"What goes around comes around. Blood Bowl" Topic

My wife and I started our league yesterday. We each have two teams, a primary and a secondary. I'll play humans and lizards, she skaven and orcs. The secondary part comes in that when humans play lizards, she'll take the lizards. Similarly, when skaven play orcs, I'll take the orcs.

Anyway, she tends to leave her figures not quite in a square, so I'm always asking where they should go. As she started her turn yesterday, I asked about a down Black Orc Blocker, since he covered two squares. She stood him up in the correct square, and I called her for illegal procedure. It went kind of like this:

Me: You forgot to move your turn marker!
Her: Oh, I didn't know we were using that rule.
Me: Well, we did talk about some other league rules [whether we'd bother with a weather table (we are, and are playing in a blizzard), whether use kick-off table (we are), etc], and didn't mention that one, so we'll let it slide this time. But now you know.
Me: On the other hand, the rule is just to help you remember to move the marker, and can be kind of mean, so we don't need to use the Illegal Procedure rule. It is optional.
Her: No, we can use it.

… a few turns later …
Her: You forgot to move your marker!

Fortunately for me, I had no re-rolls and didn't mind giving her one for a turn where she couldn't do much. Actually, she had some bad-luck other places. She chose a Special Play card that gave a bunch of bonuses on FAME and similar things, but the kick-off result was a High Kick, so didn't take any of those into account. My Special Play card got rid of two of her three re-rolls, but she ended up with them all, because of different events (including the Illegal Procedure) during the half.

We got through a half in an evening, which is good for us. I think we'll start going a lot faster, though I think she needs to not stare at it for so long.

Oh, and my lizards are up 1-0 at the half, with two injured skinks and a Knocked Out Saurus. She has one Knocked Out Lineorc.

andy

I should have mentioned that, after I let her off for her forgetting to do it, that she agreed to use it the rest of the way because she knows she's far more likely to remember than I am!

That's what I get for trying to catch her.

andy

Only ever played one game of blood bowl many, many years ago.

Humans vs Orks with me playing the Orks.

Very low scoring game for the first half since I spent most of it putting my opponent's players either into the ground or badly injured.

We called the game at the beginning of the 2nd Half when all the Humans could do was put just five players onto the pitch.

I had 11 players on the pitch.

It was going to be a slaughter if he continued to play.

I think Blood Bowl is going to be good for my character. :) That's because I'm having to relax about getting my players hurt. The lizards have lots of skinks, and they're fragile. I find myself laughing more, and hoping I'll get some bonuses as my team value goes down… If I play worrying about all the bad stuff, it will be much less fun.

That said, we've never had such a one-sided wound-fest. There are ways to keep your players a bit safer. Keep your lighter guys not in contact, and the other team can only make one blitz. (Good to have dodge rolls.) I know sometimes you have to get a lot in for assists, but if you're not all in contact, there will be less opportunities.

We have not started using fouls yet. Not sure if we will. But the overall "balance", if there is any, assumes that hurting the other guys is part of the game. So learning to relax and laugh.

andy

We played the second half last night. My expectation was that she'd get the initial kick-off and score after 4-ish turns to tie, then I'd have a chance to try to win. She made some good throws (all quick and short, as we were in a blizzard) and hand-offs, and got down near my end of the field. By the end of the game, I had lost half my team (2 saurus, 4 skinks), but I kept her orcs a move away from the end zone for 5 turns, mostly with skinks. I was running them up to put tackle zones on the ball, knowing I could get clobbered. But their dodge skill kept coming through, and there were a lot of pushes. Maybe I should have let her score earlier and given myself more time to break the tie, but I couldn't not try every turn. And I kept her from scoring the whole half. I think she used her blitz on the wrong skink once, and if had knocked down or pushed a different one she may have been able to clear away more tackle zones and had a better chance of picking up ball and scoring.

Lizards won 1-0. All of the injured are coming back, and one orc will miss one game.

We each called the other on Illegal Procedure twice in the half. It always happens when you are excited and focused on trying something, so it is frustrating to have to lose a re-roll you were figuring on. My character may end up improved, but it hasn't happened yet--I get too frustrated when called.

Next game is Skaven and Humans.

We had a ton of fun. Just need to make it go fast enough to play whole game in an evening. Turning models once activated helped a lot. Much faster than rehearing which figures have gone already. And my plays were pretty quick. She takes a bit too long rehearsing what she'll do. Familiarity with the game will help as we play more.

The book sure could be better. Finding the rules among the fluff text and examples is really hard. I think I'll take a highlighter to the rules, and note references to related sections, and which book to find them in.

andy