League Update: Season Two Is Coming!

Season Two of the illustrious Blood SBowl league begins FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1ST! If you intend to play, you need to have your team submitted by some arbitrary point on Friday evening. Don't wait until the last minute to get in!

The competition is really heating up this season. The first outing saw only rookie teams competing for the coveted Golden Caskets, but the fine craftmanship and obvious intrinsic value of the trophy has begun to attract veteran squads from as far afield as Tromaville and Atrophinius's mead garden. The league is taking submissions with any TV between 500 and 2500, so consider how much experience you want on a team before applying. Low TVs are perfectly viable thanks to the magic of inducements, and high TVs allow for a more refined strategy and occasionally some totally ridiculous level-up bonuses (at the cost of feeding inducements to the opponent).

Get your teams built and your applications in, and we'll see you on the pitch!

Season One Final Standings

Preserved for posterity:

Season One Playoff Standings

Position	Player	Team	TV	W-L-D
1st	SB	Bone Again (Necromantic)	1310	2-0-0
2nd	Austin	Yoloin Biatches (Amazons)	1470	1-1-0
3rd	Aaron	THE DUNK SQUAD (Dwarves)	1400	0-1-0
4th	Will	The Lustful Lizards (Lizardmen)	1410	0-1-0

Season One Regular Season Standings

Player	Team	TV	W-L-D
Aaron	THE DUNK SQUAD (Dwarves)	1310	5-1-1
Will	The Lustful Lizards (Lizardmen)	1380	5-2-0
SB	Bone Again (Necromantic)	1200	4-1-2
Austin	Yoloin Biatches (Amazons)	1280	3-1-3
Pi	Transexual Transylvania (Dark Elves)	1110	3-2-2
Mike	The Mafukin Keglugadins (Orcs)	1120	2-4-1
Sean	Goatman's Revenge (Chaos)	1130	1-6-0
Alise	Tentakillas (Nurgle)	1020	0-6-1

Thank you to everyone who made awesome things happen in this first season of Blood SBowl! We had fantastic rivalries, fascinating narratives, and more gallons of blood spilled than most leagues twice our size. Stay tuned for news about season two!

To The Victor....

It's been a long road (not really), but the grand finals are finally here! Who will go home with the coveted Golden Caskets? It's sure to be OH HEY I NEVER TOLD YOU GUYS ABOUT THE CASKETS

The Golden Caskets are like the Stanley Cup of the only sport that matters: Blood Bowl played in a league that is managed by SB. Which team will be skilled (and lucky) enough to claim this glorious, slightly morbid, and wholly appropriate prize? Only Nuffle can say!

League Update: Regular Season Stats

The regular season is officially over! Here are the hall of fame boards, preserved for posterity (click for readable size):

 

And here are some other random stats and awards:

Most Concussed: Player Who Sustained the Most KOs

Heather of the Tentakillas (6)

Iron Skull: Player Who Survived the Most Injuries

Drok Dreng-Troll of THE DUNK SQUAD (4)

Most Graceful: Player Who Failed the Most Dodges

Qlamitl of the Lustful Lizards, Courtney of the Yoloin Biatches, and Chrissy of the Tentakillas (4)

Masters of Brutality: Team Responsible For The Most KOs, Injuries, and Deaths

THE DUNK SQUAD (45, averaging roughly 2 every 5 turns)

The William Murderface Award For Excellence In Manslaughter: Team With the Most Kills

Goatman's Revenge (5)

Glass Jaws: Most KOed Team

Yoloin Biatches (29 with at least one on each player, averaging 4 per game)

The Receiving End: Most Injured Team

Goatman's Revenge (13, averaging 2 per game)

The Actually Playing Blood Bowl Award: Most Yards Gained

The Lustful Lizards (562, nearly 100 more than next-highest team)

Wait, We Can Throw It?: Most Passing Yards

The Mafukin Keglugadins (146, nearly double the next-highest team)

My God, It's Full Of Stars: Team With the Most SPP Earned

The Lustful Lizards (91)

League Update: The Playoffs Approach!

It's almost that time. After the most brutal (and only) season the Blood SBowl league has ever seen, we're only two games away from the playoffs. I'll make a post detailing some league stats once the final week of the regular season has concluded, but for now congratulations to championship hopefuls THE DUNK SQUAD, Bone Again, The Lustful Lizards, and Yoloin Biatches! Team profiles follow:

THE DUNK SQUAD
The most feared team in the league, this slow-rolling dwarven deathsquad owes their playoff position almost entirely to two key players: runner Duerrim, a strong candidate for best rusher in the league, and the unstoppable killing machine Hagan Drek-Troll, who is likely to go home with the league MVP award even if he doesn't manage to capture the championship. Their "punch first, don't ask questions later because that's really time that you could be using to punch some more" style of Blood Bowl has proven to be very effective, clinching them the top position in the league's regular season. A brief interview with THE DUNK SQUAD's coaching staff revealed that only the runners have actually been taught the rules of the game; the rest of the team believes that this whole thing is some sort of elaborate fight club, and it is only the power of their racism that has ensured that they punch the opposing team instead of each other. An unusual strategy to be sure, but it's hard to argue with the results!

Bone Again
Laboring under not one, not two, but FOURTEEN ancient curses placed on various players and support staff by different priests, witches, and warlocks that they've managed to offend, this plucky necromantic squad has managed to limp into the playoffs despite a plague of injuries. Supporters of the club, colloquially known as Boners, say that the team's incredible resilience can be attributed to a pair of expert carpenters who spend hours before every game reinforcing their zombies with nails and random bits of wood that they've pried out of the stands. If true, one wonders why these carpenters can't be bothered to help the perpetually injured wights and flesh golems that (occasionally) form the backbone of the team's defense. Fortunately, fan (and manager) favorites Growl and Howl have managed to avoid the curses thus far, allowing them to carry their team kicking and screaming into competition for the cup.

The Lustful Lizards
Long regarded as the best way for at-risk skinks to escape their circumstances, the Lustful Lizards recruit almost entirely from poor, high-crime areas of Lustria. Their coaching staff assures us that these lizards are both more determined and better at taking a beating than their well-off counterparts from Tlaxtlan. The Lustrian coaching staff has managed to forge their offbeat recruits into arguably the best-balanced team in the league, capable of both figuratively stunning feats of agility and literally stunning feats of extreme violence. The Lizards boast both the best running game in the league and one of the highest rates of injuries dealt, with every single skink and saurus making significant contribution to the team's regular season run. Rookie kroxigor Chupacabra has yet to prove himself, but since all he has to do is be imposing and crack some skulls we're confident that he'll figure his role out.

Yoloin Biatches
This Amazon squad lives for risk, playing harder and less safely than anyone else both on and off the field. Rookie Biatches aren't even allowed onto the pitch until they've survived a dozen Yoloin halftime shows, which often include spectacles such death-defying leaps through rings of flame, gator baiting, and 12 or more rounds of bareknuckle boxing. Once she's made the team proper, each woman is expected to throw full-body blocks, dive desperately after fallen balls, leap dramatically over enemy defenders, and basically endanger her life at every available opportunity, often with little or no justification. As such, any Amazon worth her salt has suffered at least a dozen concussions and is constantly covered in bruises and contusions. Their tendency toward ridiculous stunts and outrageous upsets has not gone unnoticed by fans, earning them a tremendous and rabid following. This squad has a long-standing and mostly one-sided rivalry with the necromantic team Bone Again, whose very existence flies in the face of all that it is to only live once.

Good luck to everybody in the playoffs!

Blood Bowl Basics: Apothecaries

When a player's blood splatters on the pitch, everyone in the stadium cheers. Fans, players, and coaches alike eagerly anticipate the echoing crunch of a good armor break, looking forward to an easier game for their team (or an excuse for bloodthirsty vengeance). The apothecaries at the sidelines get excited as well, but their joy is more about the gold falling into their pockets than the game.

Single-Player Healthcare
Apothecaries can fix the most grievous wounds or even bring the dead back to life, but other times they'll nearly kill a man when tending to his sprained ankle. Basically, these guys have no idea what they're doing; bring an injured player over to them and they'll go at him arbitrarily with saws and bandages until something happens. Despite their unreliability, apothecaries are tremendously useful. At a one-time cost of 50,000 gold, they pay for themselves (and then some) the first time they save a player's career, and it's likely they'll do that half a dozen times in a season.
An apothecary can only be used once each game, and performs one of the following functions.

Rerolling a Casualty
An apothecary can let you reroll a casualty roll and then select either result. This can let you turn a serious injury or even a death into something less permanent, which is obviously extremely valuable. Nobody likes losing a level 4 player with two stat gains, and the apothecary keeps that from happening (sometimes). It gets even better, though: selecting a Badly Hurt result when using an apothecary will result in your player not being injured at all. He still gets pulled off the field, but he'll be available again at the start of the next drive. You can even use your apothecary to reroll a Badly Hurt just so you can select it to keep your player in the game.

Preventing a KO
When one of your players gets KOed, the apothecary can change the result to a stun instead. This may seem weak, indeed almost wasteful, compared to the apothecary's other function, but we've all had players get KOed and then stubbornly refuse to get up. Preventing that guy from going to the KO box in the first place gives you an extra player all game, which works out the same as saving him from an injury (or better, if the drive lasts longer than his stun).

Primum Non Nocere
Apothecaries are very powerful and an extraordinary value, so every team should have one. However, you don't necessarily need one right away. Buying an extra discounted reroll instead of an apothecary during team creation will probably serve you better in both the short and long term. Also, when your team is just starting out and you haven't been able to afford all your positionals yet, you may get more value out of devoting your gold to picking up players. As soon as your blitzers and scorers start developing, though, an apothecary is the only thing that will keep your heart from stopping for a second every time an opponent rolls a pow.

Blood Bowl Basics: Inducements

Some games seem destined for a loss. League compositions can be unpredictable and sometimes your crew of fresh-faced rookies goes up against a brigade of psychopaths wearing shoulderpads and jockstraps made out of all the opponents they've killed. How can you beat that without cheating? Thanks to inducements, you won't have to!

Who Needs Skill?

In each game of Blood Bowl, the team with the lowest Team Value is awarded money equal to one thousand times the difference between the teams' TVs with which to buy inducements, which are basically league-sanctioned cheats intended to give the little guy a chance. These things are the reason that you need to watch your TV and make sure it doesn't spiral out of control. If you're not careful, here's what you might have to face:

$50,000 (50 TV difference)

Bloodweiser Babes: You can purchase up to two of these young ladies, each of whom will use a combination of magic beer and cleavage to give your team a +1 bonus on KO rolls. Normally, each of your KOed players makes a d6 roll at the beginning of each drive and wakes up on 4+, so one of these takes this to a 3+ and two take it to a 2+. A Bloodweiser Babe is (almost) the only thing that costs less than $100,000, so they're relatively common. It's rarely correct to take two Babes. though, as you'll usually get more use out of the team reroll or apothecary that you could get instead.

$100,000 (100 TV difference)

Team Reroll: You can get an extra team reroll per half for just $100K, which is a pretty fantastic deal. You should have some idea of exactly how good an extra reroll is for your team, and you'll probably find that this works quite well for you.

Wandering Apothecary: This functions exactly the same way as a normal apothecary, allowing you to reroll one casualty roll during the game (or turn one KO into a stun instead). This allows you to have two apothecaries for a game, but each casualty roll can only be rerolled once. If you're up against a team that you're afraid is going to punch your face in, this is probably a better way of keeping your team up and running than buying two Bloodweiser Babes.

Igor: Teams that can't buy apothecaries also can't buy wandering apothecaries, but they can recruit one of these surgeons of undead flesh instead. An Igor allows a reroll of one Regeneration roll during the game.

Bribe: A bribe allows you to attempt to change the ref's mind when he tries to eject one of your players for throwing a foul or wielding a secret weapon. You roll a d6 and on a 2+ your player doesn't get ejected. This can be a good buy if the opponent has a particularly useful player or two that will cramp your game plan, as it allows you to be a bit more liberal with your fouls on that guy. Bribes are super great for the Goblin team due to their extensive secret weapon use, and fortunately for them all Blood Bowl refs are both goblin and racist. Goblin teams pay only half price ($50K) for bribes.

$150,000 (150 TV difference)

Wizard: A hired wizard will sit on your sidelines booing loudly and incessantly pulling rabbits out of his hat to terrify the opposition. Additionally, the wizard will cast one spell for you during the game. At either the very beginning of your turn (before you have declared any actions) or at the very end (even if your turn ended with a turnover) the wizard can cast either a fireball or a lightning bolt, targeted at any square of your choice. The lightning bolt hits the player in the targeted square, knocking him down on a d6 roll of 2+. The fireball hits the targeted square and all adjacent squares, but only knocks down on a 4+. Lightning bolts can be powerful for giving a slow team a way of stopping an offensive breakaway of the kind that elves and gutter runners often make, while fireballs are a (somewhat unreliable) way of breaking down difficult cages.

$300,000 (300 TV difference)

Halfling Master Chef: Yes, that says $300,000. It might actually be worthwhile, though. A Halfling Master Chef steals rerolls from the opposing team and gives them to you, but the number is variable. At the beginning of each half you roll 3d6 for your Master Chef and on each 4+ you steal one reroll from the opposing team. The odds breakdown is pretty simple: 12.5% 0 steals, 37.5% 1 steal, 37.5% 2 steals, and 12.5% 3 steals. The Master Chef compares pretty positively with the same value worth of team rerolls; even if you only roll 1 steal, it's arguable that your opponent losing a reroll is actually better for you than getting two rerolls of your own would have been. Of course, there's always the chance that your Master Chef screws up, but if you don't like gambling you should probably take up a different game. Because Master Chefs are even more racist than referees, Halfling teams can hire a Chef at one-third of normal cost, making them as cheap as team rerolls.

Variable

Mercenaries ($50,000-$240,000): A mercenary can be hired to fill any position on your team that isn't already filled (for example, if you're allowed 2 blitzers but you only have 1, you could hire a mercenary blitzer). A mercenary costs $30,000 more than it would cost to hire a normal player for the position, and mercenaries carry the Loner skill because they're not used to playing with your team. That's obviously a pretty bad deal, but sometimes you can't afford to leave an important position vacant after an unfortunate injury or death. You can choose for the mercenary to come equipped with any one skill that his position could take on a normal improvement roll, but it adds $50,000 to his cost. (If your team is injured badly enough that you can't field 11 players at the beginning of a game, the empty slots will be filled with mercenaries of your team's 0-16 position and your TV will be adjusted up as though those players were normal members of your team.)

Star Players ($60,000-$430,000): Star Players are extraordinarily skilled free agents that command hefty appearance fees. Most of them are very selective about which races they'll play with, though, so most teams will only have access to a few Stars even if they have all the necessary cash. Learn which Star Players your team has access to and figure out the situations for which they'd be ideal. (I could also write an article about Star Players if people would like.)

Mo TV, Less Cheating (But Still Some Cheating)

The higher TV team can get access to inducements too, but it's going to cost them. A team can transfer any amount of money from their treasury to their inducement fund, but their TV increases by one thousandth of the money they transfer. This means that the higher team could buy (for example) a Bloodweiser Babe, but doing so would cost them $50,000 from their treasury AND increase their TV by 50 for the game, so the lower team would also get an extra $50,000.

The lower team can transfer money from their treasury the same way, but the fact that it increases their TV makes it self-defeating in most cases. If you don't have enough inducement money to afford an inducement that you desperately need, you can contribute enough money from your treasury to purchase it, but be aware of the TV change you're causing. For example, if a 1000 TV Human team decides that they need a wizard to fight their 1100 TV Elf opponents, they can get it by contributing $150,000 from their treasury. This temporarily increases their TV to 1150, meaning that the Elf team will actually receive $50,000 in free inducement money for the match. This is a high price to pay for an inducement, but it could be worthwhile for a gamesaver.