A Question on Blood Bowl

[Ninja]

Where are all of the Blood Bowl players at? Is there a forum or Facebook group to get in contact with?

[Drunkendwarf]

I know 2 of them:

www.talkfantasyfootball.org

www.thenaf.net

DJ

[magokiron]

I know 2 of them:

www.talkfantasyfootball.org

www.thenaf.net

DJ

That.

Of course, you can check IMPACT MINIATURES, or any other companies who produces FF miniatures. They may have forums to discuss BB or "similar" games.

Hope that helps.

[Darren]

The tabletop Blood Bowl world is very much alive and kicking.  There's a bundle of tournaments going on around the world each weekend (seven this weekend alone) and there's always leagues going on in different gaming groups (I start my club's seventh BB league in October).  Even with GW dumping the game, there are lots of new teams being sculpted and and produced by independents such as the rather embarrassingly named Willy Miniatures - http://willy-miniatures.blogspot.co.uk/ - they make some fantastic alternatives which have nicer models than the GW ranges.

TFF seems to be the main hub for English speaking coaches so that is probably the best bet for discussions.  There's also a NAF Facebook page which is good to keep up with what's going on.  There's a Blood Bowl Community FB group which is good also.

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialNAF
https://www.facebook.com/groups/154786034573932/

Personally, I do play Cyanide and FUMBBL a lot (especially FUMBBL) and I will be buying Blood Bowl 2 when it's released and I'm looking forward to the tablet version of the game being released soon.  That being said, nothing can beat playing the game face to face with your opponent as you can share a laugh and a beer.  I am playing more Blood Bowl now than ever before and it's still fantastic   I only just finished painting my latest team which I'll be using at STABB Cup in September - I'm aiming to have all 24 teams painted and played in NAF tournaments...

http://howlinggriffon.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/norse-blood-bowl-team-completed.html

[Wirelizard]

There's a little bit of Blood Bowl activity here on LAF, some of it on the Fantasy forum and some on Other Adventures. Some on Workshop, too, come to think of it, including my Lizardman/Mayan scoreboard temple.

TFF is the best of the dedicated BB forums, far as I can tell. Good people over there.

I've just started in my first-ever BB league with my Lizardman team, first game should be next week. Looking forward to playing a bunch of different teams over the next few months.

[thenamelessdead]

My advice would be to start with the LRB (sorry, google is your friend here). Then see if you can cobble together a home-made pitch etc and give it a whirl with some proxies. I promise you it's a quality game.

[Ninja]

Thanks for the leads everyone!!

[6milPhil]

I've often thought this would be a good game to get into, although I'd prefer rules  other than Bloodbowl to keep off the GW trail.

What's the aim? Scoring, maiming, or both?
Any suggestions for those and miniatures? Also what's a team consist of? Pitch and other needs?

[Wirelizard]

I've often thought this would be a good game to get into, although I'd prefer rules  other than Bloodbowl to keep off the GW trail.

These days you can play Bloodbowl without giving GW a cent, and the rules really are most un-Workshoppy.

GW no longer host the free PDF of the BB rules since their most recent website re-build a few months ago, following their long and really stupid tradition of wrecking their own web presence every couple of years. That said, the basic PDF of BB's Living Rule Book 6 (LRB6) is widely available - PM me if you can't find it with a Google search and I'll set you up.

What's the aim? Scoring, maiming, or both?

Yes.    Assuming you're playing a league where players skill up and advance, scoring a touchdown is actually worth more skill points than causing a casualty, though.

Any suggestions for those and miniatures? Also what's a team consist of? Pitch and other needs?

Teams are minimum 11 players starting lineup (which is also the max number allowed on the pitch at one time) and a max of 16. Exact team composition is going to vary wildly according to which race you play of the 24 choices, and your own inclination in putting together a team.

With all the GW box sets well and truly out of print getting started is a bit of a DIY effort these days.

Impact Miniatures are probably the best place to get started. They sell inexpensive but good quality resin teams with more than enough figures per set to make up a team and a bunch of other accessories and extra figures as well. They'll sell you a fabric pitch, too, if you like.

There's lots of PDFs of BB pitches out there that one could print out and tape together just to try the game out, though, or take to your favourite local copy shop and have printed on large format paper cheap.

Or do what I did, buy a piece of felt and spend an hour or two with a yardstick and a black Sharpie marking out your own pitch. I still need to hit it with green & brown spraypaint to make it look grassy, then mask off the field lines and spray with white, but just as a plain dot grid it's perfectly functional.

You'll need a tracking sheet of some sort for turns, score and such. I made my own and put the PDF up for anyone to use.

Likewise, I made my own BB roster sheet when I couldn't find a good quality one to print off.

The specialized Block dice (d6 w/ various symbols) can be bought from Impact or elsewhere, but you can just use an ordinary d6:
1 - Attacker Down (Skull);
2 - Both Down (Skull/Boom);
3 - Push (Arrow);
4 - Push (Arrow);
5 - Defender Stumbles (Boom w/ Exclamation Point);
6 - Defender Down (Boom).

Pretty sure that's it, anyone else please chime in if I've left anything else out of "Getting Started With Bloodbowl (Long After GW Abandoned The Game) 101"! I've only been playing since late last year, but that does mean that all this getting started stuff is recent and easily brought to mind...

[6milPhil]

  Stunning reply mate, thanks a bunch!

Noticed how there's a limited number of team types, so if I wanted something different is it just a matter of fitting into an existing format?

[magokiron]

Pretty sure that's it, anyone else please chime in if I've left anything else out ...

Iirc the only thing you left out was some templates as the "Throwing ruler" or the "ball bounce" templates.

You need the ruler to pass the ball, but there are charts that substitute it. I think I get it from TFF forum, but if you don't find it PM and I'll dig the PDF.

The "ball bounce" iirc is described in the rulebook, so you can easily make your own.

Actually, in my home made pitchs i print the template in a corner of the playing field so it's always at plain sight.

Hope that helps.

[Wirelizard]

Stunning reply mate, thanks a bunch!

Noticed how there's a limited number of team types, so if I wanted something different is it just a matter of fitting into an existing format?

Pretty much. There's a lot of creative figure use out there, proxying team lists with "non-standard" figures.

I'm putting together a Halfling BB team, for example, by adding to the number of skinks (the smallest Lizardman players) in my collection and adding a couple of treemen. The Skinks will serve both in my Lizardman team and on the "Lizardling" team.

The teams are varied enough that you can probably find an existing team that matches the feel you want for the figures you have, and provided it's clear which figure is which type of player, you're good to go.

magokiron mentioned the two bounce templates; they're on the tracking sheet PDF I created for myself and linked to above.

Instead of a throwing ruler we use either the throwing chart (easily found online) or an app on my Android smartphone that basically is the same chart with the phone doing all the math for you.

[6milPhil]

I was considering a Cthulu team and a non-cheesecake female human team - how would you suggest I might fit that in?

[Wirelizard]

I was considering a Cthulu team and a non-cheesecake female human team - how would you suggest I might fit that in?

For Cthulhu - Chaos is the obvious starting point. They're bashy but have some ball-handling ability.

For human females, Amazons would be the obvious choice, or a Human team, especially if you want an ogre or some other Big Guy in the team. If you want human women plus more monsters, go gender-swapped Norse. They're all relatively versatile teams, fairly bashy, good at ball handling but not as tough as, say, Lizards or Chaos.

[6milPhil]

Thanks, I started printing out those rules, but my inkjet ran dry, but I have the first 40 pages to read... although I'm always wary of big rule sets...