I had the pleasure to attend a Blood Bowl 7s tournament at Promethean Games, near Bracknell in England on 23rd December 2015.  Accompanied by my two boys, we made up a field of 14 ready for a tournament different to any I had been to before.

All we had to bring was dice, as the fields and all players were supplied by the marvellous Smee, the Tournament Organiser (different person to Schmee).  The day started with the draft.  All 84 different BB positions were printed on a card (Slann Catcher, Snotling, Beastman etc) and dealt out to a pool of 7 players.  From your hand, you chose a card, and then passed the hand to your left, repeating this process until you had a hand of 10.  From this 10, you chose your team, with a budget of 600k.  No rerolls allowed, apos were 50k, and AC and CL were 20k each. You could have as many players as you wanted (no min or max) as long as you were within budget.

You then put your cards into a plastic sleeve to show your team, and stuck stickers (thanks loads to Fumbbl for the icons!) on your coloured cubes to show which player each cube represents.  The first 4 rounds were then randomised, playing 2 games against players from your own pool and 2 from the other pool.  The two players with the best record then played a final to find the winner.

In terms of in-game rules, most were as you would expect if you have 7s experience.  Only 7 turns per half, and all passing ranges were increased by one.

This was a brilliant tournament, extremely well-organised and played in an amazing spirit.  The draft removed a lot of balance issues, and the winning team didn’t have a wardancer on!  Alex took a treeman and a goblin, which is the best TTM combo, and managed one against his brother, before killing his wardancer!  That was their first tournament game (in their 7th shared tournament) and honours were even.  Alex came bottom, with 4 losses and a draw, and Linus managed to come 3rd with 3 wins and 2 draws, finishing above me (3 wins, 2 losses) for the first time. A sign of things to come, no doubt!

I will definitely be running one of these tournaments at my house in future (Birthday Bowl 2016?), but will use all my own figures instead of the cubes, as I have at least 2 of each positional.  Should be fun!