcs. In the second half though I managed to score early, and then, on the last turn of the game, I passed two dodge rolls, moved, picked up the ball and dodged into the endzone to score the equalizer.
2ND GAME
We switched teams, and I soon realised how much I love Orcs. In one drive, I allowed what was then my Black Orc run up the pitch with the ball in a penis formation. I hadn’t intended this, but couldn’t resist pointing it out when I noticed. AND I JUST REALISED THE BLACK ORCS IN THE FORMATION COULD HAVE LED TO SOME BLACK PENIS JOKES. MISSED OPPORUNITY THERE VYPER! Anyway, yeah, Black Orc had the ball and managed to get one square away from a touchdown. Then my opponent had his turn, blitzed (running block) the guy with the ball, and got the push back result, leading to a touchdown in my opponents’ turn. YAY!
I also got another touchdown in the first half but I can’t remember how. What I do remember was the awesome armour rolls I kept getting that half, due to lots of Orcs bashing dem ‘umies. Basically what happened was I somehow managed to reduce the human team’s number of players from 11 to 4 by the end of the half. I killed one human, knocked out five and one more was sent off for a foul. So I was winning not just on the scoreboard but in the fact that I nearly outnumbered by opponent 3:1.
But somehow he managed to get most of his players back in the second half, plus he had a single reserve. I beat up some more guys, but he managed to score. And then he scored the equalizer ON THE LAST TURN.
Two games drawn on the last turn. Damn.
3RD GAME
There was no third game. And I most certainly didn’t lose it 3-1. Never.
In conclusion, it was a fun way to spend the day. The Blood Bowl game is definitely something I’ll be looking at getting myself, probably with some Norsemen or Orcs, or even Goblins for the hilarity of night goblin fanatics, explosives and pogo sticks. It’s also highly recommended and for anyone who is interested, you can download the Living Rulebook in the Specialist Games section of Games Workshop’s site.
-Vyperchild
** Also, FUCKING illegal procedures. If you forget to move the turn counter before doing anything else in your turn, you either lose your turn or have to forfeit a re-roll. I did it a couple of times. But so did my opponent. **
Brad
sanity is for the weak 