Blood Bowl Team Manager - Sudden Death Expansion

Earlier in the year I had a chance to play Fantasy Flight's Bloobbowl Team Manager, and I have to say, I loved it. Simple rules and fast paced gameplay combined with the inherent comedy of Bloodbowl make for a win. The only thing that I felt missing was my beloved undead.

But ho! What's this?

The new Sudden Death expansion is due out shortly, with three new teams, undead, dark elf and vampire. You can read about it here, but here's the jist of it:

Fantasy Flight Games is pleased to announce the upcoming release of Sudden Death, a bone-breaking, pulse-pounding expansion for Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game! This death-defying expansion brings a host of options to the pitch, including three new teams, new Contract payouts, new enchanted balls, and more.

The Dark Sorcery Syndicate union features dabblers in forbidden magics who just don’t know when to stay down. The undead Champions of Death tear up the pitch – sometimes literally as they raise new zombies and skeletons from the corpses of former Blood Bowl players. The vampires of the Black Fangs are always thirsty for victory (and blood). And the Dark Elves of the Naggaroth Nightmares are happy to give both teams plenty of fresh corpses with which to play.

Sounds good! This'll be getting stuffed in my Christmas stocking, let me tell you.

NWG practice games & the dangers of gin

Last weekend two long time pals of mine called down for a few practice games for the upcoming NWG tournament in Wicklow. I needed this badly, as I've played not a single game with the warriors of chaos list, the list I am using for my fimir clan. In fact, I've not played warriors in at least two editions. I was to learn some things. Painful things.

After many years playing pretty much only my beloved vampire counts, I've embraces both the sons of Hashut and the fimir in the last while. The fimir in particular are a project I had been mulling over a long time. However, with this change I now have to consider things like panic, break tests, battle standard bearers and all the other paraphernalia of living troops. It's like a new game. And what better way to ease into a new army than bring it to a competitive tournament against folks who live only to drink the tears of their broken and weeping foes. (Not at all lads, yer all lovely, but the tears thing I stand behind.) In at the deep end, I guess. With all this in mind, I thought I better at least know the rules for my own army so as not to take even longer to complete a turn. I believe my surname has even become synonymous in certain circles with taking an age to take your turn. 'Come on mate, you're Staffording the hell out of this magic phase.'

Lovely.

So we set to it. I played against John's lizards and Craig of Blog of Grudges fame and his dwarves. Against Craig, I learned to mind my meargh (sorcerer Lord on disc) from getting cannoned off in turn 1. This is an elementary lesson I apparently needed to re-learn. I also developed a deep affection for the Infernal Gateway spell. My fimm (warriors with halberds and mark of Tzeentch) are super resilient, taking a rear charge from a block of thirty miners and not only surviving the impact, but turning about and pounding the little fellows back into the ground. Ultimately though, the anvil Craig was packing allowed some dwarf units to pull off some sneaky charges, and though it was close,  Craig did me in 14-6.

John's lizards taught me other things, things like don't get suckered into charging a unit that won't break, thereby pulling it out of the battle line and subsequently getting mullered by 3 counter charges. Chosen are good (my half-dead, bog mummies, essentially) but not that good. The Tuatha Taiden (marauders with mark of Khorne and great weapons ) did very well, holding the line against all, due in great part to the chieftain (exalted hero with sword of anti-heroes & other trickster's shard) who killed the lizard general, battle standard and a stegadon single-handedly, and he didn't think it too many. Poor deployment on my part, plus a general lack of experience cost me, but John's dice mocked him relentlessly, almost resulting in him losing his last Kroxigor and ancient stegadon to an overrun directly under his own Comet of Casandora spell. It would have been very funny indeed had they died as it ploughed down directly on top of them. In the end, a draw, which got pulled to an 11-9 to John due to my SCALE 1 list.

I'm enjoying the fimir, it's a new play style, and I'm having a blast putting the army together. The meargh is half done. I now have two weeks to finish her, which for me is cutting it close.

After the warhammer we gave Blood Bowl - Team Manager a go, and I have to say, all the positive reviews were bang on the money. What a great game. It is reminiscent enough of the actual game to seem familiar, but has plenty of it's own pleasant quirky rules. At this stage however, we were into our second bottle of gin, so my review is tainted somewhat by severe inebriation. And boy, how I paid for it the next day. Gin is the tipple of the devil himself, there can be no doubt.

So, after a most pleasant couple of days gaming I can safely say I am totally unprepared for the unlawful pounding I will receive at NWG.

BLOOD AND THUNDER!

On a side note, it seems I suck all the ass at Blood Bowl online. All of it. After another 4-0 defeat tonight I think I need to reconsider my future playing this game. How terrible to love a game and be truly awful at playing it.

Cyanide Release Dungeonbowl

Good lord! I hadn't heard a peep about this! Fantastic! Here's the link to the GW release.

Dungeonbowl

I shall be taking a look at this for certain. For those unfamiliar with Dungeonbowl, here's the blurb:

For those of you not up to scratch with your Bloodbowl, Dungeonbowl is the subterranean version of this classic game of fantasy American football set in the Warhammer world. The premise of Bloodbowl is simple: you pick up the spiky ball, punch and kick your way through the opposition's defence, run the length of the pitch and score a glorious touchdown. You then repeat the process until you run out of time or both teams are so battered that they can no longer fight. Dungeonbowl is pretty similar, only that it is fought underground in a nightmarish dungeon and the ball is hidden in one of several treasure chests (booby-trapped treasure chests, no less) scattered throughout the arena.

Bloodbowl - Chaos Edition

I like me some Bloodbowl. I've been a fan of Cyanide's computer game version since it was released, and I was more than happy today to see that there's a new expansion planned for September, the Chaos Edition. From the site: 

In Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition, three new races are making their triumphant arrival as well as a new stadium! The malevolent and much-anticipated Chaos Dwarves finally make their entrance, while the outcasts of the Underworld teams surface for the first time to participate in the tournament! This is just the beginning of a new season full of touchdowns and blood, as Blood Bowl also welcomes, for the very first time in its history, the Daemons of Khorne, hailing all the way from the Chaos realms! 

Now, the big excitement for me here is chaos dwarves. I love all things chaos dwarfy, and I've been hoping against hope for the chaos dwarf team to make an appearance, so this news makes me happeh.

Bloodbowl website

Fimir - Femo, the Chained Cyclops

I spotted this fellow on Greebo Miniatures, who produce some really fantastic Blood Bow... ah, I mean Fantasy Football miniatures. Being a bit of a Blood Bowl fan, I was perusing the undead team, and in particular the amazing wights, when I saw this new release, Femo, the chained cyclops. Now, I might be a bit fimir-centric these days, but to me, he seems very much like a rather large and somewhat obtuse looking fimir, with his big rock on his back and all. I mean, 'Femo'? It's pretty blatant. I'm sore tempted to pick him up, either as a filler for my second fimm unit, or as a standard/musician for a fianna fimm unit. Perhaps a little sculpting around the eye might be in order, but essentially, as he is. I can already feel a back-story for the big rock bubbling away.

What do folks think? Is one mad?

Blood Bowl - Field of Dreams

Listening to Zlurpcast recently, I came across an interview with the man behind FF Fields, a new company who do a range of bloodbowl fields, or pitches, depending on your location. All I can say is goddam. They look fantastic. They do standard designs, or custom fields with your logo, end zone text and so on, in either roll-up or six part hard plastic. This is a great new product for Bloodbowl, and now that I've seen it, the need to have is rising steadily.

Bloodbowl Team Manager - Counting Down...

I'm a bit of a Bloodbowl fan. It's arguably one of the best games ever published in my oh so humble opinion. Despite it's strange relationship with Games Workshop (it baffles me why they don't support it more fully) it has a special place in a lot of gamer's hearts. So the upcoming release of Bloodbowl Team Manager from Fantasy Flight Games is getting a place on my shelf, I can tell you. After the glowing review from Garagehammer I find myself eagerly awaiting the release of the game.

Tick tock...