March in NAF Tournaments
Once again, we’re buzzing after a terrific month of tournament Blood Bowl. 63 more tournaments have had their results added to the NAF database (or if not, they will be imminently!), including four Sevens events. Great to see the continued success of variants; keep reading for more news in that area, variant fans. On the internet, Strider84 won the 2019 Speedrush over on FUMBBL, utilising Roxanna to beat both the clock and his opposition with his Amazons. Well done, Alex!
On tabletop, our friends over at GW have trailed the upcoming Halfling release. Our #flingnation contingent are salivating as if a particularly well-glazed, sticky bun is available at the buffet. I’ve always been #goblingang myself, but I’m glad to see that there is new Stunty fun in the pipeline for the Hobbits. As ever, it’s worth repeating that any new newness can be included at NAF tournaments for now and then we’ll review it as the NAF in November.
In NAF-land, the first major of the year, the Dungeonbowl, took place in Dusseldorf. I would hazard a guess that this is the first NAF tournament where the playing area had to be changed between rounds because a Moroccan diplomat needed the room, but even the forces of international politics couldn’t get in the way of more classic NAF action. The below image was taken just before the final kicked off and, spoiler alert, the less handsome one was lucky enough to take home the trophy. Check out my tournament report here for more details on one of the big individual five. As ever, DocMaxx did a fantastic job as TO, you should visit the Dungeonbowl if you haven’t already done so!
Reports
Outside of major action, there is much to discuss. I’m delighted to present three cracking reports this month, starting in Brazil (Brazil!), stopping off in Stoke, UK and then ending in Florida, USA. Firstly, to South America and over to Sergio.
This was the very first NAF tournament in Brazil, held in the city of São Paulo during a store event called Mesadaria with a lot of fans from the board game community, so we Blood Bowl fans were really excited about it. Not many participants subscribed in this first edition maybe due to Carnaval the week prior to the tournament but the 4 coaches that showed up were fierce and very willing to make their mark in the Blood Bowl circuit.
The first round was played by the Tusked Sunz Thrasherz (Orcs) vs the Blood Moon Banshees (Dark Elves) and the Drunken Beards (Dwarves) vs the Red Skinks (Lizardmen).
The Tusked Sunz missed a couple of passes and the Banshees managed to injure 2 Blitzers and a Gobbo from the opposing team and defeated the Tusked Sunz by 2×1.
The Drunken Beards defeated the Red Skinks with by a 1×0 scoreboard in a uneventful match.
The second round featured the winners of the first round marched against each other, Drunken Beards vs Blood Moon Banshees; and the losers facing one another, Red Skinks vs Tusked Sunz Thrasherz.
Both games were filled with exciting plays.The Skinks opened up the scoreboard after a fumble from the Tusked Sunz thrower on the second turn and used this mishap to control the first half but after a really hard scrum the Tusked Sunz managed to tie the match and secure a draw.The Banshees learned that the Drunken Beards are a small but hard pill to swallow and got mowed down, the Beards controlled the entire match and won by 2×0, a real stretch by any Dwarven standard.
The third and final round matched the coaches that haven’t faced each other putting the Red Skinks vs the Banshees and the Drunken Beards vs the Tusked Sunz.
The Skinks used their experience do control the ball against the Banshees and after a match filled with fouls and effective blocks from both sides, the Skinks managed to score a touchdown in the middle of the 2nd half.
Prior to the match the Tusked Sunz made a sacrifice to Mork (or maybe Gork) or Nuffle, they don’t know for sure, and they steamrolled the Drunken Beards.. By the end of the match there was 4 dead, 3 knocked out dwarves and 2 TD’s to the unscathed Tusked Sunz. Even with this crushing defeat the Drunken Beards were the winners of the Tournament and took the gold home.
1st Place: Drunken Beards
2nd Place: Tusked Sunz Thrasherz
3rd Place: Red Skinks
4th Place: Blood Moon Banshees
Overall the Tournament was really fun and attracted lots of people that didn’t know Blood Bowl, and those that already did, became members of the NAF. For me that meant success and i can’t wait to organize the next iteration of the South Amorica Bowl.
I appreciate that four coaches is not a massive event, by any means. But you’ve got to start somewhere and it’s nice to throw some focus on a new area picking the game up. 4 could become 8, 16, 32 and eventually hundreds; this may be the seed that sees BB go bananas in Brazil. I mean, who wouldn’t fancy a Blood Bowling carnival?! See some lovely images below, it looks a good start to me. Good job, Sergio!
Next, Dan talks Stone Bowl in Stoke, an event that sells out before you even have time to ask Google where Stoke is!
38 fine Blood Bowl specimens made their way to Stone train station in North Staffordshire for a 3 game one day event.
This year I went a bit crazy on the rulespack. More can be seen here (ed – log in first), but effectively it was un-tiered and 1.25 million builds. I like tiering, and I like a more sensible treasury limit, but on occasion it is fun to have the opportunity to get some lots of toys out and this rule pack didn’t disappoint. There were multiple Morg’s present, along with several other fruity stars and deep rosters.
The other “special” rule that I’ve implemented since Stone Bowl’s inception last year are secret objective cards. These sets of 5 cards are produced by the excellent Jason Weaver at Special Play Cards (see Facebook) and made to represent the 2016 style of BB bits we all love. The cards themselves are drafted by players at the start of each game and serve as the every important first tiebreaker. The cards themselves offer various objectives, from the fairly simple, such as not conceding, to the slight more challenging, such as “assassinating” the opponents most expensive player. They seem to work well, adding some nice flavour, but in no sense breaking the scoring system.
A good mix of players made the trip, with a large cohort from the increasingly terrifying Waterbowl league, and a string of coaches from across the Midlands. Stone Bowl is also part of the Midlands Championship series, so really this is the crowd that I would expect it to serve, as we all try and support each other and continue the ever-improving Midlands tournament scene. In terms of the games, yeah we did play, just two brave players managed to make it through the day undefeated. Watebowl stalwart Barney the Lurker, and his Undead, along with AngloDane Kfoged, who not only won all of his games, but also completed all three of his objectives (only 3 of 38 achieved this) meaning Käre and his Lizardmen were crowned deserving champions. Stone Bowl will return in March 2020!
Winner: Kfoged, lizardmen
Runner up: Barney, Undead
Most touchdowns: gorgoroth
Most cas: Dragonborn
Stunty Cup: Fluxpac, Ogres
Best painted: Token, Undead
Beautiful, and good job, Dan. I’d go to that one year if I could ever get a ticket! 😉 I’ve stolen some images from Twitter below.
I’m expecting a report from this big Floridian cheese later this evening, so will edit it in tomorrow morning.
World Cup Focus
Today is the day. Registration for the World Cup closes pretty much as this blog is published. We have smashed the 1400 coach barrier (1418 at last count) and Dornbirn is so close now we can almost touch it.
It’s pretty easy to get a bit number blind when the WC team are doing such a fabulous job of ticking off the milestones on social media. 1000 came and went, then 1100, 1200, 1300 and now 1400. Consider that amount of Blood Bowlers in one venue, for a moment. Every time I do, I’m flabbergasted by the sheer volume of nerd we’ll see and the amount of work Torsten and team have taken on. Each one of the organising committee should be super-proud of their work.
The build-up proper starts NOW. Ladies and gentlemen of the registered fourteen hundred and eighteen, start your engines. In this space next month and every month until the tournament will be instructions as they are issued, looks back at previous World Cups and general hype. It will have to be quite the train to fit 1445 of us on!
TD Notes
In March, we sanctioned plenty of tournaments. I’ve managed to leave my notes at work so I can’t give you an exact number, but we’ve hit the usual large quantity, I can assure you (I’ll edit figures in later)! I do remember having ticked off five Sevens and two Beachbowl variant events, which is about as many of the seaside variety as we get most years in one month!
I’m pleased to report that Arioso has taken on the task of updating and owning our major records doc. That’s lovely news as that document deserves a bit of love, thanks Andreas! I’m still looking for .pdf help (check out the below for an example of the jobs we need doing), so my inbox is always open to you if you’re a .pdf handiperson. Shout loud and shout now!
The main news this month is regarding the Variants review. As those that read this column often will know, we’ve been reviewing the suite of variants we offer the membership over on this forum, and now I can report the initial results and decisions made by the committee.
Firstly, we have a bunch of variant rulesets that are going to get very minor updates and tweaks. We’re going to be correcting typos, updating CRP references to BB2016, emphasising important points newer TOs can miss and making a minimum of tweaks to improve the formats following our discussions and after the extra play the variants have received since the database was expanded. This applies to the Sevens, Streetbowl, Dungeon Sevens and Deathbowl .pdfs.
Next, we’re going to publish NAF rulesets for Beachbowl and Dungeonbowl. These are both currently approved variants, but we don’t host rulesets in the way we do for the four variants above. To limit confusion and promote the variants, expect new .pdfs here, and for the Dungeonbowl variant to be split into DB and DB7s rankings, as presently all dungeon-based play is captured in one big bucket.
Finally, we’ll be adding some new variants and providing you with rules with which to play them. In the USA, Draft is a popular currently non-NAF variant, and we’ll be providing some official rules so that you can get you future Draft tournaments into the database. Secondly, we’ll be adding a Deathbowl Sevens variant. Deathbowl is great, but it does last for 2-3 hours. We’ll be trying to make the four way madness more accessible and user-friendly to a new to variant coach or TO by providing a shorter, slimmed down rulespack. Lastly, House Rule (or similar name) is under advanced discussion. Those that followed the recent TD election process will know what this is, but in summary, this is a way of bringing currently non-NAF events that you run and attend into our ‘big tent’. If you, for instance, run a Stunty-only event we can’t presently sanction, expect this new listing to be interesting.
We did also look at sanctioning Blitz Bowl as it’s own variant, but the feeling of the committee is that the core rules of this game are substantially different to BB and you can only buy it in North America or Germany, so it’s not available to all members. We’ll keep a watchful eye on Blitz Bowl, but for now we won’t be sanctioning it.
In terms of timescales, implementing the above involves myself and already identified volunteers doing some writing, compiling or editing of .pdf files and also some website work. There are current website issues of higher priority than this, but when we have those solved, we will move on to completing the process. I mean to get the writing part done as soon as is feasible at least, and we’ll see how long the remainder takes us. I hope you’re excited about new ways of playing NAF Blood Bowl becoming available soon, I can’t wait to start approving some creative new tournaments using the new options!
Why Didn’t I think of That?
A slightly different theme here this month as I haven’t approved anything too out of the ordinary in March. There is so much World Cup warm-up Blood Bowl happening that this section becomes a bit tougher to write!
A trend I’m noting as time goes on is the importance of a strong online, social media and presentation game to swell your tournament numbers. Last year, I attended the Stranglebowl in Leicester and the experience the guys put on was super-impressive. The website is fantastic, the rulespack phenomenally put together and on the day, the decoration and presentation of the tournament is second to none. The ‘Champ’ gimmick and the all-court press the LBBL crew have is fantastic for such a new group, making their way in NAF BB. As an older head, when I am promoting my own tournament, I throw some text at Talkfantasyfootball and house some coaches in a pub; I don’t put in the extra effort these guys manage.
The results? The old head is happy with a room of 20-30 coaches. The new group sold out 60 in little more than a day and will hit 85, an amazing figure for a one day tournament. In certain areas, competition for coaches is hot and in the new world of BB2016, the sort of effort the Strangle team put in really acts as a difference maker in a really crowded marketplace. Ask yourself, could you be hitting these heights as a TO? I know I’m asking that question of myself and I’m not sure I can! Good thing I don’t have space for many more than 30, really…
I think it’s interesting how the promotion of Blood Bowl is becoming less of a fusty, forum post based pursuit and more of a social media housed, high quality endeavour. I’m not big into Facebook myself, but I’m going there more and more to check events out. I think I’m going to have to evolve with the membership on this, there is some top stuff going on! 🙂
Holiday Plans
August is already looking strong.
Gen Con Bowl 2019 3 Aug. This would be a proper nerd holiday. Lots to enjoy at Gen Con and also Blood Bowl. Super.
Coupe du Rocher 10/11 Aug. French BB on the Cote de Azure, World Cup ruleset, gaming convention. Tick, tick, tick, I think?
GeordieBowl XI 31 Aug. / 1 Sep. GeordieBowl is a cracking night out. Newcastle is wonderful and the losing skills over time rulespack is something a little bit different. Well worth a go, especially if you’re into Greggs the baker. There are quite a few up that way!
Next Time
All of the usual Blood Bowling news, views and reviews. Come back in April!