One of the barriers to entry for many Games Workshop games is the price point with starter sets often being well over $100 for two small squads and some terrain. A few years ago, Barnes and Noble started carrying slimmed down versions of some games with Fire Team being a smaller version of Kill Team and Blitz Bowl being a smaller version of Blood Bowl, as two examples.
Blitz Bowl is American Football if played by Orcs, Elves, Nurgle, etc… in a semi-satirical way. The Ultimate Edition box being reviewed today features teams of orcs and dwarves.
Good thing those two races get along and we should expect a good clean… oh dear! I guess I need to look up the advanced rules for penalties.
Gameplay Overview:
Tony’s review pointed to Brian’s review with some updates, and both give you a decent idea of how to play.
Each team has six players with three linemen, which are average players, and then three specialized players. The Dwarf team has a Runner who’s faster and can choose where the ball goes when he drops it, a Blitzer, which is an offensive specialist (blocking offense, not scoring offense), and a Troll slayer (another blocking specialist). When I use the term block that means attempt to flatten/injury. The orcs have a Blitzer, a Thrower (quarterback), and a Big Unblocker who rolls two dice and treats ‘smash’ results as ‘Kerrunch!’. That will make sense later.
Open players can move, mark opponents, or throw the ball. Throwing is a skill check that you have to roll higher than the character’s throwing stat with modifiers for distance and defenders being in the path of travel.
Marked players can block or sidestep which is move one space as long as they end up nonadjacent to other opposing players. And a prone player’s only action is to stand up.
Why would someone be prone? Probably because someone blocked them. When a player blocks another player they roll the block die the results can be Smash which knocks a player down, Kerrunch which knocks the player down and gives them a -1 on their armor check, Shove which pushes the player but if that’s into an occupied space it also becomes a smash, Tackle acts like a smash but the blocking character can’t take any more actions this turn, and miss and the blocking character can’t take any more actions this turn.
Armor checks work like throwing checks, but a failed check results in the player being injured and being removed from the game. A new version of the same player enters the dugout and can be added with the Reserves action.
Touchdowns can be scored by a player catching or carrying the ball into their end zone, but they must be open (not adjacent to an opposing player). A Touchdown is worth four points, and the scoring player is whisked away to the big leagues (with a replacement entering the reserves).
At the start of the game and after a score, a trap door opens, and a new ball enters the play area while anyone standing on a trap door exits the arena and is injured for good measure. The game continues until one team has a 10-point lead at the start of a coach’s turn or the last challenge card has been dealt out, in which case each team gets one more turn.
Game Experience:
If you ever felt like American football needed to be more like hockey, then Blitz Bowl is here for you. But before I get into everything I like and some minor quibbles, we need to talk about assembling miniatures.
Because that’s the first thing you have to do.
These can be easily snipped off the sprues with simple clippers available from Amazon but you don’t need to buy $50 ones. Most of these were pretty easy to assemble with the trickiest one being the Troll Slayer, which unfortunately, was the first one in the instructions. All of these snap together easily so you don’t need glue unless you break off a leg when you made a mistake and were trying to peel the body apart… allegedly.
But once the teams are together, get ready for a relatively quick smash ‘em up skirmish/football game. The board starts to feel small as 12 figures spread out and start blocking running lanes. You’ll start to look for opportunities to make your opponent waste their actions just getting to your ball carrier while both sides try to eliminate players to make space to score. And this is the magic of the game. You can try to brute force everything, but being strategic is most likely where you’re going to gain ground.
And here’s where the challenges come into play. You may opt to win a challenge for the points and the one-time benefit, knowing your lineman is going to get squished into a puddle of goo (it’s okay, he had a good run). Starting to clear the field will give you options to move the ball downfield, but when you turn the ball over, that wide-open look won’t be quite so appealing.
The teams in this set are pretty fun. The dwarves are slow but tough. So expect to Chumbawumba them a lot as they get knocked down but they get up again, you’re never gonna keep them down.
Meanwhile, the Orc Thrower to Blitzer combo may be their best offensive weapon (in the traditional football sense of the word) while the Big Un-Blocker will gleefully put his opponents on the IR with two block dice and his special ability that basically embodies Terry Tate, office linebacker without the multi-syllabic vocabulary.
In general, these two teams play a similar smash-mouth and grind-it-out on the ground Pittsburgh Steelers style (but with more gratuitous violence). While the orcs have a thrower, I found I was throwing less with these teams than the humans and Skaven from an earlier version.
A neat balancing mechanic in the game is the player that scores a touchdown is removed from the game meaning the other team essentially has a power play until a reserve action is used to fill in the missing player or there’s too few players on the field and you gain a free reserve action.
In all reviews, I try to provide criticism to help readers spot potential downsides before they spend their hard-earned money. And there’s not much here to complain about. The worst issue is the lack of an insert (the human and skaven box had one that helped store the minis), so welcome to wargaming. Another quibble is that games can sometimes drag on as it can be hard to build a large lead to end the game. Lastly, the luck of the draw on challenge cards and dice can play a huge factor in the outcome of the game.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, I really like Blitz Bowl for its energy and zaniness. The Old World’s brutal yet humorous style had a charm to it that Blitz Bowl proudly embraces and celebrates. The game is pure fun and one of the games that is best when the table comes alive with cheers, jeers, and friendly trash talk.
If you ever wanted to try Blood Bowl but were intimidated by the price tag or scale of the game, this should be a no-brainer. Do you need this set if you already have another Blitz Bowl set? Maybe. If you enjoy the game and like one or both of these factions, then it’s a great addition to add variety as the teams do play differently. Both sets also came with cards for other teams so you can buy more Blood Bowl teams and use them in Blitz Bowl.
Final Score: 4.5 Stars – Blitz Bowl mixes cartoony violence and dice chucking with strategic planning to power a frenetic football-like game.
Hits:
• Destroying your opponent in football has never had so many verbs
• Losing a player after scoring helps keep games close
• Dwarves and Orc teams play differently than each other and the Skaven and human teams
Misses:
• Dice and card luck can play a big factor
• Tight games can sometimes drag on a bit
• No insert for storing miniatures
