Welcome along to the first TD blog I’ve written since March. I hesitate to say that tournaments are ‘back’, but submissions to the database are beginning to increase to a reasonable level, images of tournaments being played outdoors in masks are springing up on the Blood Bowl internet, and there are some signs of ‘life after Covid’ (or ‘life including Covid’, to be more accurate) out there. If you are wondering about if you can organise / how to re-organise a Covid-impacted tournament (or what to do to cancel a tournament if you can’t or don’t want to play at the moment), check out this news post for all of the details.
Tournament Blood Bowl news hasn’t let up under lockdown, far from it. GW have released a Mixed Race Spike! Journal, which has made changes to Underworld and added a new race to the game in the shape of Old World Alliance. On the NAF front, there is lots of online news. We’ve announced plans to move our 24 / 26 patch program into the virtual world. We’ve been playing massive NAF Live tournaments throughout Covid, and we’re close to our first BB2 tournament, which I know is a long-awaited, significant thing for much of the membership. So, it’s all going on, and we’re also about to embark on the Annual Review (more on this below).
As you might imagine, this blog is slightly shorter than my efforts in ‘peacetime’, but I thought it would be a good time to reconnect, considering we have much to discuss regarding the Annual Review and tournament Blood Bowl is creeping back. First, let’s get a report from a tournament in a Derbyshire (UK) garden that took place in July, and a story of how one group got back to playing BB in these crazy times. Perhaps this will inform or inspire your effort to get back on the board!
Report
The Inaugural Bumcheek Bowl is the brainchild of ten days’ planning, hosted by none other than Derby’s Bumcheek Dave himself.
Taking place in the lavish garden of Bumcheek Manor, we planned to stage an outdoor tournament in the middle of summer where people could gather with sensible social distancing in place. Anyone entering the house for a quick cry in the toilet after conceding on turn 16 would need to do so in a mask. Pre-game handshakes were banned and coaches were encouraged to regularly squirt in their hands before and after each game (no, not like that, we’re talking about hand sanitizer).
Invites were dispatched via Facebook and tables were provided for free by local game store BASH (Boards and Swords hobbies, check them out online). A barbecue was planned, rosters were gathered and Liam from the Two Drunk Flings Podcast arranged for some of the lewdest trophies you’ve ever seen in Blood Bowl to be made. We were all set!
As the event drew near, the real-life weather table had other plans! We had a stormy looking forecast. Not to be put off, our host assembled enough gazebos to cater for the players and the barbecue. Other than a couple of deluges that required a team effort to stop water collecting, the event went without a hitch. Quite fittingly for 2020, a Nurgle team came out as champions. Who knows what’s in store next year?
I think this is a fitting report to come back with, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it shows the lengths people are going to to play Blood Bowl and be safe doing it across the NAF world (or, as safe as they can be). Second, it is somewhat of an extraordinary venue, being a Blood Bowler’s garden. Lastly, the tournament was held at late notice to kick-start a local group playing again, and Dave took advantage of the NAF’s post-Covid guidance and worked with me to ensure he could attain sanctioning (working around the tournament not being an invitational, while being mindful it was in his garden). So, all in all, a good example of what can be achieved. Photo of live, socially distanced action stolen from Facebook below!
TD Notes
During lockdown, we continued to make progress on a number of fronts, albeit a little slower than we’d usually like, for obvious reasons.
Firstly, Ketil / Kyrre has been updating the NAF website, allowing us to record results for Old World Alliance, track 24 / 26 badges and link to global glicko on coach page overviews. This is very useful, as we continue to offer these kinds of services for members. The first supports what is probably our most important service (results tracking) while we establish what to do about OWA and the latter two are lovely quality of life things. Ketil continues to be a marvelous volunteer, and we thank him for his efforts. In parallel, Mike / Sann has set up Score! so that it can deal with OWA and our service all dovetails together.
Next, we’re continuing to work towards re-engaging with our European communities at a more fundamental level. As per the recent committee minutes, we’re translating tournament documents, and we’re recruiting translators to play back big NAF news in more languages and to potentially man various social media accounts (see our media guru’s latest posts in a couple of languages for more, if you’d like to volunteer). We’re holding pre-committee meeting meetings where NTOs can directly play back regional concerns to the committee; providing a formal platform for you, the membership, to talk to us, the committee (expect these to be widely advertised going forwards, now we have bedded them in). Our inbox is always open any time for any member, but some like a more formal route to us, and now you have it. Finally, we’re going to be announcing something big regarding tournaments in Blood Bowl hotbeds in the near future which is pretty exciting. More on that soon. All in all, the point of this program is to bring more of you to the point where you feel involved and that the NAF speaks to you, and we’re attacking it from a number of angles. We were all disappointed with the lack of engagement during the recent presidential election from our European friends, and we’re desperate to get more people from more regions into the conversation. This one is pretty close to my heart, so I’m happy to see the progress we’re making.
As you will have seen, the Annual Review is getting into gear and ramping up. Let’s not sidestep the issue; this year, the major conversation is probably going to be about Underworld and Old World Alliance, and if / how the NAF formally include these changes / the new team. The AR is a membership-wide process. You talk to your staff, they argue their region’s case, the committee take that away and make the right decision for the whole. I anticipate and look forward to some deep debate this year, and remain convinced in the process. It was built to cope with these sorts of controversial items, so let’s attack it together head on. We will not be able to please anyone, but this sort of transparent, reflective process is exactly how we should be dealing with BB2016 flux, in my view.
Why didn’t I think of that?
I wasn’t going to run this item this time, but we began to go through the sanctioning procedure for the next Las Vegas Open this morning (no link yet, or I’d include it). We’re all familiar with the two traditional forms of Blood Bowl: resurrection (standard NAF affairs, teams reset between games) and progression (dead players stay dead, you can earn upgrades via accumulated spps). Here, it looks very much like they’re going to play resurrection in almost all ways (with a skills / budget package and that’s how you upgrade players, a starting number of gold pieces in excess of 1 million, the usual convention about including star players as a part of the roster), but injuries and deaths will be permanent. I guess this is an interesting halfway house I’d not considered before. I’m not immediately sure if I like it (as is often the case with new things, it requires a bit of thinking!) but it’s certainly novel. I’m supposing Journeymen and inducments will be in evidence to even up games between the broken and non-broken teams, and who knows if this pseudo-resurrection will catch on after the event?
Next time
Hopefully, August will bring more of a ‘normal’ blog, but we’ll see. If any of you would like to submit reports or suggest items I can cover in times of less face to face BB, please do so. I don’t mind writing less(!), but if there is more to say, I’ll say it!
Stay safe.
Phil.