Variants Review 2019 Complete

Dear members,

I’m happy to be able to present you with the results of the 2019 variants review and an updated variants page on theNAF.net!

This spring, we set out to review our variant rulesets and determine what (if anything) we should add to the list of alternative versions of Blood Bowl we grant NAF sanctioning. This has been an exciting and in-depth process; we’ve reviewed rulesets with experts, we’ve listened to the community regarding what more we could offer re: NAF sanctioning, we’ve made infrastructure updates to our ranking database and we’ve produced some pretty stylish and professional looking rulesets. We are now ready to share these with you and to accept your submissions for all variant tournament types listed below.

I’d like to thank everyone involved in the process. I’ll not detail the entire team here, mainly because it’s a long list! From the expert panel we consulted, to Nate dealing with web developers, to our fantastic .pdf team and artists, you’ve all done a fine job. Please join me in thanking our great volunteers!

I enclose some further notes on the various things we’ve done and why we’ve done them below, but in general, please get stuck in and enjoying variant NAF Blood Bowl!

Thanks,

Phil.

*****

Sevens / Street Bowl

Our two most played and robust variant rulesets have only seen minor tweaks and the addition of a few small points related to the BB2016 release. Enthusiasts should make themselves aware of the rules have changed very slightly, but again, these are tweaks rather than large re-writes. These documents primarily serve to provide a tidy-up and a facelift.

Beach Bowl

We’ve long sanctioned Beach Bowl, but not hosted a ruleset before now. We have made a few changes to the rules we previously recommended in an attempt to freshen up the format and make it more attractive, so please take a look and find out if the beach is for you! For my money, this doc features Garion’s best bit of artwork. It’s worth stopping by for that alone, if nothing else.

Deathbowl / Deathbowl 7s

Not much has changed in the Deathbowl ruleset other than some tidying up and some new advice on making certain format points run smoothly in practice. We have received a number of requests for a streamlined version of Deathbowl (‘it’s great, NAF, but it takes hours, how can I practically run a Deathbowl event?’), so now we sanction a 7s version of the variant, notes on which you’ll find in the main document. This is brand new, so the sooner you start feeding back to us what works and what could be improved for a shortened version of Deathbowl, the better.

Dungeonbowl / Dungeon 7s

Our offering here was previously quite confused. We sanctioned both Dungeonbowl and DB7s, however we only hosted a DB7s ruleset (offering no Dungeonbowl guidance) and tournaments of both types were entered under the ‘Dungeonbowl’ heading in the database. We’ve now split DB and DB7s in the rankings, and the combined document now offers some clarity and hints around running a Dungeonbowl tournament. Much of this is extrapolated from the DB7s document we previously hosted, but we also have taken notes from the Dungeonbowl major tournament, as they have plenty of great experience over in Dusseldorf. If you have previous DB7s results you’d like separating from the DB listings in the database, please get in touch.

Blood Bowl Draft

A new addition that is popular Stateside. Can you build a roster drafted from every race in the game and lead it to victory? Thanks to the guys over at 3DB for the help with what is an exciting ruleset. When you upload Draft tournaments to the NAF site, every coach playing will need to be entered with the ‘Draft’ race, which is a new addition. We’ve taken all reasonable steps to hide the listing of the Draft race in most of the database to reduce confusion, but it’ll be there when you drill down to relevant areas.

Specialist

We’re not hosting a ruleset for Specialist, because (by it’s very nature), it’s special! This is the place where we can now house your tournaments that previously didn’t fit our sanctioning structure. Do you run an all-Stunty event? Are your house rules so ‘out there’ that you fear they won’t receive sanction under ‘Blood Bowl’? Contact the Tournament Director and see if we can record the games you play on the NAF website in this new variant section. I hope we can bring as much BB as possible into our big tent.