Talk Fantasy Football

With everyone hoping to see Blood Bowl released this year I’m looking forward to seeing how they finally release the game. It’s difficult to imagine a way of doing justice to a game with 21 (24) official teams and still makes it financially successful. Especially as every Blood Bowl fan will be convinced they can do a better job than GW. A one off release will only cover a handful of teams but supplements and extra teams will struggle with the law of diminishing returns. Here are my thoughts:

Blood Bowl (standalone boxed game)
4 teams (Humans, Orcs, Wood Elves and Dwarves) full rosters, big guys and stars for each team
A single Blood Bowl trophy and set of Special Play/Extra Training cards
Plastic pitch much like the Realm of Battle Board
Rules stay pretty much as is with possible tweaks to skills and team rosters
Campaign book themed around the Blood Bowl tournament

About a year later they release:

Blood Bowl – Chaos Cup edition (standalone box game)
4 teams (Chaos, Skaven, Dark Elves and Goblins) full rosters, big guys and stars for each team
Mutations?
A single Chaos Cup trophy and set of Dirty Trick/Desperate Measures cards
Plastic pitch much like the Realm of Battle Board but different to the first
Rules stay pretty much as before with alternate rules for Nurgle and Underworld
Campaign book themed around the Chaos Cup tournament

About a year after that they release:

Blood Bowl – Dungeon Bowl edition (standalone game)
4 teams (Elves, Chaos Dwarves, Norse, Necromantic) full rosters, big guys and stars for each team
A single Dungeon Bowl trophy, Treasure chests and set of Magic Item/Magic Potion cards
Plastic pitch that can be assembled as a single pitch or in a dungeon tile format
Rules stay pretty much the same with rules for wizards, allies playing in a dungeon
Campaign book themed around the Dungeon Bowl tournament

We would probably then have to wait a couple of years for:

Blood Bowl – Spike! Open edition (standalone game)
4 teams (High Elves, Lizardmen, Undead, Amazons, Halflings) full rosters and lots more stars
A single Spike! Open trophy and set of Miscellaneous Mayhem/Good Karma cards
Plastic pitch
Rules stay pretty much as is with some additional options for Star Players
Campaign book themed around the Spike! Open tournament

All four games would have everything you need to play but with new options for teams, inducements etc, and different ideas on how to you’re a league or tournament.

You could also release a Limited Edition version of each with an extra Star Player such as a Beast of Nurgle and maybe even try to squeeze in an Ogre or two into each set along with a few random Snotlings so anyone who bought all four boxes ends up with an Ogre team as a sort of Easter egg.

Long_Bomb wrote:With everyone hoping to see Blood Bowl released this year

I'll stop you right there. Personally I don't want GW to touch BB again.

I like the idea Long_Bomb; I think it unlikely that GW will provide any long term support beyond the rumoured limited edition box.

How would I re-release BB? I'd reach out to the BB community, reinstate engagement & tourney support programmes, release a great value box with unchanged rules but in a nice new book, a couple of plastic teams & pitch. I'd then reinstate specialist games support with some brand new sculpts at great value and start offering tournament prize packs to promote the game. Wishful thinking I know!

I am firmly in Darkson's camp.

+1
BB is no longer a GW game, it's our now.

Papy

A lot of the 40k or Fantasy GW stuff can be modded to make blood bowl teams. If I was GW, I do the one box but design some of the 40k stuff with interchangeable weapons, back packs, stances on purpose so they could be easily used for 40k and bloodbowl. Then create articles on how to make them into 40k/Blood Bowl. They still get to sell loads of 40k stuff and managed to create teams for blood bowl.

As long as they don't

1 Ban the main fan support group from holding its flagship UK tournament at my venue
2 Refuse to let them produce dice as they have done for years
3 Do no pre publicity about what I was going to do and when

oh hold on...

With free pizza......

Only thro mail order and you get to choose which 2 full teams ( all positionals) you get in the box......



Meanwhile, back in the real world...

I love the idea and would love to see those boxes, i would however look for them arriving just after world peace is achieved

I would prefer GW just left it the hell alone.

Failing that, an updated boxed set is fine, but don't "one-off" it, keep the rules the same, move SG over to forgeworld and make us some decent 16 man teams instead of 50 pointless space marine tank variants; and offer a "league finder" website that cyanide advertises in-game so people who pick it up can find TT opponents.

Nah, scratch that; just leave us the hell alone.

While I agree with Darkson and Heff, I think it does need to be re-released. Let me explain...

I don't think GW should touch BB ever again. They are a complete blight on their specialist games. The specialist games were great games when White Dwarf was supporting them with new content. (As an aside, I've been playing the Warhammer Quest iOS game the past few days and it made me dig up my boxed copy. I had forgotten about the extra cut-outs, cards, etc. that were released in the White Dwarf to expand the game. THAT'S what White Dwarf *should* be for.)

So, how could it be re-released and satisfy everyone? The only solution I can see is if the rights to the game are licensed out. Not sold, but licensed. Selling them would be too complicated in the IP that is the background of the Warhammer world. Licensed out, the licensee could just release the game verbatim and GW would be ok with it. Now, some people say that GW won't license out any figure game, and while that is likely true, BB is a board game played with miniatures, not a war game. Has anyone seen Relic? FFG put out a board game *with figures*, using the GW IP, so it could very well be done.

As is stands, GW won't touch BB. They likely will just let someone else deal with it eventually, because they would be risking nothing while making income off of a license.

That all said, the game really needs to be re-released. Not only to get new blood into it, but any game in the 100 at boardgamegeek that has rules that are three versions too old in the box, likely needs a newer copy available. Just being rated that high shows it would sell quite a few copies.

My main problem with the "don't ever touch BB again" view is this - how do new players get into the game? EVERY BB player I know is in their mid-20s and above.

The average age at NAFC must have been early 30s. I know 40k & to a lesser extent WHFB are aimed at younger players, but there's a continual influx of new blood thanks to GW's marketing dept. What happens to BB in 20 years time when its played primarily by 50 yr olds?

My personal observation, after years of hoping they'd turn it around, is that the only result that ever comes from GW remembering BB is a bad result.

The problem of how to generate new players is not one I have the answer to, but there's no way in hell that GW have the answer to it either. Frankly, I have zero faith that anything they do around the game (or any other) has the intended outcome of "develop a stronger long term community". And that's reflected in their core game business model; high customer churn, just shift units.

I would much rather they just stopped pulling the rug out from attempts by the community to do so. To be honest, with the rise of the third party suppliers, it's probably too late for GW to claw the bulk of the sales back at this point if they wanted to.

Also, I don't know how much younger we can realistically aim for than players in their mid-twenties. How to tap the market without a boxed game is really the kind of question I would look to be putting to NAF; I suspect that their remit might have to be reviewed soon in light of their severely reduced utility to international coaches in the coming years, and refocussing on establishing a coherent strategy for future market penetration might be the way forward.

Of course, we could just backlash and strip all GW IP out of the LRB rules, abandon the block dice (replaced with a six sided NAF die), rename/rebrand the game and launch it in a country that doesn't recognise board game IP, and then we wouldn't have to worry about it any more. We could pull back the power creep while we were at it.

I volunteer to be the one that culls the wood elves.

All very true Shteve0, GW's current business model has moved away from keeping gamers in their pocket by providing alternative games that might attract players by osmosis! Losing that link makes it an uphill struggle - even if it comes at the benefit of stability.

I'll back the revolution!