Blood Bowl Season 3 is almost here, and with it come two (kinda) new teams! We’ve already covered the Tomb Kings; today we’re taking a look at the updated version of the Bretonnian roster, which only got a run as a team during the LRB days, and no official models— until now, of course. Let’s go through the new humans on the block and see how they measure up.
Pros
- Extremely cost efficient. You can start with all your essentials and then some, and players are relatively easy to replace.
- Lots of early skills to build on. Assuming you field all positionals, 7 out of your 11 have Block or Wrestle, 6 have Dauntless, and 4 have Nerves of Steel.
- Can bash against high strength teams unusually well for a human team thanks to high armour Grail Knights and Dauntless spam.
Cons
- Very average statlines. Standard human fare, with some minor tweaks. Positionals all have equal or worse stats than Human team equivalents (bar AV here and there).
- Not great skill access. Locked out from the new Devious skills entirely, as not even the linemen can take them as Secondaries. Positionals have unremarkable access.
- No real team building. In League you can buy everything, except one or two optionals. A tourney roster will only really add a star player.
The Roster
Bretonnian Squires
The Squire is something of a combination of the old Bretonnian team’s peasant Linemen and Yeomen, taking the lower armour of the former and the Wrestle (and 3+ AG) of the latter. Given that these linemen are knights-in-training, I was surprised they didn’t have the standard 9+ armour (and all the knight positionals 10+), but they’re lumbered with the fragile 8+ AV and we’ll have to make do. The rest of their statline is the standard human compliment: average strength, average agility, average movement, etc.
While rather unsexy on paper, these linemen are really the bedrock of the team. With Wrestle on every mook, these lads are going to be a supreme annoyance as markers, ballhawks, and screeners. The classic ball carrier “Dwarf Dodge” (blitz out and then run) is going to be a risky maneuver against even a fresh Bret team!.
They also cost the same as a standard Human Lineman at 50k each, which is good, because with that armour value they’re going to get benched a lot. Thankfully not as often as in the 2020 rules, thanks to the updated casualty table, but still. It’s also a shame that they can’t even take Devious skills as Secondaries, as throwing Dirty Player on a 50k or less piece is always a temptation, particularly in a tourney roster.
Thanks to starting with Wrestle, you can go in a lot of interesting directions for first skills. Taunt will make an even more annoying marker, and Strip Ball or Tackle an effective ballhawk. Though it’s not very glamorous, Kick is always worth picking up on a lineman, useful against basically any team. More Dauntless can make your team even more irritating against strong teams, but perhaps just take if it comes up on a random pick. Speaking of, Squires are a good option for randoms, especially now that the process has been improved. I count 7/11 General skills (excluding Wrestle, of course) which are ok-to-great on them, which is well worth a punt (but no passing access, so no Punt).
If you manage somehow to amass enough SPP or tourney picks for a Secondary, Guard, Jump Up, Diving Tackle, and Stand Firm are all great options.
Bretonnian Knight Catchers
Our first knight positional sports a slightly above-average MA7, which might be worse than the regular Human Catcher, but at least this one has AV 9+. Like the other knights, the cost here is primarily based on the bevy of starting skills — specifically Catch, Dauntless, and Nerves of Steel. With a standard 3+ AG, and the thrower’s 3+ PA, Nerves of Steel is unlikely to see as dramatic use as on Elf teams. But it’s a nice-to-have that’ll come in handy fairly often. Dauntless is unlikely to be as useful in early League games, but as your primary scorers it shouldn’t take too long to get Block on ‘em.
They’re maybe a touch overpriced at 85k a pop, given their lower MA and lack of Dodge compared to the 10k cheaper Human Catcher, but also this team has nothing else to spend its money on really, so it’s hard to get particularly upset about it. You also will likely be replacing them less often than you would the comparatively more fragile Human Catchers.
Knight Catchers have Primary Access to General and Agility skills, which gives them plenty of good options, but really the only logical first pick is Block. Once you have that you essentially have another (slightly less armoured) Grail Knight. After that, the next obvious pick is Dodge, then perhaps Hit & Run or Sidestep, given that they’re the only player with Agility as Primary.
Bretonnian Knight Thrower
The Knight Thrower costs 5k more than the regular Human Thrower, and for that 5k swaps out Sure Hands for Dauntless and Nerves of Steel, which isn’t a bad deal. Otherwise he’s your standard human thrower. Same stats, same access, same Pass skill. This guy will likely get even less early use out of Nerves of Steel, as the Catcher will be using it for hand-offs as well as catching passes, while the thrower just uses it for passing. Dauntless, again, is mid to start (with no combat skill) but after you grab Block, you’re laughing, and basically have another Blitzer to use.
This piece is going to have a somewhat harder time accruing SPP than the Catcher, so you’ll want to focus on the essentials. Block has got to be first pick, as it makes for a better ball carrier and a backup blitzer, then Sure Hands for better pickups so you don’t have to resort to Secure the Ball as much. That might have been a first pick if their rerolls were pricier, but you can trivially start with three, so you can afford to wait till after Block. Alternatively, you could lean harder into utilising Nerves of Steel by grabbing Accurate as a second or even first skill.
You might notice a shared positive to the last two Knights — their skills are so-so out of the box due to their average stats, but after a single level-up they’re in a really good place. With no extra skills they’re outperformed by plenty of other similar positionals, but arguably outperform them after both have picked up a skill. Dauntless is great with Block, Nerves of Steel is great with Diving Catch or Accurate, etc.
Grail Knights
These lads are your Blitzers, of course. Aficionados of Warhammer Fantasy lore, such as I, may be a tad disappointed to see a normal human blitzer statline here (apart from , given that in their original form they’re basically religiously fueled Space Marines. My logic is that all of the best Grail Knights are off fighting dragons, and the Blood Bowling lads are their more cowardly cousins.
On the upside, they do sport a nice bevy of starting skills — Block, Dauntless, and Steady Footing, the latter of which is a new skill that basically gives you a 6+ ward save whenever you’re going to fall over or get knocked down. It’s not going to come up often, but boy is it going to be annoying when it does! Otherwise this is a standard Blitzer piece with the added benefit of being a good Big Guy/strong Blocker thanks to Dauntless.
Steady Footing makes these an ideal piece on which to put Guard, especially given your general lack of Strength access (or indeed strong players). Mighty Blow is also obviously a good first pick, and going for MB on one and Guard on the other is worth doing. If your league or tourney is likely to have a lot of Dodge, possibly substitute Mighty Blow for Tackle first. As a later skill, Stand Firm dovetails with Steady Footing and Guard excellently.
Tactics and Playstyle
Bretonnians mostly play fairly similarly to the regular human team, but with some quirks. Wrestle spam means that they’re unusually resilient to blitzes and Block heavy teams, and if they can get a shot at the ball carrier even a basic lineman can act as a ballhawk. But without a lot of Strength access or high strength pieces, they’re going to struggle a bit more to make that hole in the line. They’re slightly slower, but have greater capacity for Elf plays thanks to all that Nerves of Steel.
Against higher strength teams, you can (mostly) throw punches, but you can’t really take them. Your linemen are low armour, your dudes are not strong. Because of that, disengagement is the modus operandi. Don’t follow up blocks, don’t heavily base up (unless it becomes necessary). Any savvy opponent is going to try and get as many punches in on those low armour Squires as they can, don’t let them! In a pinch, you can also out-elf any strength team quite handily, even better than Humans can.
Against faster, higher agility teams, your primary weaknesses are unimpressive movement speed and a lack of ability to keep up with their agility plays. Unlike a regular Human team, you can’t bully them with an Ogre or cut them down with Tackle, so you’ll need to rely on any acquired skills and normal combat attrition.
Due to how cheap everything is on this team, and how few extra purchases Bretonnians even have access to, expect to field Star Players regularly both in league and in tourney play. Old World Classic have a great selection of stars — Puggy Baconbreath, Cindy Piewhistle, and Akhorne the Squirrel for lower amounts of petty cash; Morg ‘n Throg, Griff Oberwald, and Grim Ironjaw for higher amounts. Anyone who can add a bit of strength to the team is a welcome addition!
Starting Team Builds
League Play
Bret rosters are very efficient indeed, to the point where there’s functionally only a couple of valid lineups that don’t come intensely below 1000k TV. Well, there’s one listed in the Spike Journal, but it’s not actually a legal list, so ignore that one!
2x Grail Knight
2x Bretonnian Knight Thrower
2x Bretonnian Knight Catcher
6x Bretonnian Squire
3x Reroll
1000k TV
So uh, yeah. Everything! Well, almost. 12 guys, all your positionals, three rerolls. There’s one logical alternative, of course.
2x Grail Knight
2x Bretonnian Knight Thrower
2x Bretonnian Knight Catcher
5x Bretonnian Squire
3x Reroll
Apothecary
1000k TV
11 guys, all your positionals, and an Apo. Really up to you which of these you go for, it makes very little difference.
League Development
Buy another lineman or two, depending on if you started with 11 or 12 players. Buy an Apo if you didn’t already. The rest of the money after that, I mean geez, either you get super unlucky and need to replace players a lot or it gets flushed down the Expensive Mistakes table.
Tournament Builds
Your only real options are adding Stars, so here’s a couple of options for a 1150k roster:
2x Grail Knight
2x Bretonnian Knight Thrower
2x Bretonnian Knight Catcher
5x Bretonnian Squire
Karla von Kill
2x Reroll
Apothecary
1150k TV
That gets you 12 players, as well as a slightly stronger piece that can also Dauntless around the place. You do have to go down to 2 rerolls to avoid dropping to 11 players, but with some safety skill picks that should be manageable.
If you’d rather have the extra reroll and more bodies, you could try:
2x Grail Knight
1x Bretonnian Knight Thrower
2x Bretonnian Knight Catcher
6x Bretonnian Squire
The Mighty Zug
2x Reroll
Apothecary
1150k TV
We’re dropping a Thrower for another Squire here to grab Zug, who can do Big Guy stuff that the team is generally missing.
If you want to go all in on getting some more brawn, there’s also:
2x Grail Knight
1x Bretonnian Knight Thrower
2x Bretonnian Knight Catcher
5x Bretonnian Squire
Morg ‘n Thorg
2x Reroll
1150k TV
A dicey one to be sure. No bench, on a low armour team? I wouldn’t recommend it. But hey, it has its upsides.
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