Blood Bowl - Do I Like It?

Yes. Yes I do. And no.

The game looks very nice when you pick it up. The components are a step up in quality from previous editions. Nothing other than actual cards and the pitch is  Everything seems bigger or better. The range ruler, throw in template and scatter template are made of plastic and not acetate sheet. This makes them a little more user friendly. Shame that the range ruler does not seem to fit in the box nicely. Counters are now plastic rather than card and each team gets it's own set. The minis are bigger as are the bases. This means that the old pitches seem a little too small. I am not sure if this means that older minis will need re-basing for tournaments. I like the idea that the each sprue comes with some game balls. One of the problems always used to be losing the few balls that you got with the game. There are player cards in addition to the special player cards. Getting back into it, the standard player cards are a fantastic aid. The player cards are so  good that it great if these were produced for all times. It is essentially keeping the same old rules. This is really good. I haven't found anything that looks like an effective change.

The figures, for me at least, are just a bit too spiky. They have gone the way of all recently released GW fantasy miniatures IMHO. The snap fit figures are a blessing and a curse. They give the figures great animation. The snap fix is far from perfect and this has lead to be biggest gripe. See the Golden Orc Award post if you want to know how I really feel about it. It is the kind of thing that seems to come with CAD designed figures. there is no chance that they will be compatible with older figures. That is a shame but to be expected.

The game does not come with stats for all the teams. There are more teams in the Season One book and I suspect that there will be at least another two books to cover all the teams. In fact there seem to be a lot of teams missing at the moment. There aren't so many special play cards. Again, I suspect there will be more later on. There was only the one extra team, the Skaven at the time of release. I have all these teams and they are fairly standard teams. It looks like the dwarves are about to be released and usually GW release products every month. I am guessing that they are spreading the popular teams among the books. Probably a marketing ploy and again, this is to be expected.

Overall: Blood Bowl is a great game. It hasn't been tinkered with so much that it makes it a different game. It means that it is going to get a new lease of life, which is a really good thing. It's different enough that people are probably going to buy the stuff. This gives the game some legs. Assuming that GW stick with it, and all the teams get released I would be a happy man. I would have like figures that were less spiky and compatible with the old ones but this was a bit of a punt. On the whole I am quite happy.