This was the first time that Bryan and I had played Blood Bowl with new 'Second Season' rules. The main change has been the addition of a skill relating to how well a player can pass the ball. (Earlier this year I bought the new Second Season box set - read more here!)
Bryan has a dwarf team, which he has started painting but hasn't officially named yet. One of the possible names is the Dinas Delvers, so I've decided to go with that for now. I played with the skaven team with the addition of an ogre. Last time we played, my giant rats got really badly stomped on so I was hoping an ogre would give them a bit of protection.
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| Scrimmage line melee |
What I didn't bank on was some of the dwarves (the "Trollslayer" characters) having an attribute called 'Dauntless', which basically took away the advantage of my ogre's higher level of strength. That led to a lot of shoving back and forth on the line of scrimmage and at one point my ogre ended up flat on his back.
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| Ogre down! |
MATCH REPORT
Dinas Delvers 0-1 Bayside Vermin
(Match abandoned at half time as it was getting late and both managers were tired!)
Because we played the new season 2 rules which meant we had to look a load of things up and that slowed us down. This meant we only played one half, of 8 turns each.
There is a new kick off procedure and you have to roll to decide what happens while the ball is in the air and how far it deviates from where it's supposed to go. It then took a few turns for any of the players to actually get the ball under control. To pick it up, a player has to perform an "agility roll" - throw the dice and see if they score the target number needed. The Vermin kicked off, and then various Delvers fumbled trying to pick up the ball.
In this version of the game, your team go ends if (when) you mess up a dice roll. So every time a Delver failed an agility roll, the skaven could get closer to where the ball had ended up. Eventually one of the Vermin's pacy Gutter Runners eluded the attentions of the Delver defence and made a beeline for the ball.
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| Eyes on the ball |
Then it was a sprint to the end zone for the Gutter Runner and a glorious touchdown!
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| SCORE!!! |
As coaches, Bryan and I haven't got round to naming our team members and actually keeping any kind of record of what each individual player does. Over the course of a league campaign, Blood Bowl players earn Experience Points (XP) if they manage to do something like score a touchdown. However, any XP earned by this particular Gutter Runner would have been cancelled out, because on the next play he got pushed into the crowd and knocked out by violent fans!
With limited turns left before half time, the Delvers attempted a long pass over the heads of most of the players. The dice roll for the pass failed, but the Vermin player attempting to intercept couldn't couldn't catch it cleanly, instead knocking the ball astray. That meant more agility rolls.
On the Vermin's very last turn of the half, with the ball loose and for the taking, the Vermin player failed an agility test! This was very annoying, as agility is about the only skill skaven players really have. But, that was it, he fluffed the pick up and that was it for the night.
Overall, this was a great learning experience. The dwarf team has some useful attributes and although the ogre didn't really achieve much, none of the skaven players were killed this time! Which in the crazy world of Blood Bowl counts as progress!
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