Following on from UKTC 2024 Day 1, which was lots of fun, we were up against Team Wales for the beginning of day 2, and dreaming of great things.

I played Jayward, a new opponent for me who is likely to be a solid part of team Wales based on his performance this weekend.  He had Orcs, including a feared tackle blitzer.  The first half was marked by him not being able to roll a pow until turn 6, and said blitzer spending a fair amount of time on the floor getting kicked in the head.  He withdrew sensibly, which isolated one of my trees when he went to the flank, but my bizarre numerical advantage meant I was able to force multiple 3+s from him, all of which came off, then a key one of mine failed and he went in for the turn 8 score, and the TTM score was not to be.

There was also a weird situation where I used the same player twice, as a combination of a jump up block and orc removal meant he was facing the wrong way and neither of us noticed until about 20 dice had been rolled.  Luckily we were able to rewind to the position before it happened.  Apologies again!

Second half belonged to the aforementioned orc blitzer, dodging into the cage on a 5 to take out the first fox, then pulling off a 4,3,2,2 to take out the second, leaving the game at 1-0 and a squad loss for us.  Team Wales went on to come second in the tournament, so well done to them!

Round 5 was the fine gentlemen of Two Men One Dice Cup, and I got to play Chilli for my 600th game of NAF tabletop 11s, whose pro elves promptly destroyed me 5-1.  He scored in 3, then took a 5+ into the cage and catch the ball.  I wrestled him down, and the ball popped to the other blitzer, and the game was pretty much over, save for a consolation TTM score and a bit of elf faffing.  Blood Bowl, eh?  A team win though, happily.

Round 6 was the return of the vamps, coached by blackduke on a team from one of my home counties of Somerset, but only 3 rerolls, which Sunday and Monday (more later) has convinced me is too few.  He burned through them super quickly with an impressive collection of 1s, and the game finished on a 2-1 win, leaving me on 303 for the weekend and bottom of our squad, as Chicken23’s goblins went 222 with a better strength of schedule.  Alex (Pegleg/Dementor) smashed the weekend on 510, coming 3rd out of 300 individual coaches on SOS, and Stewbacca had a great 321 with his amazons.

The Sann Clan finished 12th out of 76, which is fair to say probably slightly higher than expectations!  Many thanks to Pipey and the team for a great weekend again, and look forward to returning under Haychdee’s stewardship.

Fun day yesterday, quick Gnome download!  My roster was all the toys, 5 rerolls, 2 coaches, 15 players, with Guard and Block on trees and 4 dodge gnomes positionals, 3 dodge linemen.

Game 1 was Bashto’s vampires.  I’d played a warmup game against Alex’s vamps, with basically the same build, and failed to hurt anything, so I thought as long as I can get some dead thralls it should be OK.  Didn’t happen, sadly.  We played in a blizzard the whole game which was pretty crippling, as well.

He put me in for the first drive, and I was a little sloppy with my screen set up, meaning he could get round the outside with a few players.  Didn’t have the movement to protect the ball afterwards, but 4 dice on the carrier for me was not enough, and he was able to wriggle free and score on my turn 4 when I pushed him to the end zone to prevent the further stall.  A few solid turns put me in easy TTM range, but fluffed the 3+ landing and then they did the AG thing and travelled the length of the pitch in a couple of turns for 2-0 at the half.

The second half was a procession, and it finished 4-1, not a great start and the team lost as well to Tactic and Theatrics, who finished day 1 on 3 wins, so didn’t feel too bad about that.

Game 2 I had snotlings coached by Squigthrower, in our marvellous hats!

He had an excellent devil may care attitude to playing snotlings, and it ended in a 3-0 win for me and a team win as well.  Back in the game!

Game 3 was Necro coached by Gizmo3k on the Scottish Murder Queens team, who is waiting for his gnome team to arrive!  Bit of a relieve to be playing a fairly normal team.  He fluffed the pick up early on, and my fox scooped it up, surviving 4 dice to run in for 1-0 on my turn 2.  I then scored in my turn 4 of the second half, and it should have been fairly comfortable, but he pushed to make it 2-1, and then I did my best to lose by faffing around in the backfield instead of consolidating, but got away with it.  Phew!  A solid team win put us and me on 201 for the day, in the hunt for the stunty trophy and a top 20 finish for the team, I reckon.  A decent showing would also put me world #1 for gnomes, as this is a major, but 3 games to go first, and Team Wales in Game 4, which will be a challenge.  Facing Jayward and his orcs, and hoping he left his tackle behind having seen the racial breakdown (45 orcs!)

Game 5 will also be my 600th NAF game of Tabletop 11s!

Christmas holidays were upon us, so time to do a foolish modelling project!  We’d lost a Cluedo piece, and a friend of the daughter was claiming to be colour blind (she wasn’t, but that’s another story) so was inspired to raid the bits box.

Cluedo (“Clue” in America, I believe) is the classic game of guessing who did the murder, and it was time for a fantasy version!  The original pieces were Miss Scarlet, Miss Peacock (blue), Mrs White, Colonel Mustard, Rev Green and Professor Plum, but the more recent boxes have given all the characters random back stories, so no time like the present.

Mmmr Plum* is an executioner by trade, which in normal circumstances might make him a prime suspect, but in the world of Warhammer doesn’t mean he’s more dangerous than the average denizen.

Goblin Green is trapped in the past, reliving his prime when he was omnipresent on bases. A small fella with a big attitude problem.

The Peacorc is one of the lesser spotted blue orcs, to fit the pun.  Growing up he was bullied by the greenists, and has a massive chip on his shoulder to go with his massive golden fist.

Colonel Mustard is a retired army chef, leaving the pay of the Empire to open the Sigmar’s Head, a pub on the outskirts of Talabheim.  Friendly to regulars, but don’t cause trouble or you’ll get a clubbing!

The Scarlet Skaven, the Red Rat, once thought to be a legend, but mysteriously appeared when the great plague arrived in 2020, waving his censer to warn of the oncoming devastation.

And finally, needing no introduction, the White Dwarf!

Game 1 was Mmmr Plum, in the Kitchen, with the Candlestick.  Which obviously begs the need for an updated board and set of weapons as well.  Forget Heroquest, this is the obvious mash up between GW and MB games!

*bonus points if you got the Tim Vine reference.

Following on from BB2020: Part 1.

A few more days have past, more leaks have come, and the big development over the past few days (for me) is that the core OBBLM (online blood bowl team manager) team have said that it does not make sense to try to adapt OBBLM to the new set of rules.

I wonder if the phrase “OBBLM” ever passed anyone’s lips at Warhammer World.  If not, this shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the people who play in BB leagues around the world. If so, it would be interesting to know if there was a plan.  If there was no plan, it shows a distinct lack of regard for those people.  I doubt we’ll ever find out.

While OBBLM existed for many years before the NAF got involved, it was on my watch that the NAF took on the idea of providing a central league hosting service for those who did not want to host it and do the admin themselves.  Since then numerous leagues have used the service, and the OBBLM development has become more of a NAF service with the various patches needed for the new Spikes, and it’s been great to see the community effort behind this, which is one of the brilliant things about the NAF – individuals come and go in how involved they are, but the organisation continues to thrive.

There is now a NAF effort being put into developing an OBBLM replacement, but that will take lots of volunteer time and effort, unless there are some bonus funds found or a crowdfunding approach, both of which seem unlikely.

So this got me thinking about the other things that will need to change or become obsolete.  Along the same lines as OBBLM, the other league management systems (principally Aros and Halfling Scribe, but also the NAF STARS I suppose) will need significant individual effort if they are still to be used.  I’m hoping to look into a Google Sheets alternative to facilitate league management, but we’ll have to see what happens.

Away from leagues, there are many tournament roster sheets that will have to be rewritten, from the individual tournament ones (such as mine for Eurobowl 2021, if it changes rules) to Battlescribe and the like.  Depending on their complexity, this will be a variety of effort needed, and there is no guarantee that all of them will get the effort, so some may become obsolete.

Obsolescence is also a problem for various bits of statistical analysis that I’ve done over the years. I touched on the NAF data issue in the previous blog, but it’s pretty certain that there will be a significant rebalancing in the tiers, so the existing analysis will be less applicable (and therefore potentially less interesting – insert gag about this not being possible).

As well as that, loads of my youtube stuff will become out of date.  Some will stand the test, with chain pushing etc still being a thing, but the basic “how to play BB” with 100,000+ views will need a new version, if no-one else gets there first.

And the final couple are that various teams may not be usable in the new rules (but I’m not above proxying) and the 24/26 will become an anachronism as the number of teams changes frequently, but these are minor considerations.

So what do we take from this?  Basically a significant change is coming (obviously) and it would be nice to know how many if any of these changes GW took into account when they decided to change their rules (which of course they are entitled to do).  Additionally, lots of people seem to be a bit cross, and while I would never tell people how to feel about a given topic, I can look on the bright side of a new set of rules coming – new blood to the game, and a new set of tactics to learn. 

So if I can, with my 100s of hours of investment being chucked out of the window to a greater or lesser extent, perhaps others can too?

Hi,

this post will explain how to import your tabletop league teams on to Fumbbl in times of social distancing (and for other occasions!).

The first thing you will need is a “skill ruleset”.  You can use my one (ruleset 1206) or you can make your own using this link.  There is a huge amount of variety available within rulesets, so it is definitely worth making your own.  If you do choose to use mine, note that it:

• uses Spiralling Expenses not Expensive Mistakes
• allows Piling On without a Reroll

When you create your ruleset, you will want to make the starting TV large (I went for 5,000,000) so that people can buy everything they currently have. The admin can then reduce the TV as needed.  Choose the name of the ruleset carefully, as you can’t change it later!

There are 5 pages of options in the ruleset options, which are mostly self explanatory.  “Petty cash adds to TV” means CRP inducements.  You will need to add Brets and Khorne into the rosters if you want to use them.  Do this by choosing custom “yes” and then save, and then choosing Add Roster on the bottom right.  The versions marked NAFC are the official ones.

While you are creating the ruleset, look in the url for the number of it and make a note. 

After you have a ruleset, you should create a League.  On your homepage, click Create a New Group on the bottom right.

• Change the Group Type to League
• Change ruleset ID to the ID of your ruleset
• Change status to recruiting

Fill in the rest of fields as required.

Once you have created your league, you should have something like this:

Provide this page to your league chums, and get them to click on Create team for this league, then buy everything they have in their tabletop team (players, FF, goods, rerolls).

Once they have done that, as league admin you can go to the team, and adjust anything that is in red by clicking on it.  To adjust FF or Treasury, this will be through the main team list.  To adjust player skills etc you click on the player first, then click on the SPPs and award the correct number of SPPs. 

You then Edit skills to give the correct skills.  You can also click on the Injuries box and can award injuries to the player.

Once the teams are made, the teams can play each other by clicking play next to the team and using the name of the game as previously decided between the teams.

Thanks for reading, hope all is clear – there may be a video tutorial later, let me know if I’ve missed any steps!

Some thoughts on swearing.

I am one of the admins on the Blood Bowl Community group on Facebook, and one of the ten rules of the group is as follows:

This has been a rule of the group as long as I can remember, and I think I was one of the first 100 members or so, as Pug set it up.  The rule gets questioned every week or so, so I thought I would have a standing post to answer those questions.

In essence, the admins believe there are very few people who would want to read lots of posts littered with swearing, and most forums I use have had a rule against it.  The question therefore comes down to where you draw the line, and in the case of the BB community the line is drawn to forbid most swearing, as above.

In general, this is because there is very seldom an actual need – there is usually a more descriptive word that could take the place of the swearing, and the joy of writing is that you can take time to think of what that word might be.  Swearing when writing is generally used for emphasis, so it is mainly this avenue that is being denied to people, and it’s an admin judgement that this is a reasonable thing to do in this particular group.

Swearing is also commonly used when directed at somebody, and as personal abuse is also against the BB Community rules, and rightly so, banning it in this way is also reasonable.

So in summary, swearing is banned to keep the tone of the group as civilised as possible.  Members are free to disagree with the rules, but they agreed to stick to them when they joined the group, so if they can’t follow them they should refrain from posting or find a more suitable group.

Hope that’s helpful. If it’s not, you know what you can do!