Special Play Cards Cost

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Milo
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Re: Special Play Cards Cost

Post by Milo »

The game has become a lot more competitive since the release of the CRP. That's great for tournaments -- it's an amazing achievement to have a consistent and playable version of the Blood Bowl rules, with all the moving parts, that can have a competitive balance.

That said, Blood Bowl has always been a wild and wacky game with lots of randomness. For those of us who played in 3rd Edition (with it's +2/+2 Dirty Player and +5 Piling On and overpowered special play cards and such), the current version can seem a little tame and vanilla. I think the new Special Play cards are considerably toned down, and once there is some balance between the disparate values of the Special Play cards, I think they'll add some nice spice to the game without unbalancing it like the old ones did. (Flu Bug was one of the cards that was dramatically more powerful than it's mates. I lost a game to that recently.)

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Post by Mystic Force »

The answer to this is multi part and really gets to the heart of why YOU play Bloodbowl, and when you started.

So this answer will cover a bit of history, my personal preferences and some observations.

I started in 3rd ed as mentioned above, and I think that most people I have encountered in Bloodbowl look back to the point they were introduced as being a benchmark to compare all other things against. For example those people who started in the 2nd ed often express negative feeling towards the 3rd ed aesthetic of soldiers walking off the battlefield, whereas I think that is a benefit as conversions are easier from the WFB range. Plus it is just what I am familiar with, and I could paint stuff the same way as I did my WFB armies and give them fluff, or as I prefer background, of soldiers who had just walked of a battleground, after all the very first game of bloodbowl was played by bored soldiers at a battlefield!

For those who did not experience 3rd ed, I will give you some context and my interaction with it and how it shaped by Bloodbowl outlook.

3rd ed had 3 decks of cards, magic items, dirty tricks and random events. Magic items were the most powerful and you were limited to 1 card per game they could PERMANENTLY improve any player such as the infamous magic helmet with +1 AV, and armour 9 or 10 Griff Oberwald as a permanent fixture on my friends roster made him the bain of my Undead, along with his brother Riff (because you could have more than 1 of a star player). Dirty tricks was focused on the game being played and random events had a lot of cards that could be used to help build your team, such as buying a regular price reroll, recruit a player cheap, more cash etc. They were powerfull and could make you pull off unexpected things.

You could make passes that would otherwise be impossible, you coud knock people down in unlikely circumstances, you could deny TD, all sorts of crazy stuff. But so could your opponent.

It was not sufficient to just count squares and know your opponent couldn't score because you never knew what was coming. You had to play differently to account for these it was a fact of the game. Bluffing with cards was also a weapon, a few knowing looks might be enough to dissuade your opponent from a certain course of action.

Now handicapping was completely different the underdog got additional cards, and relative ability was done by counting up player values and apportining value based on total SPP of the team rather than improvements on players.

Now how I played Bloodbowl at this time was with a group of friends it was something to do to pass the time while we hung out, it also gave us a reason to get together. Although we wanted to win there was no reason to be ultra competitive amongst your buddies otherwise they were unlikely to keep turning up or playing. We played the loose 3rd league rules so it didn't really matter who won a game.

Now move on a few years and I started playing Bloodbowl with people I knew only because they also wanted to play Bloodbowl, this coincided with the rerelease and the replacement of cards with the beggining of the handicapping system we see today. The game was being reworked for the balance aspect and the more disruptive elements started to be reigned in. No rolls to see if your secret weapon player got banned they just went, wizards no longer turning people into frogs (still got the frog counters!) And no special play cards in routine play. That was my continuing experience of Bloodbowl through moving to another continent were I could carry-on playing this game. But now the game was more regimented with scheduled leagues, and tournament play. And there was an increasingly paired down rule set for balance and speed of play. But this was never the only way to play it. There has always been options of using cards although in a more limited way. But they were never as good as say adding a Star Player or other inducements.

Those special play cards represented the mayhem present in the background. So for me they added what the game promised when you read the back story. If this game was ONLY meant to be played as a competitive activity then no one would play Halflings, no one would throw teammates. Reading all the team guides out there the advice says for nearly every team never throw except for a quick pass Completions for a SPP to go up a level. That makes the game a little one dimensional. The 2-1 grind is the way to always win a little unvarried. There has to be more to the game than a slug fest where you occasionally move the ball over the line to score. No one stalls very long when faced with a grinning 3rd ed opponent with a fist full of cards.

So I personally loved the cards, still love the cards and don't care so much about winning. So you can take everything I said with a pinch of salt because we all play this game for different reasons.


Edit

Accidentally chopped of last line

A game of chainsaw weilding goblins playing football is probably not meant to be taken too seriously.

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I am a pro "fun" guy.
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Re: Special Play Cards Cost

Post by nivlaps »

My outlook and starting point is very similar Mystic Force. Good post. +1

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Jorgen_CAB
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Re: Special Play Cards Cost

Post by Jorgen_CAB »

@Mystic Force... could not agree more...

I have played this game since first edition thirty years ago. I don't particularly like the way the CRP changed the game into a competitive and rather bland tournament game. I probably liked 3rd edition the most but I do appreciate some of the later addition in skills and changes in 4th and the living rulebook as well.

The current version seem like a more balanced version of the older Blood Bowl games, this seem like a good change to me. We don't need to go back to the random extreme from 3rd edition.

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