The stands are filled with cheering, jeering fans. The bits of bone and blood have been cleared away from the pitch. The sun is high in the sky, and your team of rambunctious rabble rousers are ready to take the field. This is Blood Bowl, Games Workshop's tongue-in-cheek take on American Football. GW sent us the latest big box release for the game, which coincides with a new third season edition of the rules - so join us at the 50 yard line as we check out the new Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition box set.
What Is Blood Bowl?
Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition is the newest edition of Blood Bowl, a miniature game based loosely around the rules of American Football. In the game, you take on the role of the coach of a team, guiding them toward victory. Each coach brings a team of at least 11 players to the game, and you'll attempt to move a ball down the field and score against your opponent.
Blood Bowl Third Season Edition Action on the field
Teams can generally be divided into several different archetypes with different specialities. There's your bruiser-heavy team who wants to smash and grab your opponents, barreling their way down the field and sending as many of your opponent's players into the injury box (or the grave!) as possible. Then there are your more agility-focused teams, who want to move swiftly down the field, passing and catching and playing a proper game of American Football.
Finally, there are stunty teams, who use trickery and funny little hacks to get their way to victory. It's teams like this that usually let you chuck your teammate (with ball in hand) down the field - just like in American Football!
The game takes place over two halves, with each team getting eight turns per half. But here's the fun catch - if your active player drops the ball, goes out of bounds, or falls over - you end your turn with a turnover and have to hand the action over to your opponent. So even though sixteen turns per player seems like a lot, games usually move pretty swiftly once the action gets going.
What's Different In Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition?
Fans of this classic tabletop sports game will be pleased to know that there haven't been many changes between the Second Season edition of the game and Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition. The core stats of players haven't changed, and the field remains its standard size.
Blood Bowl Third Season Edition Dice Shot
The biggest changes are all in the service of clarity. The rules have been rewritten to make it clear who's doing what, and who's being referred to in the text. Also new template markers have been created to make it clear who's been knocked down, and who's been stunned (normally, you'd have to lay your figure either face down for being Prone, or face up for being Stunned). It's an obvious and easy upgrade, and it makes a huge difference in the game.
This box is the first place to get the new rules, but they'll come out alongside two new Spike journals later on in the year. If you want to get into the action with the clearest rules possible, this is the way to go.
How Does Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition Play?
The box set comes with two teams: the Brionne Barons, a wholly new army hailing from Bretonnia, and the Nehekhara Nightmares, a classic team who are reproduced in this box (with great plastic sprues) with very little in the way of updates or changes. Even with this combination of a brand new team and a very old team, the game is wonderfully approachable for newcomers.
Blood Bowl Third Season Edition Lineup
In the box, each team has a quick-start cheat sheet, which really helps in tracking down their abilities and stats. In our test games, we found the match-ups incredibly balanced. The Brionne Barons are a very agile, fast team with great passing and catching abilities, but they're pretty easy to lay flat on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, the Nehekhara Nightmares are a sturdy team, who are slower (they are ancient undead shambling mummies, after all), but can really whollop your enemies. This balance between the two teams - with one being more proficient in the game of Blood Bowl while another team is better at the fight-y aspects of the game - perfectly represents the wonderful push and pull of the game.
The miniatures also look amazing, with very evocative poses for each team. That's what I love most of all about Blood Bowl. Unlike other Games Workshop properties, Blood Bowl has a truly outrageous, over-the-top sense of humor. There's a playfulness on display here that we don't always see in a GW game, and it perfectly fits the theme of an epic sporting brawl.
Blood Bowl Third Season Edition Table shot
Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition - Final Thoughts
While any Games Workshop release has its own barriers to entry -- you have to build the models, you have to learn from a fairly thick rulebook -- Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition is just about as approachable as you can hope for a wargaming product. It's high-flying fun, and this box set has everything you need to get into the action.
My only real quibble with the box set is the fact that the cheat sheets, while incredibly helpful, still have you flipping through the rulebook to find the exact description of all of your players' special abilities. This led to our first games featuring lots of forgotten special abilities, meaning we weren't getting the true full potential out of our teams. But after multiple play-throughs, we quickly picked up on everything our teams could do.
So if you're looking for a new tabletop wargame to get into, this is a great, fun, lighthearted entry into the genre. And if you're a returning player, the box set has the newest rules, all the tools and dice you could ever dream of, and two great new teams ready to rock.
The copy of Blood Bowl: Third Season Edition used in the creation of this review was provided by Games Workshop.