"Welcome, Jim, to the highlights of a preseason friendly, between the Beastie Boys and the Coppercorn Steelers..."
"Anything Blood Bowl can't be described as friendly Bob, and with two treemen, a minotaur, three Chaos blockers and a load of horned beastmen on the pitch, it will definitely be UNfriendly."
"Maybe getting a game versus Halflings was a fun warm up for the Beasties, Jim, but they are a little out of practise."
I used to LOVE Blood Bowl. Many years ago, in the Milton Keynes Blood Bowl League, I used quite a few 2nd edition metal teams, sometimes more successful than others. Again, I started trying to take it too seriously, that never goes well for me.
Recently, (2016) GW relaunched Blood Bowl (I remember it before polystyrene pitches folks), and popularity down the LB club had always been bubbling under. I looked on with interest at the new teams, and I even painted a Skaven team for Rach's teacher as a thank you, but was never tempted, until now. One of the guys has organised a team, and my temptation got the better of me, so I looked at the teams I could use without buying anything new:-
- Halflings - Halfpint Heroes (Miami Dolphins themed) - David was already using.
- Amazon - Bunny girls - not PC, but cute. Their skills and team have really been changed (gone are four blitzers ALL starting with Block and Dodge, utterly lethal), so will take time to learn their new strengths.
- Orcs - Gouged Eye - (Washington insert name here) - Decent Orc team, but I know others will use them.
- Dark Elves - Arioch's Assasins - LA Rams - (Where do they play now?) Great team, but I would need to practise my passing game, and that seems to be the biggest change so far.
- Pro Elves/Elven Union - Elfhelm Eagles (Philadelphia Eagles themed) - even more of a passing team, also brittle (the players, not the figures), win big or go home in an ambulance!!
- Chaos - Beastie Boys - All converted Heresy - missing parts, have a reputation for not actually hurting anything.
I plumped for Chaos - now Chaos Chosen, Favoured of Chaos Undivided. These haven't seen daylight for about 15 years, and had the unique distinction of coming in second in their pool last time I used them, without ever scoring a single casualty!!! Chaos, it's a hard hitting team, but comes with no real skills and is very, very expensive. They need to accrue SPP points quickly.
A few repairs (and finding/substituting missing body parts), they were ready to go again, I bought the new rules and a vanilla pitch, and David came round to run his 16 player halfling team (14 halflings and two treemen - Halflings don't have apothecary, they have tree surgeons) against the Beasties.
"Here are the highlights Bob, the Beasties elected to receive, and quickly caged up, driving downfield on their first play."
"Four K.O.s and two injured in three turns, looks like those Beasties are definitely making up for missed seasons."
"TOUCHDOWN!! Cornelius. Bob, the five thousand Beasties fans are loving this, even if three thousand are fair weather fans."
"There were three thousand Steelers fans to start with, I suspect that number will drop!"
"From desertion?"
"No, from being dessert, those Chaos fans are voracious!"
"Jim, we rejoin the action in the second half, where despite recieving twice, and making at all the way down to the 20 yard line, the Steelers players have failed to score. Cornelius has just shoved the ball carrier off the pitch, and the ball return was at least 11 squares."
"Must have either been an elf or an ogre with an arm like that, get someone to sign that one up immediately, Bob!"
"Unfortunately for the Steelers, they only have eight players left on the pitch, none near the ball, and two rooted treemen! All it took was the Beasties to pick up the ball and walk it in for a second TD".
"The Steelers came for hospitality, looks like they are getting horse brutality!" 
"Heresh a shot of Shteelersh dugout at the end of the game, plenty of buisshnessh for us Igors after thish game!"
"IGOR, welcome back! Looking good man, is that a new face?"
"It'sh my brothersh!"
"Certainly looks like the Steelers came off worse there."
"Jim, if this was a regular season, eight injured and two K.O's, that's over half the team, that's really bad news. Think there's going to be a lot of Freebooters making a pile of cash this season!"
"Think of the Inducements that will have too! Thankfully, it's a preseason game, so most will recover before the league commences. If not, I'm sure Igor can make a new man of them all, have to see what spare parts he has left!"
"One worry was a self-inflicted calf injury on Ky-Gox the minotaur in the second drive. Thankfully, there's enough apothecaries around between seasons to fix him quickly."
"Calf injury, I see what you did there. Apothecaries, or veterinarians?"
2-0 Beasties, eight in the injured box, but we did spend the majority of the game down to 8 or 9 players, just lucky to get a good run of blocks on the halflings (who with dodge are surprisingly difficult to catch) and David tried hitting me, but two dice defender picks is never a good option for a halfling! Knowing my luck, I will have used it all on this one game. We shall see. Any normal strength team might have been a very different challenge, and the likes of Dwarves starting with Block will be hideous.
Has Blood Bowl been changed much? Not really, a few rules tweaked here and there, passing is harder, some skills have changed and player skills too, but so far, so good.
Do I still like it?? Yes!
Am I playing again? Oooooh yes!
Comments
Post a Comment