The year? 2505. The place? The rolling green fields of Bretonnia… or perhaps the shifting dunes of Nehekhara. The game? Blood Bowl.
That’s right, sports fans – the Game of Fantasy Football is back with a new season. It brings two new teams (to begin with!), smart rules updates, and roster changes that will shake up team selections across the board. Written by Blood Bowl fanatics for Blood Bowl fanatics, this is the definitive edition of the game – it will shake up the meta and keep even the hoariest veterans on their toes.
It comes in an all-new boxed set loaded with everything you need to play, including two new teams, a hardback rulebook, dice, accessories and a pitch.
Let’s start with the teams: the Brionne Barons from fair Bretonnia take on the Nehekhara Nightmares, the truest veterans of the sport, in an Old World rematch with a markedly different vibe.
The Bretonnians are totally new to the tabletop – Dauntless Knights with a haughty attitude and high armour, attended by scrappy Squires looking for a brawl. Peasants need not apply.
The Tomb Kings, meanwhile, are back from the dead with a familiar roster – they’ve been playing for thousands of years, after all – in which all four positionals return almost exactly as you remember them.
Alongside the teams, the new season box contains everything else you need to start playing: a sturdy double-sided board and dugouts, two sets of dice, quick reference sheets, and a chunky hardback rulebook (including rejigged rosters for every team in the game).
There’s a plastic sprue containing the usual range ruler and scatter templates – and a new one which includes a clever ball marker for your players to stand on, and some new status markers to indicate who’s Prone, Stunned, Blitzing and so forth. So now, if you don’t want to lay your lovingly painted players on the pitch, you don’t have to. (But you still can if you like!)
The Bretonnian team is a classic high-risk, high-reward team with powerful abilities. Two Grail Knights are the key players, hard-hitting Blitzers with a new Skill – if they are ever about to be knocked down, Steady Footing lets them keep their footing and stay standing on a roll of 6.
They’re backed up by two Knight Throwers and two Knight Catchers – capable players who pair Pass and Catch respectively with Nerves of Steel. There’s no Big Guy, but Dauntless takes care of that. Finally, Squires bring Wrestle and a can-do attitude to the party.
The Tomb Kings will be familiar to seasoned coaches – a reliably bashy team with up to four ST5 Tomb Guardians with Brawler, backed up by two Blitzers, two Throwers, and suitably durable Skeleton Linemen. The Big Guys are tough, but Decay will still get ‘em in the end, and all those ancient Skeletons retain their Thick Skulls.
They still have a lower Agility stat than most, but this minor downside is less of an issue these days with the Secure the Ball action (which we explain below).
Speaking of rules, they’ve been lovingly reviewed, curated and revised for the third season – and that’s cause for celebration. The core game is exactly the same: the pitch hasn’t magically grown any new squares, there are no new stats, and everything should be very familiar.
It has all been exhaustively rewritten for clarity. Terminology is familiar, but consistent: there’s never any confusion between players (your miniatures) and coaches (yourself), or declaring and performing actions.
All of this has been done to make the playing experience as smooth as possible, without losing any of the depth or the magic of Blood Bowl. The Kick-off Table has been improved (no more Officious Refs), Wildly Inaccurate Passes no longer apply, and you can even now earn Star Player Points from throwing your team-mates and being thrown. There’s even a new Keyword system that makes it much easier to standardise interactions.
There are very few major changes, but the aforementioned Secure the Ball action is one. This works a bit like a Blitz or a Pass – it’s a once-per-turn action that lets you gather the ball on a 2+ and then ends your turn. There are caveats, of course: you can’t take the action if there’s a standing opponent within two spaces, while Big Guys and certain other powerful players aren’t able to perform it at all, but this innovation definitely mitigates the frustration of low-Agility teams who sometimes struggle to get the ball in hand.
Status Markers come in a fetching shade of metallic grey, but if you’d like to paint them, these are the colours suggested in the rulebook.
Status Markers are another innovation that just make the game smoother. Previously, it was actually quite hard to tell whether a player was Prone or Stunned, or whether they’d already taken their turn. Many people laid them face-up or face-down, or turned them around to indicate activation, but with bases getting bigger, it all became quite confusing. The Status Markers change all that – and you can now clearly mark every Blitz, knock-down, and more.
Most of these status effects should be familiar, but some are new. Distracted is now the catch-all term for players who are standing but have lost their tackle zones, including boneheaded Ogres or players hypnotised by Vampires. Chomped is inflicted by the revamped Monstrous Mouth Skill, while the new Eye Gouge Skill prevents a player from offering assists. Dodgy Snack is the result of a Kick-off event.
The new season will be released later in the year, alongside two Spike! Journals for the new teams, as well as new boards, dice and cards. We’ll touch on the rest of the rules changes in a comprehensive article soon – including the new Skills.
And no, we haven’t forgotten the High Elves – there will be PDF rules available at launch for coaches with the classic team in their collection, but this will all be updated in due course...
