Monthly Poll: Is Blood Bowl Tabletop "New Player Friendly"?

[juck101]

Yeah it simple enough. Play infinity malifaux or a ton of other games and review how simple the BB rules are. The game is easy to 'play' and harder to master.

[Jip]

It's a tough question to answer 'yes' or 'no' to because you have to decide whether the opponent/s is part of the game.

Is Blood Bowl Tabletop (rules, minis, mechanics) "New Player Friendly"? I'd say yes. The LRB and the new BB2016 rulebooks explain the basics, then offer additional/optional rules as a next step. I think they're both (I know it's essentially the same document with a few additions/omissions) fairly jargon-free and would like to think you could pick it up having never encountered the game before and reasonably easily get to grips with it.

Is Blood Bowl Tabletop (existing players, community, ethos) "New Player Friendly"? Again, I think yes - depending where you play. I'm lucky that we have a great local tabletop scene, so I've felt very welcome and ushered in. That would obviously be harder in areas with less of a tabletop community, but I guess online play fills that void, partially.

Is Blood Bowl Tabletop (from a Games Workshop perspective) "New Player Friendly"? Unfortunately, my experience (and the experience of a lot of people I've spoken to) is, no. It's a shame there's not as much support in-store about actually playing the game as there appears to be on-line from GW about buying, painting, reading about the game. My local store doesn't allow games to be played, and I know I'm not alone in that. It's doubly frustrating, given that I can order it there, pay for it there, even paint it there, but then have to go to the comic book store next door to play.

The only one that might be a bit controversial...

Is Blood Bowl Tabletop (resources, forums, social media) "New Player Friendly"? This one I'm not so sure about. Exhibit A: the BB Facebook group still thinking that commenting "TAKE LEAP, lol" on every post is vaguely comical. Also, dug this post up from a while ago and, although I've been to a few more tournaments (and I'm currently planning to run my first), it's still how I perceive the online tabletop side of things for new players.

I've only been to three tournaments (CakeBowl, Gertbowl and The Elflympic Games), so far, but I'm really glad the vibe at those tournaments didn't match the vibe on some of these threads. Whether passive-aggressively, or directly, challenging organisers, it really misrepresents the community to newcomers - like me.

As a new player, I bet there are some other new folk that shy away from a tournament because of comments on its thread (often by people not even intending to attend it, anyway), because they expect players at the event to have that same attitude on the day.

The real sad thing is, for me, the reality couldn't be further from the truth. My experience at tournaments has been impeccable, other than Glowworm shouting at me for how long I allegedly take to finish a game. if I'd gone by the threads organising them as an indicator though, I'm not 100% I'd have attended them to experience that. If little Jimmy (why are they always called Jimmy? Why does little Barnaby never do anything?) read conversations like the Elflympics or QuidditchBowl threads, he'd probably put his new humans back in the box.

It must be a thankless task working for NAF and organising tournaments, fair play and good luck to anyone that attempts to do either or, for those crazy enough, both!