Unboxing: Blood Bowl
Come take a look inside the box for the new release of “Fantasy Football” Games Workshop style – It’s Blood Bowl!
Alright Blood Bowl Fans – it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Here at BoLS we got our hands on a copy of the new edition of Blood Bowl and the contents are fantastic!
Let’s pretend for a moment that this box is your first introduction into Blood Bowl and you never heard of the game before or played the previous edition. This box has everything you need to get going right out of the gate. Of course it does! Because this is a complete game – it comes with two full teams Orcs and Humans. It also has all the dice, templates and accessories you’ll ever need.
I’m not going to get into the game play just yet – but it’s very similar to the previous incarnations. At least the “core” of the game is pretty much the same. What I do want to talk about are the models included because I was blown away by them. We showed off the sprues already but I’ve had the pleasure of building them all and they go together like a dream.
The Human team reminds me a lot of the old style of the Blood Bowl Teams. They are a little plain-jane in terms of bits and doo-dads, but they are supposed to be. The most dynamic model for them is probably the catcher who’s “leaping one-handed catch” pose looks cool – although in a real game of football that would open him up for a monster hit. The Linemen aren’t bad and neither is the blitzer, in fact, I think the Human Team is actually well done…It’s just that the Orcs are just that amazing!
I have a feeling that the Orcs are going to the most popular team right out of the box. For one, these models go together so well it’s like magic. that goes for the Human Team as well. But the Orcs…wow. The cuts of the models hide the seams so well it’s hard to tell where they are post-assembly. Just like we’ve seen with all of Games Workshop’s latest kits these Orcs take that to 11.
My favorite model of the bunch is probably the Black Orc Blocker. This model is so well sliced-up on the sprue that you can assemble it with out any glue. In fact, I did that with most of the models and they hold together! I still recommend glue if you plan on painting them. But this is great for first time players and hobbyists. You don’t even need glue to put your team together. That’s awesome.
The Bases are all 32mm and they actually have a small hole in them. I thought at first that this was some type of new production thing GW was doing with the bases – I was half-right. The hole in the bases is so you can slot in a football! That was a really nice touch from Games Workshop.
Also, if you want the video you may have noticed the sprue above. Now, I had played Blood Bowl Previously so I sort of knew what the 8-arrow thing was, its the scatter template for the ball. The Helmet with the numbers and the Footballs with the tick-marks? I had no clue – hey, it was my first time looking in the box, cut me some slack! But did find out after reading the rules (which we’ll cover later) that the “Helmet” is the throw-in template (used when a ball bounces out of bounds and the crowd knocks it back in). The Footballs with the tick-marks? That is actually 1 long template for…PASSING. They represent each zone for the passes: Quick, Short, Long and Long Bomb. It’s a nice touch!
The board is great as well – it’s actually two different fields, one is “Orcy” and one his “Humany” which is a nice change. Plus the dugouts also also two-sided so you can have a cohesive theme. The last thing I wanted to mention was that this game has a lot of special dice – it’s got the standard D6’s and block dice, a D8 and a D16! I have been gaming for many, many years and I had never seen a D16 – it’s not a standard die in a polyhedral set. So that was both surprising and kinda cool too.
Overall, I’m pretty excited about Blood Bowl again. Maybe it’s the new models (definitely part of it), perhaps is the new board and accessories, maybe it’s just because it’s shiny and new – but I certainly can’t wait for this game go to hit shelves this November because I want to play it with friends in a Blood Bowl league. Plus GW has already teased that there are lots more teams on the way. If you watch the video you know what I’m talking about, but also we covered this when we talked about their website.
Yeah – the Scramblers are coming…So are the Dwarfs and more…
Are you ready for some (Fantasy) Football?!
