One of the most common questions (and to be honest, complaints) about the new box set concerns the lack of positionals to make a good team.

So, what do we have?

Dwarfs: The GW set comes with the 12 dwarfs you need for a basic team.  Job done.  The Deathroller is nice to have, but a competitive team would not usually have one, as it’s so much Team Value for something that’s not likely to have a huge impact on the pitch so it’s very optional.  The only problem is when you play in a league and want to go to more than 12 players, obviously.

Orcs: Comes with 2 Blitzers, 2 Black Orcs, 2 Throwers, and the best teams have 4 Blitzers, 4 Black Orcs, and probably only one Thrower.  Plus they have a Troll, which has now been released.  My most efficient recommendation for this would be to use the figures that are nominally Blitzers as Black Orcs, possibly marking the bases of all of them with a green strip to make it clear.  You can then put a red strip on 4 of the spikiest lineorcs, and use them as Blitzers.  Job done, or if you wanted to be fancy, you could do some head swaps, so that all Blitzers were not wearing helmets. Finally, add a troll.  For this you can use almost any fantasy troll model, as they are not usually carrying inappropriate weapons, or if they are they can easily be snipped.  Stick him on a 30mm or 32mm base, and you’re done.  A few Goblins might be nice too, but again any goblin figure without a weapon would do the job here.

Humans: Comes with 2 Blitzers, and you want 4.  You may want extra catchers too, but not such a big deal.  Simply use 2 of the bottom left linemen as Blitzers.  Colour code all the Blitzer bases red.  You should also be able to pick up some spare human linemen if you want them from people who bought the box set, or those who bought two boxes to fill out the positionals.  Finally, get an Ogre.  They’re awesome.  Either the GW one, or the GW Morg, or literally any Fantasy Ogre not holding a weapon.

Skaven: only 2 Gutter Runners.  Nightmare.  Easy peasy though, use the Throwers as Gutter Runners.  No one will mind.  Then nominate one of the linerats as a Thrower (you could stick a ball in his hand, from the sprue).  You will want extra linerats (my current tournament team has 13 players, rats are squishy, but almost every Skaven player will have bought two boxed sets for the multiple Gutter Runners.  You probably won’t want more than one Thrower in your team, unless it’s a long league.  Rats die.  A lot.  You will want a Rat Ogre model, and these are harder than the Ogre or Troll to proxy, but there are some good plastic options out there, or the GW Blood Bowl one.  In old ranges there was a Headsplitter model, which I like a lot.  The other option for extra Gutters is the Deathrunner from Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, as the box comes with 2.  The weapons would be need snipping though, which is a shame as it’s quite a nice model.

Hope that’s helpful!  Thoughts welcome.

Crumb-bowl – the King of British one-day tournaments – has been reincarnated as SAWBBowl, standing for Swindon and Wiltshire (Blood?) Bowl, to mirror the new name for the local league (SAWBBL).  56 coaches signed up for the new venue, with lots still on the waiting list. Why? A combination of the friendly host (Glowworm), the excellent lunch (John the Noodle Guy), the noob-friendly rules (3 games, 1100, 5 normals and a double) and the glorious sunshine (seemingly guaranteed!).

While 3-game tournaments of this size are a bit of a raffle for who wins, you do still need to win all 3 games, so competition was fierce.  Scoring (12/5/0, bonuses for TD and Cas up to 3 each) rewarded pushing for big wins.

I took Skaven, as I’m using them in most tournaments this year, and also took the Sann Clan along – Linus with Chaos Dwarfs and Alex with Amazons and Zara.  My build was the same as previous – 4 GR, 2 Blitzers, 1 Thrower, 6 Linemen, 3 RR, Apo.  2 Block GR, 1 Wrestle, Blitzers with Guard and Frenzy, and then as a quirk of this tournament (Glow obsessed with the number 4), the number 4 player could have 2 normal skills instead of one double, so I went with Wrestle and Strip Ball on a Gutter, which I have christened “Wrip Ball”.

Game 1 was against Tank’s Vampires, on his birthday!  Not a great birthday treat, to play against Tier 1 with a team he hadn’t used before, but hopefully it was fun anyway!  I made a mistake early on, choosing to 1D blitz with my Wripper rather than a normal two-dice with no skills.  Against a Sure Hands thrall, this decision was all kinds of wrong.  Ah well.  He scored, but I managed to recover the game and win 3-1, as well as getting three casualties after his Vampire skulled out to death with the last block of the game.  Max points, and everything shiny.  Had a chat with Tank after the game, suggesting some stuff (putting thralls where you want vamps to be, always setting up for 2D blocks on the line), and I think he won a game later, as well as winning some shiny dice, so his day improved!

Lunch was awesome as ever, and the boys played vast amounts of football on the lawn outside with Cam, Gorgoroth’s son.  Still missing the Caterham crew, who weren’t able to make it this year, but hopefully they will be back next year.

Game 2 was v the Skaven of Shortarse, a local coach with whom I am building up quite a rivalry (after his mino scored in turn 24 of a previous game of ours, grumble grumble). He had Glart, instead of the extra players, and had sidestep on his Gutters and a Dirty Player, so a very different build to mine.  He took to fouling quite early on, which led to an opening in the cage, but there was a whole comedy of errors (including me mistaking a blue skill ring for block, whereas it was actually wrestle, more grumble) leading to a scoreless first half.  He was a couple of Gutters down, however, and the second half turned into a bloodfest – I think he only had 3 players left at the end, and after a few turns of stalling I scored in turn 16.  RIOT, ARGH!  Luckily, he didn’t manage to pull off the score.  Phew.

Game 3, on table 1, playing for the title as long as a decent number of points were gained.  Tricky though, as it was against Wishwellington’s Wood Elves.  A decent coach from UKBBL playing with the best team, which included a Tackle/Strip (Strackle?) Wardancer.  Yuck. I had a couple of decent chances on his drive, but nothing quite came off, and then three minutes of horror led to three of my Gutters heading to the dead box.  Waaah.  I then uttered the words “well, that’s game over”, which should basically be a hanging offence, as in the second half my single remaining Gutter somehow managed to hang on the ball long enough to get into his half, and then a linerat scooped up the ball and limped over the line.  He had a decent chance for the Turn 16 one-turner, assisted by a Quick Snap, but it didn’t come off.  So a draw, and neither of us got silverware!

Congratulations to 20phoenix, with his first tournament win after quite a few second places, and Darkson who managed 2nd with vampires.  Alex picked up the wooden spoon, and won an excellent board game donated by Canteloup (who is still alive, hurrah!),  who also donated a win to Linus.

The new venue is tremendous, and the capacity for next year will be 60.  I thoroughly recommend signing up as soon as the tournament is announced, and paying by the end of January to secure your place, as this really is one of the hottest BB tickets of the year.

Over at Team Scotland, we’re using the awesome Fumbbl functionality to test out Eurobowl teams against each other – personally, I’m testing out with and without the Rat Ogre.  I’m currently firmly in the “without” camp, as I don’t like having my blitz dictated, and there are no doubles choices so he can’t have block.  Anyway, that’s not what this is about.

In my latest (well, first) game, I was against Phil78’s Wood Elves.

I had this position, after an unfortunate double both down for him, I had a one-die blitz on the ball carrier.  Made the 3+ and 4+ dodges, and then rolled a push.  I had 3 rerolls left, but we were only in Turn 2.  There was a 1 in 3 chance of getting the ball off him, by rerolling (I had block, he had dodge), and if it worked it would be pretty good.  Glowworm says “never reroll a push”, but that’s largely superstitious nonsense.  I did reroll the push, and got a skull.  Maybe there’s something to it after all.

Reroll management is obviously incredibly important.  In this case I made the wrong call because:

• the chance of it going well was too low
• the upside of it going well was not good enough
• there were too many turns left for the number of rerolls I had left

And it’s these three things you should consider when deciding whether to reroll, along with how bad it would be if you did not reroll, and similarly how likely it is to be a bad outcome.  When I skulled, my Gutter was also badly hurt.  Luckily, the Apo was on hand!

After 62 NAF tournaments and over 300 tournament games, I’ve finally cracked it.  The thing that stops me from being world class is that I get excited and make bad decisions.  I need a big sticker (or stick) that says “take a couple of minutes, analyse the situation and play on” rather than “things are looking good, this is AWESOME!”.

As an example, my vampires were playing against 20phoenix’s skaven.  He drove into my half, then all my gazes worked and I sacked the ball carrier, with my vampire catching the ball.  This was quickly followed by his lightning bolt failing.  Life was good.  The next turn was critical.  My two choices were to whack a load of rats and hope to get some of them off the pitch, thus consolidating my position and making life even more AWESOME!  This is what I chose, but it meant that I could not form an effective cage around the ball carrier.  The next turn, he half-diced my vamp with strip ball, and the ball popped loose.

The sensible and better choice (definitely with hindsight, and hopefully with foresight next time) would have been to think that it was my turn 2 and I have the ball on his drive, so there is no rush to get anywhere.  With this frame of mind I could have not worried about hurting more rats and just concentrated on clearing them out of base contact, in order to form a better cage.

Similarly, I can still remember at Eurobowl being in a tremendous position with my Necro against Wood Elves, and making exactly the wrong choice – leaving a possible (though unlikely) one die with Strip instead of a half-dice with nothing. Again, this was because I was in much the better position, and it clouded my judgement.

So the moral of the story?  Take a moment instead of acting like a crazy person.  That, and Strip Ball can do one.

I made this board in 2011 and there seems to be quite a lot of interest in general in homemade boards with the resurgence of BB, so I thought it would be worth revisiting.

I was initially inspired by various boards in the Stadia of the Old World thread, particularly Virral’s board and Rev’s guide on CMON.  I don’t really have any woodworking skills, but luckily B&Q will cut wood for you for free!

Another part of the reason for making the board is to have a larger Elfball board, as a few of my minis are on 30mm and the occasional one on 40mm, so I made a board with 35mm hexes, which happens to have about the same diameter as the length of a BB pitch.

The finished version, complete with Elfball logo:

Then the other side of the board, which contains a B.B. pitch. The bits of polystyrene were packaging from an IKEA wardrobe, and I used a soldering iron and metre long metal ruler to make the grooves. The central section lifts out and tucks at the end so that the case folds up.  The dugout boxes shown open up to double as carry cases:

I first painted the entire thing black.

Then I painted in the white lines, and started putting the flock on by painting glue on to the squares, then shaking off the excess. The stairs on the side also hold the central section in place.

And the board ended up looking a bit like this:

Since making the original version, I’ve also added a couple of score tracks, table football style:

And a few adverts round the outside:

I was quite pleased with it, given my lack of experience making stuff in general.  Eagle-eyed viewers might notice that it’s showing its age a bit, with some of the flock coming off, and there is also a dent in one side matching my son’s elbow!  The board (in its folded up state, as shown below) has travelled the length of the country from Bognor to Manchester, and is a joy to play on (in my humble opinion) as you can rest your arms on the outside and lean in quite a satisfying way.  The dice do bounce quite a lot though, so it’s a table for dice-cup users!

I love Legacy teams!  These are Blood Bowl teams where lots of people paint an individual miniature, and then there is a raffle and one person wins the whole team. I’ve taken in part in all (I think) the talkfantasyfootball.org teams since 2007, plus various Waterbowl ones, and been lucky enough to win 3, including some spectacularly nice figures.
They are a brilliantly democratic thing, with simple paintjobs and highly intricate ones both getting one vote.  People often contribute figures and then ask not to be included, which is tremendously generous.

The latest?  Waterbowl 2017.  Skaven.  Watch out, here comes Morg!

Clad in our new hoodies, the Sann Clan marched to war!  ARBBL makes you use two different strength teams on the two days, so I was taking Elf then Vamps, Linus had Nurgle then Chaos Pact, Alex went for Chaos Dwarfs then Goblins. I was using the Apes to represent, as I enjoy the figures – Hawk got a little confused at the beginning, so it wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t manage a draw against me with Halflings so I don’t feel too bad.

Game 1 was against said Halflings for me, with Zara.  I went in 1-0 at the half, but the only fling off the pitch was from a sending off, who killed one of my catchers, so it wasn’t ideal. Zara got the ball, and rather than trying to dislodge it from a S4 blodger (Strip Ball might have been wise) I went for whittling down her support, which would have worked better had Hawk not whittled 4 of my players off the pitch in the first turn of the second half. A poorly-judged defence in turn 16 and some favourable dice meant that Hawk pulled off the 1-1 in the end.  Don’t supposed we’ll hear about it again though.  Alex managed a draw against the mighty Besters with his dodging CDs against Underworld, and Linus failed to stall against scs.sam’s Slann, trying a sideline cage (oops) and ended up on the wrong end of a 3-0.

Because of the format of the tournament, there were a lot of stunty teams, and we now played the Goblins of Bubba from Bristol, all 3 goblin teams.  Alex got chainsawed a lot, and ended up losing 1-0, Linus drew 0-0 in a nailbiter, and the Elves did what they are supposed to and managed a 5-0 against Eski, after a tense first half on his drive.

More stunties for me in game 3 against an ECBBL team, again made up of all Tier 3/4 teams. I faced Morg and halflings, coached by Yogi, in one of the most painful matches I’ve had, in terms of how ridiculously one-sided it was.  Both his trees rooted in turn 2, after 3 1s in a row, and from then on it was just a case of getting in Morg’s way until something went wrong for him. He had to try a desperation play eventually, and the Elves did the Elvish thing.  The second half didn’t get much better, and we finished on 4-0.  Alex lost 1-0 to Heff’s Vampires, managing to almost completely destroy his team, but not quite having the knowledge yet to capitalise.  Linus lost to an identical Morg team, coached by WishWellingtons.

So the Sann Clan finishes on 2-3-4, third bottom, and facing an ARBBL team this morning.  I was going to use the Apes as Vamps, but I think I will switch out to my standard Vamp team to avoid the confusion (or might ask my opponent each round).  Alex is looking forward to secret weapon shenanigans (including an HMP bomber) and Linus is using the TFF Legacy Pact team that I won when he was 3!  Despite my 10 TDs in the day, I am trailing behind Landrover’s High Elves for most TDs on 13, after he demolished Sam’s Slann 6-2, as well as a couple of other big scores.

Onwards, to victory!

A few thoughts on how to teach your offspring Blood Bowl.  My credentials to start with – I believe Dementor (my 2nd son) was the youngest ever NAF player when he played at the age of 8, and Enderman (the eldest) is aiming to be the youngest to complete the 24, having played 12 of them in 14 tournaments at the age of 11, and with ARBBL pick n mix in a couple of weeks he will have played 14 by the time he hits 12!  Zoe is currently 6, and just played her first game of 7s.

I started playing board games with them before they could count, and playing counting games as soon as they could (snakes and ladders, where they had a d8 and I had a d6).  My favourite photo is of Alex (Dementor) sitting on a potty playing chess with me.

We started BB at about age 6.  I did not mention strength, agility, go for its, kick off events or fouls. Everyone had the same strength and agility 3.  We did use assists (bringing in a friend) and we used 4 positionals, each shown with a base colour.  Everyone had AV8.

• Blitzers had move 7 and Block.
• Throwers had move 6, Pass and Sure Hands.
• Catchers had move 8 and Catch.
• Linemen had move 6.

We had one reroll per turn, plus the reroll skills as shown, so turnovers were rare.  I gave them lots of chances, and lots of coaching.

After they picked up the basics and could play games through, they started playing on Cyanide’s BB1 and quickly picked up the rest of the skills and then starting working on tactics.  They have both played on Fumbbl, with Linus’s first game being against Spartako, one of the best coaches in the world.

I have played Linus (Enderman) 4 times in NAF tournaments and he has taken 2 draws off me so far.  I’ve beaten Dementor once.  In the last tournament (Exebowl) I finished on the same points as both of them, as I got a win, and one got a win and the other two draws.

They play a lot against each other, as they have lots of time available and a ready opponent.  I own all the teams, so they quite happily swap between the teams, and know the stats of the Star Players better than I do…

Next job is to set a club up at school (I’m a secondary teacher), but time is always short!

As everyone knows, there are 24 official NAF ranked teams, but there are also rules available for Khorne, Apes and Bretonnian (as well as a host of less commonly used teams).  I’ve played Khorne in the Cakebowl league and at a UKBBL tournament, and recently(ish) picked up the Apes of Wrath team in the Impact Kickstarter in order to use it in the league and as a proxy at NAF tournaments.  I’ve also played them in a league on Fumbbl, which is their main home (Khorne are from Cyanide’s BB1, and Bretonnian from BB2).

After a few troubles with undercoating the Trollcast, I used acrylic white that I happened to have lying around, and that took really well, and after that this was one of the quickest teams I have ever painted, as there is lots of hair!  I left the body armour off the gorillas, as there is always the option to add it later, perhaps if they do well in the league they can earn it.

Using the figures is absolutely brilliant, they look excellent as they move down the pitch, so I’m looking forward to using them at tournaments.  First up will be as Pro Elves at ARBBL Pick N Mix, with a couple of gorillas as blitzers, chimps as catchers, orangutan as throwers and bonobos as line-elves.  The ball handing fits the monkey theme really well.  The other positional is the gibbon, but not sure how often he will get used.

I’ve painted up a squad of 19 so far, with hopefully one more chimp flying over from Sweden to make 20, as the chimps work well as catchers, and sometimes 4 of those are good.

Haven’t decided yet whether I will use the Apes on Day 2 as well as proxies for Vampires – only 7 Bonobos, so the Gibbons may get to be thralls as well depending on the team build!  Or I may use traditional vamps, as the idea of blood-sucking Gorillas is a bit creepy.