Hello, sports fans! You’ve probably noticed that you can now pre-order the Blood Bowl Matched Play Guide – a handy resource for tournament organisers to use when running their own events. We caught up with Blood Bowl rules writer, Jay Clare, to find out exactly what fans will find within its pages.
The Blood Bowl Matched Play Guide is the ideal companion for anyone who attends Blood Bowl tournaments and gaming weekends. It outlines everything you need to know to run an event yourself, complete with guidance on how to organise your rules pack, how to work out scoring, what tiebreakers you can use, how pairings should work for an event, and more. This is ideal for budding Tournament Organisers (TOs) who are looking to run their first events, but also for veterans who can use this as a standardised formula for their events.
By putting all of this within the Matched Play Guide, coaches that attend an event using it will know exactly what to expect, and the TO’s job will be far easier. Ultimately, it allows all attendees to follow the structure of the event with ease.
To ensure that the Blood Bowl Matched Play Guide is the ultimate companion for Blood Bowl tournaments, it has been formulated with the help of our crack playtesting team, who are some of the most accomplished and experienced Blood Bowl tournament players in the community. Many of them have more silverware than a Halfling buffet, so they certainly know a thing or two when it comes to Blood Bowl events!
It’s also worth noting that the Blood Bowl Matched Play Guide will be used at all official Games Workshop Blood Bowl events going forwards.
Alternative Formats
The Blood Bowl Matched Play Guide also contains guidance for how to run events with different formats. There are rules for running events with a group stage coupled with a knockout round – much like many real world sporting events – plus team events, and the ever-popular Stunty Tournament!
We also know that many experienced TOs enjoy putting their own unique twist on their Blood Bowl events. The additional rules section provides a number of ideas for fun, alternative rules that can be used for your events, from the likes of including injuries and player advancement, to creating your own custom Inducements, and even generating Secret Objectives that coaches must try to accomplish. These are just some of the ideas found inside, and may serve as inspiration for your own events.
Skill Points
Perhaps the most significant change within the Matched Play Guide is the introduction of Skill Points. In the past, tournaments would allow coaches to assign a number of Star Player Points to their players in order to give them new Skills for the duration of the event. However, this often led to some confusion as to exactly how they could be spent.
That system has been replaced by Skill Points. Teams are given a number of Skill Points depending on their Tier, as found within the Blood Bowl FAQ and Errata. These Skill Points are used to purchase Skills for their players, with a Primary Skill costing 1 Skill Point and a Secondary Skill costing 2 Skill Points.
Skill Points aren’t just spent to take Skills though. Hiring a Star Player will cost 2 Skill Points – plus their associated cost in gold pieces, of course. This means that coaches will need to decide if it is better for their team to spend those Skill Points on more Skills, or on a Star Player.
Additionally, the most dominant Star Players in the Matched Play scene will be classed as Mega-stars, and will cost you 4 Skill Points to take in your team roster. These Star Players are all still a worthy investment, but will cost coaches more Skill Points to field.
Which Star Players are classed as Mega-stars is constantly being assessed to ensure the game is as balanced as possible, and the list of Mega-stars will be included and updated in each Blood Bowl FAQ and Errata going forwards.
Cheers Jay! The Blood Bowl Matched Play Guide is available to pre-order now and will be on sale this Saturday. You can download the updated Designer’s Commentary, which includes the list of Mega-stars, here.