"Blood Bowl or Dread Ball?" Topic

Never played either or anything like them. Figs for both look great. As I can likely find players for either, which one should I go with? Pros and cons?

You also might consider Blitz Bowl (2018), which is a scaled down version of Blood Bowl. I've discovered that Barnes & Nobles is dumping the 2018 boxed sets (which has two teams) in favor of the 2020 "Season Two" sets. I found one for $9. USD The figures should be pretty much usable with whatever game you settle on, so it's a good deal even if you don't wind up using the game itself.

Blitz Bowl is a great entry point if you've never played Bloodbowl. The recently released rules for Blood Bowl 7's also broadens your options within the game line.

But overall look at Bloodbowl first as it's a far more developed game with a far bigger player base.

In terms of background, I find Dreadball to be infinitely more believable:

- A sci-fi world with an organised sport run by an organisation whose only real concern is ratings? Sounds legit to me.

- Compare this with a fantasy world where different (and mutually antagonistic!) races tour each other's lands and are not immediately cut down by the locals. Where the level of technology means that advertising and mass communications don't really exist – so where are the fans and sponsors? Doesn't work for me.

For gameplay, I've only played Dreadball. It's an excellent game, fast, easy to learn (but hard to master) and with a variety of styles & tactics. I've heard that BloodBowl is slower and larger, which may appeal more to some people. Look for online reviews; I can only tell you about one side of the story…

I suspect that Dreadbowl has the edge on costs, since a team uses fewer players (and the Dreadball Extreme variant is currently available online for the astonishingly low price of £9.99 GBP: link

Model quality varies: some of the earlier Mantic models are made of PVC and aren't so easy to build, though later ones are really good. I imagine that GW's BloodBowl figures are technically excellent, though as always their style is something you either like or loathe.

Hope this helps. I've tried to keep this balanced, but really I'm a big DreadBall fan.

I never see distributor extra discounts on Blood Bowl. I see them all the time for Dread Ball.

Another suggestion is to hunt down copies of the OOP Battleball game by Hasbro. The figs are great, as is the grid-iron playing field. The rules aren't the best, but there are some decent home-brewed variants out there which greatly improve the game. Check BoardGameGeek for links to those.

link

It does have one genius mechanic— each player type uses its own die for both movement and tackling— "running backs" use a d20, for example— but the utility of the die is reversed in the two situations. For movement, you want the high roll. But in tackling, low roll wins. So the big, slow defensive backs (d6) almost always win tackle contests with the running backs (d20), but once the running backs are out of their movement range, it's all over but the touchdown.

Thanks. I will give them all a look. I am leaning away from GW due to cost and am glad to hear there may be a positive alternative.