Blood Bowl
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Blood Bowl is a light-hearted tabletop board game created by Jervis Johnson for the British games company Games Workshop. The first ever competitive game took place between Jervis and Stewart Parkinson in Nottingham, England at the end of 1985 (when still in its developmental phase) and it is still going strong today. The game is set in a fantasy universe similar to, but not the same as, Warhammer Fantasy, populated by traditional fantasy elements such as human warriors, goblins, dwarfs, elves, orcs and trolls.
Blood Bowl depicts a turn based game of 'fantasy football', akin to a very violent version of American football. It is played with a collection of 28mm models made by Citadel Miniatures representing the two 'football' teams. The board represents the field, and, as with most board games, game-play proceeds using dice, cards and counters.
The aim of the game is, like in American football, to score touchdowns. However a secondary component of the game is to try to injure/maim the opposition (thus making scoring easier).
The game is purposely light-hearted in its approach - making allowances for such things as fouling the opposition and bringing weapons (such as bombs, chainsaws and steam rollers) on to the pitch.
Each team in the game is based on a particular race, with each race having their own advantages (Elves tend to be fast and good at scoring, whilst Dwarfs and Orcs are more suited to trying to grind the opposing team into the ground).
The game also allows teams from one game to be carried over to the next, so that players gain gain skills or injuries as they gain experience.
Strictly speaking, Blood Bowl is not a 'tabletop wargame', though it is probably closer to other Games Workshop inventions such as Warhammer 40,000 than it is to traditional board games such as Monopoly.
In 1995, Blood Bowl third edition won the Origins Award for Best Miniatures Rules of 1994. Blood Bowl is presently in its fourth edition, with the current rules revision called "Living Rulebook 4.0", short LRB 4.0.
In 2004 work was started on the next version of the game, tentatively earmarked to be released in 2007, Blood Bowl's 20th Anniversary. The rules, currently in version 1.8 and in pdf form, are available for download from Playtesters Vault (http://www.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/vault.asp), and are discussed in the Vault forum (http://forums.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/forum_b/default.asp) .
External links
- Blood Bowl at Games Workshop's Specialist Games site (http://www.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/)
- Talk Blood Bowl- The most popular place to talk about Blood Bowl (http://www.talkbloodbowl.com/)
- LRB 4.0 can be downloaded here (http://www.specialist-games.com/bloodbowl/tlr.asp)
- NAF - World ranking for Blood Bowl tournaments (http://www.bloodbowl.net/)
- Big Blood Bowl resource page (http://www.blood-bowl.net/)
- Blood Bowl Old Skool Picture Archive (http://www.bloodbowl.org/)
- FUMBBL: Online Blood Bowl League (http://fumbbl.com/)
- PBEMBBL: Online Blood Bowl League - LRB based (http://www.pbembbl.org/)
- MBBL2: Online Blood Bowl League - Lots of house rules, and about 80 different races (http://www.blood-bowl.net/MBBL2/)
- REBBL: Online Blood Bowl League - LRB and different race specific leagues (http://www.rebbl.com/)
- ECBBL - London's Leading League (http://www.irwilliams.com/ecbbl/index.php)
- BOBBA: Bergen & Os Blood Bowl Association - A Norwegian league with a variation of the rules optimised for leagues spanning over several seasons (The rules are available online in english.) (http://www.bobba.no/)
- OnLine Blood Bowl League: An online Blood Bowl League (http://www.olbbl.com/)es:Blood Bowl