Rat Ogre Bowl

As discussed on TFF, and after honourable mentions on Facebook when “favourite variants” were asked for, without further ado we present: Rat Ogre Bowl!  History records that this was made up by Deathwing and Longfang before spreading across Europe and the World!

Needed:
– 2-8 players.
– A Blood Bowl Board, Templates, Dice and Ball.
– One Rat Ogre per player (you can use other Big Guys as substitute Rat Ogres, as above, but every figure counts as having the stats and skills of the Skaven Team Rat Ogre).
– about 20 minutes.
– a sense of humour.

Goal:
– To get your Rat Ogre with the ball in either endzone.

The rules are fluid, and up to you (a proper living rulebook!).  Just agree them before you start, and enjoy!

Set up:
– Choose one Endzone.
– Every player places his/her Rat Ogre on a square in the chosen Endzone, so that it is not in the Tacklezone of another player’s Rat Ogre.  You could start closer, or make the pitch a square, to make the game shorter and more action-packed.
– Place the Ball in the middle square of the Line of Scrimmage on the other half of the field from where the Rat Ogres start.
– Determine who starts the game by dice rolling, highest roll wins. The game moves clockwise from that player. For subsequent games, the player after the previous winner gets to start the game.  Alternatively, roll at the start of each turn and play in that order!

Game play:
– On your turn, you may make an action with your Rat Ogre as if it was a normal action in a Blood bowl Match. Note that you can only Blitz if you actually hit something, rather than just Blitzing every turn.  2+ is no fun!
– You have no Rerolls, so any failed action (Pick-Up, Block, Dodge and Going-For-It are the most common dice rolls) ends your turn.  Or change this if you want, and play with a couple of rerolls each.
– You may Assist another player’s Rat Ogre in making a Block (and also on defense, if you really want to), but you don’t do so automatically, nor do you counter assists unless you want to.
– If your Rat Ogre gets removed from the field for any reason (K.O., Casualty, Crowd Surf), you may place him in any square in either endzone immediately. Note that this means getting your opponent stunned is often more effective than getting him off the field, and thus you may want to not use Mighty Blow.  Alternatively, treat a crowd push as a stun in the square, and treat KOs as stuns instead.

And that’s it! The game usually ends up as a big slugfest as you desperately try to keep hold of the ball that you finally managed to pick up and stay out of the hands of your greedy fellow Rat Ogres!  Change the rules as you see fit, and comment below if there are ones that work particularly well, or any other comments.

Thanks to Panico for providing a pdf of Rat Ogre Bowl rules that they use: ROB Rules