The newest edition of Blood Bowl is on the horizon, and we’ve already gone over some of our hopes and expectations for the new edition. But before we dive into the fun and excitement (and arguments) of a new season of the game, it’s good to take a moment to look back and reflect. We’ve rounded up our Blood Bowl team to give their thoughts on how Season 2 went, for them personally and for the general health of the game.
Blood Bowl Season 2, or BB2020 as we shall call it for the rest of this article for brevity’s sake, was perhaps the biggest shift that the game has had in a long time. In 2016 Games Workshop finally welcomed the great sport of Blood Bowl back into the official fold, after years of community support with the Living Rulebook. In its initial return, Blood Bowl did not undergo any substantial changes from the most recent community version (LR6), but when it was time for another edition, this changed.
While the general flow and foundational rules of the game were left intact, the edition attempted significant sea-changes in the throwing game, statlines, player levelling, and a range of other skill changes and additions that created a noticeable shift in the meta. Over the course of the BB2020 lifespan we also saw a range of new teams and star players added to the game, and a definite new trend in how new teams were designed.
All of this is rather a lot for one writer to handle, so we’re throwing it to our Blood Bowl writing team to get their thoughts on how the edition panned out.
Before and after BB2020 was released, what was your relationship with the game, and how were you playing it?
HardyRoach: I first started playing Blood Bowl sometime in the 2000s. It had long since been abandoned by Games Workshop, but there was still a small but interested community in my hometown. I ended up with a plastic orc team, from one of the starter boxes (not entirely sure where it came from, but I still have it), and played a couple of leagues at the local club. I never took it very seriously, or learned how to play competently. I then moved on to other games.
Around 2015 or so I picked up the game once more via Cyanide Studio’s Blood Bowl 2 video game, after being invited into a Discord-based league by a friend. To begin with I was terrible and got completely rinsed every game, as expected. But I started taking it more seriously, reading tactics articles, and learning the core principles of risk management. From that point it had its hooks in me. Lacking an in-person league to join, it stayed digital. That is, until I moved to London in 2019, and not long afterwards, BB2020 got released! I joined a couple of leagues at my preferred clubs, and ever since then I’ve been sporadically joining leagues and tournaments whenever I have the time and inclination. I wouldn’t call myself a great player, but I think I hold my own against some very tough opponents, which the London scene is full of!
King_Ghidra: I had the first two editions of Blood Bowl back in the 80’s, and then a long break from the game before I came back to it in 2009 via FUMBBL. I started playing tabletop again in 2018 and was already playing in two different London leagues and the tournament scene before the 2020 release. I’ve continued to play league and tournament Blood Bowl since, including attending Eurobowl for the first time last year. Blood Bowl is my spirit animal as far as tabletop games are concerned. There’s no other game that’s kept my interest and spurred my passion in the same way.
Dan “dittka” Boyd: I picked up one of the Blood Bowl starter sets some time in the 90s and used to play exclusively with my brother. However, I didn’t start joining and organizing leagues and tournaments until I was in college in the early 2000’s. While the game was “dead” there wasn’t a ton of interest at local game stores barring a few die-hards, so when GW resurrected it in 2016, I was beyond excited. Since then, I’ve been building teams and playing in leagues and tournaments ever since.
BB20 was, I think, a welcome expansion of the ruleset. 2016 was, more or less, an extension of the LRB, so I was glad to see some changes and shakeups hit the pitch.
What do you think proved the most impactful general rules changes on the game and community?
HardyRoach: I think this is an interesting question to think about, because some of the changes that received the vast majority of concerned hand-wringing prior to release didn’t actually end up being as impactful as feared. One of the biggest headline changes was the splitting of Agility into Passing and Agility. While this had a larger impact on Elves and other teams with high Agility pieces, I don’t personally think this really changed the way most games tended to be played. Passing remained a fairly niche, unreliable play for the majority of teams (which I don’t think that was their intent, though see a later question for more on that), and only a handful of teams had their passing game notably improved or worsened.
The biggest change for me, at least for league play, was the new Star Player Points system and the introduction of random skills, paid-for stat upgrades and variable costs for secondaries and primaries. The stat upgrades change has had the practical effect of just causing nobody to take them at all. I can’t actually remember playing a single league game over the past five years in which someone had invested in one. Given how much SPP it needs and the fact that it’s random, it just isn’t a very sensible thing to bother saving for. I actually prefer secondaries being available but more expensive, that to me is preferable than relying on the whims of randomness, but for stat boosts it just effectively removes them as an option, which is a shame. Random skills are an interesting low SPP cost punt for linemen, but they’re a little too swingy, especially for certain skill categories.
There have been a lot of little shifts, like casualties becoming more likely and the associated knock on effects, but for me the largest shifts in the game happened as a result of the changes to teams and star players, rather than the core rules.
Marquis of Peaches: Multiple rerolls – I have some musings about this that boil down to quite useful but not as impactful as the initial noise had it
Also the Prayers to Nuffle table, which is outright terrible. A couple ways to fix it (make it cheaper, since 50K of CTV difference should be spent on something more useful, let the coach choose what drives to use them if they take them as inducements), but really get rid of it.
King_Ghidra: Multiple RR’s a turn is the first that springs to mind as well. I know that this was an unintended change, and the fact that GW doubled down on it, and it didn’t completely destroy the balance of the game, all seems absolutely astonishing to me, even several years down the road. I suppose in a sense I’m saying this didn’t have an impact, but clearly every game is being played in a slightly different way now. My gut feel at the time was this favoured Agility teams who could use the multiple RR’s to ‘go all in’ and make game-changing plays. And to a certain extent that’s true, but probably more impactful is the ability of multi RR’s to add another safety net on a safety net for the more conservative, grindy, bash teams. Some of their worse failure states have been taken away; while they too can now pull off hero plays that were once the province of agile teams.
The next one, which doesn’t get a lot of air time, is the change to the casualty table caused by switching from D6+D8 to D16. Effectively this increased the likelihood of getting an MNG from about 33% to 50%. I have played three different Elf teams and Skaven in leagues in BB20 and this change is absolutely punishing. Very quickly you find yourself in a situation where one or two players are MNG each game. Those players aren’t gaining SPP, they’re probably forcing you to run with Journeymen (and good old Loner) and this problem massively disproportionately affects squishy teams and works to the benefit of bashers and foulers. I think this is a very low-key change that has probably had one of the biggest impacts on league Blood Bowl.
Finally I’m going to pick a little one here which is jumping over prone players. This has added genuine tactical alternatives for coaches (in admittedly niche situations). I know anecdotally it has led to some amazing moments in many games.
Dan: Early in our BB20 coverage, I talked about how low-armor, high-value teams were going to get brutalized in leagues with the new casualty table. Feel free to join in on the back-patting over here. My poor Pro Elf catchers never seemed to play more than one game in a row, which was never ideal. I guess that let me use Eldril Sidewinder a bunch, which is fun, but I’d rather level my own players! Also, I managed to get to the final in a league with goblins last year on the back of chainsaws and fouls, so I guess it’s not all bad!
The passing changes were something I thought were going to be impactful, but they really weren’t. If anything the only thing the passing stat did was to make humans and Skaven actually reliable passing teams. The re-roll changes, I thought, turned out to be a ton of fun! I was on the fence about using more than one per turn initially, but churning out a huge “go-turn” with multiple re-rolls can lead to amazing highs during a match.
Did BB2020 do a good job of balancing its roster of initial teams?
HardyRoach: For the most part, I think yes, although there are certain exceptions that took years to fully straighten out. The Underworld team has been discussed here before, but it really needs to be reiterated how crazy it was that a team designed to be firmly in Tier 3 had to be bumped up to Tier 1 because of how well it was performing. As I mentioned the Tier system, I think it was a good idea in principle, but it’s a bit wonky in regards to certain teams and it’s a shame that TOs have to untangle that to make sure teams aren’t advantaged or disadvantaged. Underworld shouldn’t have started at T3, Chaos Dwarfs shouldn’t be T1, Black Orcs should arguably be T3, maybe Nurgle too.
It’s frustrating, because some of those teams received what might appear to be relatively minor changes, but under any degree of testing it should have been obvious that they were severely under or overperforming. In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t matter too much, as the BB community is more than used to making their own adjustments and rulespacks, but it is vaguely irritating regardless.
Having said all that, if you go back and peruse the meta articles by our own King_Ghidra, the vast majority of teams were within a 5% margin of that 50/50 win rate, even in 2021 when things were fresher. In the years since, this has remained mostly true, even if the teams at the top or bottom do not necessarily conform very well to their official tiers. I’m personally happy enough that bar the occasional runaway team that needs to be reigned in, the overall balance hasn’t been too bad at all.
Dan: I just wish they would have revisited the tier lists a little more at some point during the lifespan of BB20. I adjusted tiers for the events that I ran, and I know that a lot of tournament organizers did so, too. I think coaches and event organizers would take GW a little more seriously if they paid more attention to competitive Blood Bowl and stats.
How do we feel about the design of the new teams introduced over the edition’s lifespan?
HardyRoach: Not too bad, but it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The two new teams the game launched with, Imperial Nobility and Black Orcs, are both pretty flawed. Black Orcs are mostly just Lizardmen but without the high movement that makes that team actually effective. They threw Brawler and Grab on the Blorcs themselves, but neither skill does much to make up for that core weakness. Imperial Nobility have almost universally overcosted positionals, and their statlines are poor (particularly on the linemen).
Otherwise, Khorne, Necromantic Horror, Norse, and Gnomes all turned out just fine. I have no significant complaints; they are perfectly cromulent teams. Vampires and Amazons are a bit overtuned, and Chaos Dwarf rather undertuned. I count four teams that I’m happy with, and four or five teams I would adjust to varying extents, which isn’t a bad return, all things considered.
I will say that I do think the general direction of introducing brand new positional specific skills to a lot of the new rosters has been a mistake. Most of them aren’t really poorly balanced or anything, they’re just another thing to remember or be caught out by.
King_Ghidra: For the most part I think GW has done a really good job of introducing new teams that are restrained in power. They’ve expanded the game without causing power creep.
There are two clear exceptions: Amazons were one of the best teams in the game before their change, and I am happy to hold my hand up and say I thought they would be worse (certainly out of the box) and I was wrong. Whether they are actually better now than they were, I don’t know, but they have become much more ubiquitous, and to that end more of an oppressive meta threat than before their change. On a fundamental mechanical level I hated Dodge spam before their update, and I hate it just as much now. I’m more than a bit worried that Third Season changes will make this even more obnoxious.
Vampires meanwhile, just got a straight glow-up of spectacular proportions. I wrote in our release article that I thought they might be too good, and they are. Hypno on 2+, especially hypno that makes things like Blodge magically disappear, is too good. MA8 ball carriers (or MA8 hypno’ers) are too good. Too often their overwhelming ability to turn off skills and peel defensive layers open makes the experience of playing against them feel futile.
Dan: Overall, I think that the design philosophy has been great. Each team is flavorful, fun, and the models are top-notch. Gnomes especially! There have definitely been some balance issues along the way, but overall I think they’ve done an excellent job.
What do we think of the way Star Players were designed and used in this edition?
HardyRoach: Not good things, personally. I understand that GW were clearly trying to add some more value to the Forge World offerings, but a lot of the improvements to certain star players caused them to become an extremely dominant presence in any game they were in, hence the advent of “Starbowl”. The new unique abilities add some fun texture, yes, but they’re also another thing to remember much like the new team skills. Other star players had the opposite problem, where they were rendered worthless due to increased cost or removed skills.
Tournament play ended up way too centred around stars, and a lot of rulespacks and GW FAQs have had to do a lot of work to try and push back on that. This bled into league play as well, as obviously certain teams have much greater access to stars than others.
King_Ghidra: Proliferation of stars and general cost decreases have completely destroyed their role as exceptional inducements and thrust them down the throat of Blood Bowl in every environment. It has had a miserable effect on both league and tourney play, with a ton of games being ruined as contests by absolute nonsense. I hate that every rules pack now has to have some kind of Star Player solution, and whenever someone doesn’t do a good job, coaches pile in with the most broken stars available. The fact that this was all transparently a financial decision is very frustrating.
Dan: I love star players. Painting them is so much fun. Using them can be an absolute blast. Playing against them can be an excellent challenge, and taking one out of the game is always a great time. That being said, there are two big problems. First, they’ve become too central to tournaments. Too many teams have I seen tournament rosters built around one or two cheap, effective stars. Second, the internal balance of stars is absolutely terrible. Take Gretchen Wachter vs Wilhelm Chaney. Why would anyone ever take Gretchen over Wilhelm? I’d really like to see GW take the actually terrible stars and make them usable. Maybe not great, but give me a reason to take them!
There were lots of new skills and skill changes, how did they impact the edition?
HardyRoach: Biggest impact in my experience has been nerfing Claw and removing Piling On, which effectively killed off the abundance of ClawPOMBing teams in a lot of environments. Thanks, because to me wiping out most of an opposing team should be a rare treat, not a central team strategy. Nerfing Leap had a minor impact but not as big as some feared, I feel. Some of the new skills I thought might come into wider usage haven’t really, like Fumblerooskie or Defensive, and this is obvious in retrospect – if the objectively best skills cost the same, why would you ever prioritise taking anything else.
The next point is not really about skills in specific, but the change in which various skills and states can effectively turn off defensive skills like Dodge and Block has had a big impact, and not always for the better necessarily.
King_Ghidra: We saw some new skills which caused a lot of discussion but ultimately didn’t really do anything. Safe pair Of Hands and Fumblerooskie spring to mind. I remember reading an impassioned thread on FUMBBL from someone who thought SPoH was going to completely ruin Agility gameplay by preventing favourable scatters. It’s hard not to think that some of these skills were invented to pad out the random levelling charts. Brawler is really bad but seemingly not going anywhere and about to be forced on more teams. Pile Driver is terrible. Iron Hard Skin at least got a nice glow-up with the Chaos Dwarf release. I don’t think any of the new skills have made a real impact.
Dan: The only new skill that I can think of that had a big impact was Hit and Run, and only one team has access to it. Block, Dodge, and Guard are still at the top of the heap and will be unless something changes.
What were the biggest missteps of the edition?
HardyRoach: Two things, in my opinion. First, the often slipshod technical writing of the core rulebook, and second, the confusing and often labyrinthine FAQs. A lot of the annoying exploits and runaway team issues over the course of the edition were caused by unclear rules or clarifications, many of which had to be backpeddled on later, and that’s just quite sloppy. It’s obviously hard to balance a game with this level of complexity, but some of the calls just seem kind of bizarre. For instance, fumbling a bomb doesn’t cause a turnover, but fumbling a chainsaw does, but also if a player gets knocked down or falls over during their activation there’s a turnover, except where there arbitrarily isn’t. Christ, lads, get it together.
MoP: Star Players. I know the whole point of the game is to sell toys, but woof the star player bloat was rough.
Otherwise, seconding every Roach said entirely, especially about the technical writing. Words mean things, dammit.
King_Ghidra: I think ultimately, the most significant change to this game with BB2020 was the game receiving ongoing change, not just with new teams, but with the FAQ and related updates, and it wasn’t done well. Swarming was left broken for too long. We had some initial changes that re-tiered certain teams for reasons that weren’t totally clear, and then were never visited again. The Mega-Stars list got released and then had little to no updates and weird asymmetrical stuff like having Bomma in and not Cindy. And we’ve already spoken at length about the bloated and confusing FAQ itself.
Even if BB25 does provide much-needed rule clarity in its initial release, are we still going to end up going down the FAQ route again and back in the same boat within a year? I really hope GW has a better grip on how support and change will be made in this edition.
Dan: I’ll second everything everyone said so far, and add: Remember when Barik Farblast didn’t work for like two years? Wasn’t that funny?
Do you think BB2020 achieved what it set out to do?
HardyRoach: To me it seems like the biggest aims of the edition were the following:
- Make passing less accessible but more valuable, and reprioritise throwers.
- Add more control and interest to the process of promoting players.
- Make statlines and some other rules more clear.
I’m sure my fellows have some others they can think of, but I’ll just address these. For the first point, the mission failed, for the most part. I have no idea why they didn’t give a lot more teams with a thrower PA2+, rather than just Elves, Humans and Skaven. The idea of making most of the team worse at passing but the throwers better at it makes sense to me. But for most teams throwing was the same, just now less people could do it. Weird. For the second point, mission accomplished mostly. I have my gripes with the current SPP system, but I do overall prefer it to the old system. I hope it gets further refined for Season 3. For the last point, they achieved it for stats, but not for other rules. They tried with the introduction of some keywords and such, but as mentioned the whole thing was sloppy.
So overall I think they missed more than they hit on their big goals, but they also didn’t ruin the game or anything, so this isn’t a big deal to me.
King_Ghidra: I think on some fundamental level there was a desire with BB20 to really modernise and update the rules, given that BB2016 was effectively simply a repackage of the CRP rules that had been in play for the best part of a decade already.
I admire that goal, but clearly they only got some of the way there. There’s a clear trail from that effort to the forthcoming Third Season’s headline claim that it will improve rule clarity.
I will give a small shout out to a very simple change that they did get right: turning stats into target numbers. This is way clearer than it used to be. The game also had a good stab at removing some of the ‘feels bad’ stuff from BB16, and that deserves praise.
I definitely agree with Roach on the passing changes. I didn’t believe the goal to reinvigorate passing was achievable (because you just don’t need or want to pass to win games of Blood Bowl), but the rules and roster changes supposedly implementing it were way off the mark. Ultimately we got more complexity (including two-stage interceptions), a bunch of players becoming useless at something, and no fundamental incentive for this play style.
Dan: Broadly, I think BB20 was fun, engaging, and had some novel experiences. So yes, I think GW nailed it, but not without caveats and quibbles.
Overall, will you remember BB2020 fondly?
HardyRoach: Yeah, for sure. Despite my various quibbles and moans, I think the edition remained the same game that I love. They introduced new teams that I think are really fun, and introduced some rules changes that I think went off well and should be kept around. I also have seen a lot of growth in the community, and I think that’s great and hope it continues into Season 3.
King_Ghidra: Blood Bowl has remained a very fun game at its core, and was very healthy in its general meta. The new teams and old team shake-ups definitely added some spice and variety to the game. We got plenty of nice minis and accessories of course. Star Players and rule soup leave a somewhat bitter taste though.
Dan: Oh, yes! While not perfect, the game was very good the whole time. I can’t wait to see how they shake things up moving forward!
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