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Sunday, February 6, 2011

Bloodbowl

In honor of Superbowl Sunday, we will talk about Bloodbowl. Bloodbowl is another Games Workshop title set in the universe of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. However, instead of being about armies fighting each other on the field of battle, it is about teams fighting each other on the gridiron. Imagine fantasy football, literally. You've got teams of orks, beastmen, chaos mutants, goblins, undead, lizardmen, and all manner of fantasy staples fighting for the Championship. It's a fun game that recently saw release as a videogame, and it's available for free online play through fumbbl, I think.

Anyway, it's pretty nutty. Although I love the orks even in Fantasy, I prefer the chaos team because I love me some beastmen. However, orks are a more balanced team, featuring little guys, big guys, blitzers, blockers, linemen and throwers. Though balanced, they still focus on beating the ever loving crap out of the other team, ensuring that they're too injured to play through a whole game, thus winning by default. Bloodbowl as a game features shady tactics, such as fouling fallen foes, bribing refs, and hiring mercenary all star players to carry your team through that tough battle. Using your team's fortune, you can make the ref call more fouls on the enemy, or ignore your own, have people beat up enemy players, or instigate crowd riots.

That isn't all. You also got spells that you can cast on the field, steroids to give your players, and other fun stuff. At the end of a game, your players gain experience, and if they level up they can gain new abilities. This varies based on teams, like a Chaos player could sprout tentacles, while an ork player would learn to be a better blocker. Each team plays differently, though some have very similar game plans, and others seem like carbon copies of other teams. Be that as it may, it's an amusing game, and a break from the seriousness that Warhammer Fantasy Battle normally is. My only problem, my only complaint, is that it's been discontinued. The rules are available for free, but Games Workshop no longer makes models for it. I might buy some orks or beastmen from Fantasy's line and model them into Bloodbowl players, depending on how finances look. Next year I might even stream actual Bloodbowl, not that anyone would watch Gork's(Or maybe Mork's) Blitzboyz try to take the Old World Bloodbowl league by storm.

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