Playing like it`s 1986-A Game of 1st edition Blood Bowl

Playing like it`s 1986

A Game of 1st edition Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl is a game that has a special place in my heart.  It all started in the mid 80s with me, like many British children at the time, becoming a bit of an American football fan.  I went as far as to play wide receiver in a junior full contact team, the Folkestone Wolverines.  Sadly the team was marred in controversy - the headcoach was caught fielding ineligable players and there was some talk of financial irregularities.  With that kind of background, the Wolverines will have to reappear as a goblin team in the future.  That is something to consider. 

Anyway, I played my first game of Blood Bowl around 1989, after I’d saved up my paper round money to buy the 2nd edition big box set with that wonderful astrogranite pitch. I’d love to be playing with this treasure from my childhood, but it’s currently languishing at my brother’s house in the UK. Luckily, he sent me a copy of 1st edition Blood Bowl along with the Death Zone expansion a while back, so I figured I’d give this venerable old gent a go.

1st edition Blood Bowl has more in common with Warhammer Fantasy Battle than with the later editions of Blood Bowl. This actually made the game pretty easy for me to pick up, since I’ve played more than my fair share of WFB. For my first game, I decided to keep things simple and only use the basic rules. I’m looking forward to adding some of the optional rules from Death Zone once I feel comfortable with the game.

I’ve got a lot of teams to choose from—1st edition uses standees—so rather than spending too long deciding, I just grabbed two at random from the box. The two teams facing off were a Half-Orc team, The Hellraisers, and a Dwarf team, Dumezil’s Miners.

Gameplay in 1st edition is broken into phases, with the active player going through all of them before the inactive player takes over. The phases are movement, throwing and kicking, tackling, and reserve movement—although, oddly, the rulebook talks about five phases in a turn, but I could only find four. As I mentioned earlier, these are the same as in older editions of WFB. For example, in the throwing and kicking phase you roll against the throwing skill rather than the bow skill in WFB. Likewise, attacking is resolved using combat skill rather than weapon skill.

The winner of a game of 1st edition (and 2nd edition, for that matter) is the first person to score three touchdowns. This can make the game run fairly long, but since I’m playing solo it’s not really an issue for me.

Overall, the gameplay of 1st edition isn’t that difficult, and it’s actually a lot of fun. But there is one issue worth mentioning: the pitch is too small for 11 players. There isn’t much room for the more agile teams to dodge around the bashier ones. The easy fix is to play with fewer players on the pitch. In my next game, I’ll limit the number of players on the field to 9, and the team size to 13. If that doesn’t work, I’ll tweak it a bit more until I’m happy with the gameplay.

Dumezil’s Miners Pulverise The Hellraisers in Dominant Display

Dumezil’s Miners dominated the game with their grinding style. Their plan was simple: keep the ball as long as possible and pulverise The Hellraisers in the dirt. It worked perfectly. Despite the Half-Orcs’ attempts to launch a passing game, the dwarves proved unstoppable. The Hellraisers’ team apothecary will need a miracle to get them back on their feet.

Final score

        

Game statistics

Highlights

The Hellraisers came out of the gates strong. They rushed for the ball, and after a quick scamper, they threw a pass for a touchdown. Their fans thought they were in for a good game.

The Miners responded to the score by gathering up the ball and slowly moving towards the Hellraisers’ endzone. The slow pace of the ball carrier allowed the rest of his team to take out some of their aggression on the Half-Orcs.

The Hellraisers tried to put up some defense, but the skill, toughness, and armour of the dwarves made their task almost impossible. Only a concerted team effort allowed them to make any impact on the Miners.

As the game went on, fewer and fewer Half-Orcs were able to take the field.

After an extended beating of the Hellraisers, the Miners finally decided to run the ball into the end zone.

The final play for the Hellraisers came as they tried for a third score and victory. Their hopes were crushed by the sheer number of dwarves racing towards them. The coach probably should have thrown in the towel earlier.