It’s an exciting time for Blood Bowl fans, with the recent announcement that Blood Bowl will be getting a ‘Third Season’, or third update of the rules since the 2016 re-release. And apart from a few small previews, those rules currently come with lots of unknowns, leaving the community in a state of feverish speculation. HardyRoach and I got together to chew over the possibilities and express our hopes for what the Third Season will bring.
Rule Clarity
King_Ghidra: One of the stated goals of the edition, this is a big one for me. I have given my increasingly weary verdict for Goonhammer on the FAQs over the past few years, and to reiterate my general feelings on that, I’m glad the FAQ exists, I’m glad it gets regular updates, but it has become a bloated, unordered mess, and the quality of the questions chosen for inclusion and the responses given have often been poor. Moreover, the flip-flopping of certain rules and changes to certain actions has effectively made it impossible to play the game for certain teams without constant FAQ consultation. If anyone can confidently say what does or does not cause a turnover after various possibilities of a Throw Team-Mate action, or a Bombardier action, you’re a better person than me.
All of this stems from the state of the original Second Season rules, which fundamentally I applaud for trying the keyword approach and creating universal principles for the game. But it was immediately obvious they hadn’t nailed it. The fact that certain teams (especially Vampires) subsequently released that had various complex interactions with that original confused state left us in a pretty horrible place.
Clearly GW are aware of these issues and call out some of them in the WarCom article, so, I hope with all my heart that with what they’ve learnt, and with the skills they no doubt possess as rule-crafters, we see a more elegant, intuitive, and comprehensible Season 3.
HardyRoach: As GW rulebooks have become more and more technically precise with their language over the years to prevent bad faith readings or even just good faith interpretations of unclear text, we have all also learned that there’s no amount of precision that will rid us of all of this. Consequently, one of my hopes for Third Season is actually not about the rulebook or the rules at all, but simply that I hope that the team working on the FAQs has learned some lessons from Second Season, and avoids some of the mistakes they’ve made over the course of that edition. If it’s true that the new rules have been worked on in conjunction with prominent members of the competitive community, perhaps also extend that to the FAQ process, if at all possible.
Meta Shake-Up
King_Ghidra: This is going to be an interesting one because much of what might happen here was omitted from the initial WarCom article. The community has been awash for years with rumours and speculation about forthcoming changes. We’ve heard that more teams’ rosters will look like the contents of the miniature boxes, that certain teams will lose certain skills, that universally strong skills like Guard or Block will get nerfed or controlled somehow, etc. etc. And for the most part we’ve not yet heard anything to confirm any of this is happening at all.
What we do know is that recent team reworks have tended to follow a model where skills like Block have been removed from players (e.g. Amazon Blitzers) or positionals have been reduced to reduce the amount of Block available (Chaos Dwarves). In the Chaos Dwarf case those Blockers were replaced by Flamesmiths with Brawler, and we have heard that Tomb Guardians are also now getting Brawler. So there does seem to be a consistent design philosophy to move teams away from defaulting to Block at least. If this is applied to some of our traditional rosters, there is going to be an enormous impact.
Per the WarCom article we’ve got a new skill that might also threaten Guard’s power: Eye Gouge. This seemingly cancels a player’s ability to provide any assists, (so not just Guard players) and with GW already having made some movies in this direction with Defensive, it’s clear that the power projection of Guard is certainly in their sights.
Personally I’m in the camp where I think some rules changes to reflect the supremacy of Block/Dodge/Guard is overdue. Those skills should either cost more, or other skills should cost less, or the amount of them should be capped somehow, or something, anything, should be done to reflect or balance their influence.
If something like that does arrive it will be one of the biggest changes we see in the edition and potentially completely change team-building for League and Tourney play. But if it is coming then GW has not shown their hand yet.
HardyRoach: I’m in the camp in favour of some kind of scaling SPP cost system for different skill tiers. I don’t particularly like the idea of limiting the number of skill picks (which feels like its taking control away) or the idea of capping skills (which will be low impact in shortform leagues and tournies anyway), but the idea that the Coach will have to work a bit harder to turn that Gutter Runner into a Blodgestepper is appealing! It would have a knock-on consequence that getting that much needed Block skill on a Saurus or Black Orc will be even more difficult, but perhaps that’s an acceptable trade-off.
King_Ghidra: This is all of course an exercise fraught with risk. Any combination of even small changes can propel a particular team to unforeseen heights of success (or irrelevance). And experience across a multitude of games and systems suggests that developers are never able to match the community in quickly finding and exposing those combinations. Hopefully GW will be monitoring the early weeks of release and pounce on anything that might be hurting the game.
It took multiple revisions over months (years?) to bring Underworld Denizens back into line with the other teams, and right now the game has a couple of very strong teams in Amazons and Vampires that could go completely out of control if the game changes further in their favour. Ultimately I hope Season 3 does shake the meta up, even radically, but that broken outliers don’t emerge, and if they do, GW acts quickly to check them.
HardyRoach: This definitely is something that makes me concerned. One of my favourite teams over the course of the game has always been Chaos Dwarfs, and after playing a fair amount of them since the new team was released, online and on tabletop, I feel like they’re so much less fun now. Unlike some, I’m not so down on the Flamesmiths – they’re not great, but have come in handy once or twice. But removing Tackle from the Chaos Dwarf Blockers was a terrible idea. Maybe it felt like a small change to the designers, but it removes that “sticky” quality that makes up for how slow Dwarf players are, and makes them really struggle against any kind of agility or movement based team. As Ghidra says, even small-seeming changes can have major effects.
Skills and Traits
King_Ghidra: I really hope that we don’t see more positional-unique skills like Hit And Run because it just adds to the inventory of stuff that needs to be in a coaches head to play the game, and it detracts from that concept of keywords and universal principles to instead leave us with something like 40K where you need to know all the specific wording on a particular unit’s datasheet to actually know what it does. Star Player Special Rules have already added a lot of that to the game. Also as a general principle, if a cool and interesting new skill is added to the game it would be better if it could go into the general pool of skills available for players to acquire via levelling.
It seems that with some other new skills coming we are going to get more generally available, and perhaps we might see some updates or rework of the player advancement categories or process. Right now randoming has some really bad categories where the bad/useless outweighs the good. Randoming does need to be balanced, because you are getting skills quicker and cheaper, but it does again often lead to ‘feels bad’ situations.
All that said, the new skill Steady Footing might be the exception where I really really hope it isn’t proliferated.
What’s wrong with Steady Footing? It adds dice rolls (by your opponent on your turn), which is going to be an annoying interruption. It’s not likely to occur (which makes the roll mostly pointless) and when it does it’s going to feel extremely bad. Saving Throws or Ward Saves are not something Blood Bowl needs. Very often, coaches have to work hard to get one shot on a ball carrier, having their skills and effort negated by a lucky 6 is not improving the game.
HardyRoach: I agree with you completely about Steady Footing. They probably thought it was fine because, on paper, it’s not dissimilar to Foul Appearance. But the psychology of it is completely different.
I’m not the biggest fan of Foul Appearance as a skill. However, it’s one thing to not get to do your block/blitz, it’s another thing to get all the way to actually scoring the knockdown, only for a lucky 6 to just say “nope”. That just feels bad. As Ghidra pointed out when we talked about this, you can also reroll a Foul Appearance check, but not so with Steady Footing, as your opponent seems to roll it.
Block prevents a knockdown, but it’s not random, and the impact of it is also dependent on your opponent’s skills. Dodge prevents a knockdown, but still has an effect on the game which you can capitalise on. These add tactical interest, even if Block is a bit OP, but this does not.
Secure the Ball
HardyRoach: This is probably the most impactful rules addition that we know of at the moment, and it’s certainly been a divisive topic in the various Bowl communities I’m in. The most common anti-StB arguments I’ve seen are that it reduces wacky randomness, it goes too far in alleviating a disadvantage of low-AG teams, and that it disadvantages speed teams by making scores off of post-fumble snatches less likely. Pro arguments include that it makes it less likely to lose a game due to a run of bad pick-ups, and that it gives low AG teams more of a chance to gain or regain possession should the ball be knocked loose.
Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic, and interested to see the full version of the rule. My measure of the value of a change like this is whether or not it introduces new tactical considerations and interesting trade-offs, or whether it removes them. By making it so that Secure the Ball has a higher chance of getting a pickup, but immediately ends your turn, it introduces a lot of interesting situations! You’re under pressure, and you need to do a pickup, but you also have important punches. Do you do a regular pickup first thing, hoping that you can do your punches afterwards so a turnover won’t leave the ball on the ground? Do you do your punches first, hoping for good results, so you can end the turn with a StB? Or do you forgo your punches entirely and do a StB first to make sure that reroll you don’t want to burn gets used on the most important thing if needed?
On the idea that it’s too kind to low AG teams, I just don’t really agree. Due to ending the turn it keeps speed plays unreliable for those teams – you still can’t easily pick up, hand off, then do a pass to move the ball quickly. Also, as it can’t be done if there’s an opponent close by it can be cancelled out with pressure, and if you are incapable of getting someone within two spaces of a loose ball late in the drive, you’re probably not in a good position anyway! In practice I think this action is going to be used on the first turn of a drive the vast majority of the time, and if your entire game plan is messed up because your opponent, uh, picked up the ball, I think you may have bigger issues. A far less important but personal point: it always bugged me that seasoned athletes somehow struggle to pick up the ball in a situation with no opposition or interference around, so that petty nitpick of mine is addressed (the community will rejoice at that I’m sure).
However, having said all that, there are a lot of unknowns that could completely change my opinion. They’ve said the action will be restricted in some way, that’s good. Big guys won’t be able to do it, and “certain other powerful players”. But we don’t know how they’ll be restricted. What we want to avoid is a scenario in which a Lizardman team can happily pick up and carry with a Saurus, as this would be both somewhat unfair and also disrupt their intended play style. I’m less concerned about limited positionals like Bull Centaurs and Flesh Golems, as having one of those off the front lines is a decent negative trade-off to having a strength 4 carrier. But if it’s restricted to strength 3 or lower, that might be the best way, and doesn’t require remembering which strength 4 guy can or can’t use the action.
Furthermore, how will skills and modifiers interact with this new action? Will Sure Hands, Big Hand and Extra Arms be usable? Well, dunno yet! Hence my aforementioned caution.
New Teams
HardyRoach: We’ve got one confirmed new team (Bretonnians), and one teased new team (High Elves). I was actually really surprised to see that Bretonnians would be the next brand new roster, as Imperial Nobility are just a rejiggered version of the old Bret roster (but, uh, worse). From our limited info, it seems like Brets will have some stuff in common with their original version – knights with lots of skills, dauntless, plenty of wrestle – but the Imperials are keeping custody of the low-AV linemen with Fend (good, you can keep ‘em).
What I’m hoping for with this team is a sort of elite human team, like an Elf team but with perks other than a good AG score. Higher average armour, more skills, but overall more expensive per player. Amazons and Norse are based on specific gimmicks and low armour, so don’t quite fit that niche for me despite their high skill count. Imperials have the expensive positionals (that are overcosted) but also low armour, low agi linemen, so more of a min-max team (in theory, in practice they’re just a bit crap).
For High Elves, I’m not sure what my hopes are. Certainly, for them to retain their general identity as the “passing elves”. Otherwise, perhaps something that makes their positionals a little more unique, though ideally without the introduction of too many more positional-specific new skills that further complicate the game’s meta and bookkeeping.
Tomb Kings aren’t a new team, obviously, but as they’re in the initial release I’ll share my hopes for them too. I’m overall happy with what we’ve seen so far (which isn’t much, but they imply that changes are minimal in the first article), with the caveat that if Brawler increases the cost of the Guardians too much, it’s going to make things irritating. Brawler is certainly not worth an extra 10k of hiring gold, I’d rather have no skill at all. If it’s 5k, I can live with that, especially given that taking a thrower on a starting roster will be less essential with the introduction of Secure the Ball.
King_Ghidra: I can’t say I was wildly excited about Brets returning. After Imperial Nobility, I thought that kind of team concept had been done, but I know there are a lot of people in the community that liked the original Bret roster and the Bretonnian theme and aesthetic. The minis certainly look great. I hope as a roster they find a niche that is dissimilar enough to the Nobles.
Tomb Kings I’m excited for, because I think the current iteration is a great team, and I’ve been holding off buying third-party models in anticipation of this long-rumoured release. I am also definitely a bit concerned about the Brawler change and cost increases. It has big potential to hurt the team’s starting rosters for little gain, though arguably down the development line it will help them.
I’m going to assume that the initial High Elf pdf will just be a cut and paste to tide them over until a proper rework. I’ve always felt they were the elves with the least identity in terms of game mechanics, and the clunky rework of their throwers in BB20 didn’t help. If any team does deserve the kind of spicing up that has been achieved with positional-unique skills it is probably them.
Final Thoughts
Phew! So, a lot to think on, and we’ve only had the merest of previews yet. You can be sure we’ll have lots more to say once we get confirmed details on any of the above talking points.
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