Category Archives: Gaming

UKTC 2022 Day 1 Roundup

The day dawned bright, clear and cold in York as over 300 gamers convened in York University’s Exhibition Centre for the expanded UK Team Challenge (not Championship, I’ve just found out).  Pipey’s flagship event is one of the stars of the UK calendar, and many of the people attending had not been to an event since the last one two years ago, or attending a tabletop event for the first time. Great stuff!

The Swindon and Wiltshire BB League (SAWBBL) team was made up of myself (Khorne), Ronalbeanio (Orcs), Bogenhafen_Bron (Black Orcs) and Barnacles (Chaos Chosen).

Round 1 was against CLAW, gamers from the frozen North (relative to us).  I was using my Impact Siringit as proxies for “The Khorne of Africa”, with a block Bloodspawn, 2 Block and 2 Guard Seekers, Extra Arms Khorngor and 2 Block linemen.  12 players, 3 rerolls, no apo.

First game was against Yersinia (NAF)/PorterSorter (Twitter) and his Imperial Nobility, the nemesis of Khorne with all the Fend and Stand Firm.  A spectacularly frustrating first half led to me putting my grumpy face on, with no armour breaks and a 1 in 81 turnover as I attempted to surf his Leader, one of the few players I’d be able to surf.  Went in 1-0 down, but then the dice took pity on me as the rain started to come down and the kick off scattered next to the sideline.  The inevitable failed pick up and scatter off the pitch delivered the ball, and I strolled in for the draw.  Luckily the rest of the team won, so a solid 3.5 – 0.5 win in the first round.

This took us into the main room after the random first round (bottom tables are in a second room with a fantastic view, due to the expansion) and up against the ECBBL Blackshirts, a team from one of the UK’s most competitive leagues.  I was against SteAirey’s Chaos Chosen, so it was always going to be a ruck.

I displeased Khorne early on by taking a both down with my Bloodspawn where we both had block instead of taking a pow, because the follow up would have taken me next to his minotaur.  He showed his wrath by howling with pleasure as the minotaur’s blitz sent my big guy to the dead box.  Uphill struggle time!

Being on the back foot, I decided that aggression was required.  A nice chain push would have opened up his cage if a beastman had been removed from the pitch, but wasn’t quite to be, so instead I fully committed and trusted in the dice, leading to the mess below.

2-3 turns of really tight BB followed, including the ball popping loosed, but eventually I ran out of useful players, and with a nice hand off he was able to score in his turn 8.  I attempted the frenzy one turn score, which had him worried, but a pitch invasion and only having 8 players scuppered me.

Second half started trickily, with a brilliantly placed Guard Chaos Warrior making life spectacularly difficult, but a lucky one dice pow opened up half of the pitch and I was able to equalize for the draw.  One of the best games I’ve had in a few years, and a reminder of what an awesome game this is.

Another win for Barnacles, a tie from Ron and a loss from Bron meant a creditable team draw, and a match up against the Welsh Dragons!

My opponent was the Welsh captain and lovely chap 20phoenix with Undead.  My drive was predictably difficult, saved at the end when my Bloodspawn removed his Guard Mummy, failing regen.  His team pretty much imploded in the few turns over half time, and he did well to score in his turn 4.  With my Khorngor off the pitch I was relying on Linemen to score – the first pickup failed but I squeaked in for the turn 16 win.

Sadly it was the only points for the team as AndyDavo and Boneless (Hawca) snuck close wins over Barnacles and Ron and Hellboy mercilessly battered Bron 3-0.

We finished the day on 1-1-1, comfortable midtable, but most squad casualties! (I think).  Excellent curry in York joined by Twelfman, Wobert and Rubick, then a fairly early night in the excellent AirBNB. 

Back to the front shortly to take on the Swedish Whine Alliance!  I’m off squad bottom table, and ready to rumble.

All draws, tables and so on available at https://www.bbuktc.com/drawsandresults/ – pleased that ExScore seems to be coping with the 320 entrants, even though someone did their best to break it at lunchtime, which was a bit hairy!

I’ll be continuing to Tweet throughout the day, so follow along, and put the date in your diary for next year.

 

Age of Cluedo

Christmas holidays were upon us, so time to do a foolish modelling project!  We’d lost a Cluedo piece, and a friend of the daughter was claiming to be colour blind (she wasn’t, but that’s another story) so was inspired to raid the bits box.

Cluedo (“Clue” in America, I believe) is the classic game of guessing who did the murder, and it was time for a fantasy version!  The original pieces were Miss Scarlet, Miss Peacock (blue), Mrs White, Colonel Mustard, Rev Green and Professor Plum, but the more recent boxes have given all the characters random back stories, so no time like the present.

Mmmr Plum* is an executioner by trade, which in normal circumstances might make him a prime suspect, but in the world of Warhammer doesn’t mean he’s more dangerous than the average denizen.

Goblin Green is trapped in the past, reliving his prime when he was omnipresent on bases. A small fella with a big attitude problem.

The Peacorc is one of the lesser spotted blue orcs, to fit the pun.  Growing up he was bullied by the greenists, and has a massive chip on his shoulder to go with his massive golden fist.

Colonel Mustard is a retired army chef, leaving the pay of the Empire to open the Sigmar’s Head, a pub on the outskirts of Talabheim.  Friendly to regulars, but don’t cause trouble or you’ll get a clubbing!

The Scarlet Skaven, the Red Rat, once thought to be a legend, but mysteriously appeared when the great plague arrived in 2020, waving his censer to warn of the oncoming devastation.

And finally, needing no introduction, the White Dwarf!

Game 1 was Mmmr Plum, in the Kitchen, with the Candlestick.  Which obviously begs the need for an updated board and set of weapons as well.  Forget Heroquest, this is the obvious mash up between GW and MB games!

*bonus points if you got the Tim Vine reference.

FAQ Email to GW

Just sent this to GW.  The more people that make similar points, the more likely they are to listen, I expect, so if you agree with any, please do email them. Email is bloodbowlfaq@gwplc.com.

Hi,

Blood Bowl: Second Season – rules feedback in advance of May designer notes

I am one of the admins for the Blood Bowl Community group on Facebook, whose 25,000 members have highlighted some areas of the BB rules where there is still room for interpretation so further guidance would be helpful.

Diving Tackle
The previous FAQ stated that DT can only be used on the reroll if it was not used on the initial roll. This is a new interpretation of any use of a reroll and opens up a few problems. The reasoning is that the player is now prone, so is not able to use the skill on the reroll. However, this interpretation indicates that in fact there is no tackle zone on the dodging player at all, which would lead to an automatic success. It also suggests that if the player is dodging from one square in the DT player’s tackle zone to another square in the same player’s tackle zone, then the modifier for dodging into a tackle zone would no longer apply either.
This is the only item where I thing a previous ruling should be reversed, as this really is an anomaly in the rules at the moment.

Blitz Result on Kick-Off
The wording of the blitz is d3+3 open players may move. One may blitz and one may TTM. Does this mean that if a 3 is rolled, then 6 players can move AND one may blitz, or 6 players can take an action, of which one can be a blitz?

Foul Appearance
FA is rolled at the beginning of a blitz action. If it is failed, does the player lose the entire action, including the move section? This is my understanding, but it is a bit strange, and is being interpreted differently by different people.

Sweltering Heat on weather table, Pitch Invasion on Kick-Off Table
D3 players are affected on each team. Is this a single d3 roll applied to both teams, or two separate d3 rolls, one for each team?
Player Activation
The previous FAQ stated clearly that you do not have to activate every player. It then goes on to say that you can declare a move with each player and not move them, which is not the same thing when dealing with negatraits. It would be great in the next FAQ to remove the second paragraph.

For me, these are likely to be the fundamental causes of disagreement in games. However, for my league I have tried to make it as clear as possible, so have put together a rules document. If as many of these could be clarified as possible by GW, that would be tremendously helpful, and of course if there is any way I can help, I am happy to do so.
The rules clarifications I have written can be found here: https://docs.google.com/…/1catXlLLAbvJLbrINOv0M…/edit…
Kind regards
Mike (sann0638 on the internet)

BB2020: Part 3

It’s launch week!  So to celebrate, played my first game in anger with the new rules against the eldest.  Here’s what I learned!

  • It’s still entirely possible to set up with 10 players.  I did this on my first drive.  Excellent.
  • I’m blaming this on the slightly odd imperial team build that I had to use to make an 1100 tournament team: 2 blitzers, 3 bodyguards, 1 thrower, ogre, 3 linemen, 2 rerolls, gubbins
  • Both teams ended up with 5k spare.  When I build my tournament packs, I’m going to allow 1 Dedicated Fans to be bought for 5k
  • Keeping track of Fan Factor is a bit of a pain – you have to WRITE STUFF DOWN!  This is a step backwards for tournament BB where you didn’t actually need a pen and paper until you submitted your results.  And then it only affects 11 and 12 on the kick off table.  Not a fan.  Opportunity for new swag though.  Or people could use the score track…
  • Saying “on it, not through it” is going to be consigned to the dustbin of history.  As is push as slang for GFI, as Rush is just as easy.
  • Tournament apo now works on a 1-3 on a d8 basically, instead of 1-3 on a d6, so is slightly worse.
  • Assistant coaches are much better than cheerleaders.
  • The boy managed an accurate throw team-mate, and then used the goblin to half dice my ball carrier down!  Broken.
  • It seems particularly churlish to take dauntless from Imperial blitzers and then put them against 6 S4 players in the box!
  • I almost did one jump, then remembered you can’t jump an empty square, only one with a player in.  Makes jump incredibly situational.
  • Brawler is good fun!  Especially if you roll a both down and a pow and then reroll the both down just for lolz.
  • Vomit is fun too.  “Always vomit before scoring” is a new phrase (as it can’t cause a turnover).

BB2020: Part 2

Following on from BB2020: Part 1.

A few more days have past, more leaks have come, and the big development over the past few days (for me) is that the core OBBLM (online blood bowl team manager) team have said that it does not make sense to try to adapt OBBLM to the new set of rules.

I wonder if the phrase “OBBLM” ever passed anyone’s lips at Warhammer World.  If not, this shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the people who play in BB leagues around the world. If so, it would be interesting to know if there was a plan.  If there was no plan, it shows a distinct lack of regard for those people.  I doubt we’ll ever find out.

While OBBLM existed for many years before the NAF got involved, it was on my watch that the NAF took on the idea of providing a central league hosting service for those who did not want to host it and do the admin themselves.  Since then numerous leagues have used the service, and the OBBLM development has become more of a NAF service with the various patches needed for the new Spikes, and it’s been great to see the community effort behind this, which is one of the brilliant things about the NAF – individuals come and go in how involved they are, but the organisation continues to thrive.

There is now a NAF effort being put into developing an OBBLM replacement, but that will take lots of volunteer time and effort, unless there are some bonus funds found or a crowdfunding approach, both of which seem unlikely.

So this got me thinking about the other things that will need to change or become obsolete.  Along the same lines as OBBLM, the other league management systems (principally Aros and Halfling Scribe, but also the NAF STARS I suppose) will need significant individual effort if they are still to be used.  I’m hoping to look into a Google Sheets alternative to facilitate league management, but we’ll have to see what happens.

Away from leagues, there are many tournament roster sheets that will have to be rewritten, from the individual tournament ones (such as mine for Eurobowl 2021, if it changes rules) to Battlescribe and the like.  Depending on their complexity, this will be a variety of effort needed, and there is no guarantee that all of them will get the effort, so some may become obsolete.

Obsolescence is also a problem for various bits of statistical analysis that I’ve done over the years. I touched on the NAF data issue in the previous blog, but it’s pretty certain that there will be a significant rebalancing in the tiers, so the existing analysis will be less applicable (and therefore potentially less interesting – insert gag about this not being possible).

As well as that, loads of my youtube stuff will become out of date.  Some will stand the test, with chain pushing etc still being a thing, but the basic “how to play BB” with 100,000+ views will need a new version, if no-one else gets there first.

And the final couple are that various teams may not be usable in the new rules (but I’m not above proxying) and the 24/26 will become an anachronism as the number of teams changes frequently, but these are minor considerations.

So what do we take from this?  Basically a significant change is coming (obviously) and it would be nice to know how many if any of these changes GW took into account when they decided to change their rules (which of course they are entitled to do).  Additionally, lots of people seem to be a bit cross, and while I would never tell people how to feel about a given topic, I can look on the bright side of a new set of rules coming – new blood to the game, and a new set of tactics to learn. 

So if I can, with my 100s of hours of investment being chucked out of the window to a greater or lesser extent, perhaps others can too?

 

Moving Tabletop onto Fumbbl

Hi,

this post will explain how to import your tabletop league teams on to Fumbbl in times of social distancing (and for other occasions!).

The first thing you will need is a “skill ruleset”.  You can use my one (ruleset 1206) or you can make your own using this link.  There is a huge amount of variety available within rulesets, so it is definitely worth making your own.  If you do choose to use mine, note that it:

  • uses Spiralling Expenses not Expensive Mistakes
  • allows Piling On without a Reroll

When you create your ruleset, you will want to make the starting TV large (I went for 5,000,000) so that people can buy everything they currently have. The admin can then reduce the TV as needed.  Choose the name of the ruleset carefully, as you can’t change it later!

There are 5 pages of options in the ruleset options, which are mostly self explanatory.  “Petty cash adds to TV” means CRP inducements.  You will need to add Brets and Khorne into the rosters if you want to use them.  Do this by choosing custom “yes” and then save, and then choosing Add Roster on the bottom right.  The versions marked NAFC are the official ones.

While you are creating the ruleset, look in the url for the number of it and make a note. 

After you have a ruleset, you should create a League.  On your homepage, click Create a New Group on the bottom right.

  • Change the Group Type to League
  • Change ruleset ID to the ID of your ruleset
  • Change status to recruiting

Fill in the rest of fields as required.

Once you have created your league, you should have something like this:

Provide this page to your league chums, and get them to click on Create team for this league, then buy everything they have in their tabletop team (players, FF, goods, rerolls).

Once they have done that, as league admin you can go to the team, and adjust anything that is in red by clicking on it.  To adjust FF or Treasury, this will be through the main team list.  To adjust player skills etc you click on the player first, then click on the SPPs and award the correct number of SPPs. 

You then Edit skills to give the correct skills.  You can also click on the Injuries box and can award injuries to the player.

Once the teams are made, the teams can play each other by clicking play next to the team and using the name of the game as previously decided between the teams.

Thanks for reading, hope all is clear – there may be a video tutorial later, let me know if I’ve missed any steps!

 

 

 

 

The Joy of Swearing

Some thoughts on swearing.

I am one of the admins on the Blood Bowl Community group on Facebook, and one of the ten rules of the group is as follows:

Keep it clean
Avoid swearing. Alternative spellings, implied swearing, asterisks or acronyms are not allowed either. Admin judgement is final. Likewise images and memes are subject to this rule too.

This has been a rule of the group as long as I can remember, and I think I was one of the first 100 members or so, as Pug set it up.  The rule gets questioned every week or so, so I thought I would have a standing post to answer those questions.

In essence, the admins believe there are very few people who would want to read lots of posts littered with swearing, and most forums I use have had a rule against it.  The question therefore comes down to where you draw the line, and in the case of the BB community the line is drawn to forbid most swearing, as above.

In general, this is because there is very seldom an actual need – there is usually a more descriptive word that could take the place of the swearing, and the joy of writing is that you can take time to think of what that word might be.  Swearing when writing is generally used for emphasis, so it is mainly this avenue that is being denied to people, and it’s an admin judgement that this is a reasonable thing to do in this particular group.

Swearing is also commonly used when directed at somebody, and as personal abuse is also against the BB Community rules, and rightly so, banning it in this way is also reasonable.

So in summary, swearing is banned to keep the tone of the group as civilised as possible.  Members are free to disagree with the rules, but they agreed to stick to them when they joined the group, so if they can’t follow them they should refrain from posting or find a more suitable group.

Hope that’s helpful. If it’s not, you know what you can do!

 

Using Score for Underworlds

Just bought Warhammer Underworlds, and my chum Jip is running tournaments for it, so I’ve adjusted a copy of Score so it can be used for those tournaments.   

Download this zip file then unzip: underworlds

There are two files in there – races.txt and do result.html.  Replace the races.txt in the main Score folder with the new races.txt (it contains the warbands up to Beastgrave) and then replace the do result.html in the templates folder with the new one (so the wording on the printed table is correct).

Then when you enter results enter the Glory score into the Touchdowns, enter 0-0 for the casualties, and then when you click “Print Results” it should show up nicely.

Any tweaks needed, let me know!

KingDomino upgrade!

Got QueenDomino for my birthday, as I already enjoyed KingDomino – quick review here, targeted at those who already know how to play the latter.

Basically the new game adds Towns as a new tile (the red ones) which have some bonus functionality.  When you play a red tile you can build on it from the options behind the big hand in the photo above, and the different buildings offer different victory points bonuses.

We only played one game, so that might be a factor, but it did seem to slow the game down slightly – one of the great things about KD is how quick it is to learn and how quick to play.  It does add a couple of years to the minimum age/intelligence needed to be able to play as well, so if you want to stick to an easy game or play with very young folk then stick to KD.

However, the extra tactical stuff was good fun, the scoring sheets (very similar to those in 7 kingdoms duel) were useful, the different way of playing 3 players was a good idea (discard the unused tile), and I’m looking forward to mixing QD with KD for a 5 or 6 player game, so very happy with the purchase!