New Edition rumors seem to be true

[spubbbba]

The difficult thing for GW is that they had already finished most of the content from BB16. There were only a few of the less popular teams still to do and once they were complete that would have been it. Bringing out new plastic kits costs them money, that could be spent on their more popular games. Marines always sell incredibly well and most other 40K factions are crying out for new models.

Once a team has a boxed set there is not much you can do to it. They added new positionals to some teams, but if they did that to an existing team it would require a new Spike magazine for the rules and either an entire new box (which won't sell as well) or the new players coming out through forgeworld.

I get the impression that Blood Bowl doesn't do that well on Forgeworld. They've only brought out a few cheerleader and booster kits, whilst most of the star players are new versions of those from 3rd edition. The big guys probably do ok, though am surprised still no Krox.

I think GW's only choice was to either finish off the remaining teams (and maybe add a couple more) and then drop the game or bring out new rules to revamp and get new people to play. I know some would prefer if GW didn't meddle with the rules, but the extra support from them promoting the game does bring in a lot of new blood.

[TopsyKretts]

No we don't need a hard reset but this is the GW business model. When I heard they were doing a new edition my heart sank. GW's history with new editions is shocking bit people put up with it. People even brought the snotting's Spike! in full knowledge that it would be out of date before they'd even painted the figures.

Having said all that, and despite myself I find that I'm actually quite liking the new edition. The separation of passing and agility is something I've always thought necessary. I don't like some of the team changes, the Underworld change purely to fit in the current sprews and breaks some peoples teams and the almost blanket addition of animosity to Orcs might move them away from being a good beginners team.

Thanks for acknowledging. The issue with changing the team rules to match the sprues is a mortal sin and they should never be forgiven for it. It is however a topic for the previous edition, and not something introduced in BB2020. Just saw a youtube review which commented on the new spike magazine and asked the question "is this the best spike so far?". Yeah, it's the only pike magazine, not much of a competition! All the previous ones are recyclable paper now. The youtube review also went through the "new" cards, failing to see that most of them were reprints of the previous edition (and some were even older). Seems like most responses are positive. The most obvious change for the cards is a lot of fluff text have replaced "he" with "they", which is more gender neutral. Guess GW has changed in the last 4 years, or they are planning to release Amazons soon Other than that, the cards are as faulty and imbalanced as ever before.

I don't mind most of the new rules. Shaking things up can be a good thing and I'm refusing to accept change. But it has to be for the better. A lot of BB2020 is not, the main motivation seems to be the business model ($$$) as you point out. But even this wasn't true for the previous edition. Yes, GW released a lot of "new" teams and "new" star players. But anyone having played before that knew that everything we already did have was compatible with the new edition in 2016. We could use any existing team, star players, even special play cards. Except for a very few minute changes, everything was the same (backwards compatible). Which means we didn't have to sit and wait for the next spike magazine to give us the star players we wanted. The only new content was optional expansions which very few probably cared about?

Today, we don't have that luxury, because of the PA stat. Now we are at the mercy of this chaotic release schedule, meaning that the new teams will shine in bloated glory, while the old will look in envy.

[Skitters]

with regards to the new cards, something I had not realised is that the special play cards that come in team packs are now race specific (at least that seems to be the case for Norse and Skaven - I've not seen the Dwarf)

previously - whilst themed towards a race - they did not specify
races that could use the cards.

Makes me think that there is a risk that some teams will wind up with a better set of special play cards than others and I suspect make them even less likely to feature outside of a GW tournament

[Lyracian]

Not seen the Race cards. Do they add to existing decks? Given they are random does that not make it even less likely to draw a particular card?

[Papa Sebco]

If you have no specific roster special play cards, you have to roll a dice to determine the card deck to draw from :
1. Random Events
2. Dirty Tricks
3. Magical Memorabilia
4. Heroic Feats
5. Benefits of Training
6. Miscellaneous Mayhem.

If you're a dwarf coach (or skaven or necromantic horror one, for instance), instead of rolling to see which of the standard decks a card is drawn for, you may choose one of your two special decks (Dwarf Benefits of Training and Dwarf Magical Memorabilia in that example) to draw from instead.

[Papa Sebco]

Anyway, BB 2020 special play cards use is more similar to previous LRB ones than to BB 2016 ones.

Special play cards are used as inducements. They all cost 100 000. Even if some special play cards may be powerful, it's a big cost (some of theses cards cost 50 000 in previous LRB).

[Lyracian]

If you're a dwarf coach (or skaven or necromantic horror one, for instance), instead of rolling to see which of the standard decks a card is drawn for, you may choose one of your two special decks (Dwarf Benefits of Training and Dwarf Magical Memorabilia in that example) to draw from instead.

That makes the team cards just better than the standard cards. No idea if they have any good cards but if you can pick a deck that has at least two good cards then you have a 46% chance to get one of them. To me this makes even less teams viable for a league as you would want there team cards too. The only saving grace being buying cards is over costed.

Special play cards are used as inducements. They all cost 100 000. Even if some special play cards may be powerful, it's a big cost (some of theses cards cost 50 000 in previous LRB).

When I read through them it seemed most were older 50k cards. If they had been costed at 50k I would have enjoyed taking one over a Keg. The annoying part is not having any idea what the race team cards are. Are there enough worth 100k to buy one or are they also going to be mostly over costed effects.

[TopsyKretts]

Anyway, BB 2020 special play cards use is more similar to previous LRB ones than to BB 2016 ones.

Special play cards are used as inducements. They all cost 100 000. Even if some special play cards may be powerful, it's a big cost (some of theses cards cost 50 000 in previous LRB).

Some of the cards may have costed 200k in previous edition too.

[Lyracian]

Some of the cards may have costed 200k in previous edition too.

Looking through the 48 cards the only one I can find that was 200k in LRB is "Ego Trip". "Magic Sponge" was a 200k card in LRB but has now been powered down so the player dies at the end of the game. I can also only see about three cards that used to cost 100k.

There are a number of cards that were not in LRB. Still not enough random cards from a random deck for me to think these are good picks for 100k.

[TopsyKretts]

According to my calculations, there were 204 cards in BB2016 (including some that may not be official like 'LVO'). About 45 of these were Miscellaneous Mayhem, which costed 200k? Of these, I found the following transitioned into BB2020: "Keep It Moving", "Assassination Attempt", "Technicality", "It's All To Play For", "Magical Sponge" and "Ego Trip". That's 7 of 8 cards copied (title at least). The only card that is actually "new" in this deck is the "Training Trouble", which uses the new Loner (X) mechanic.

[Lyracian]

According to my calculations, there were 204 cards in BB2016 (including some that may not be official like 'LVO'). About 45 of these were Miscellaneous Mayhem, which costed 200k? Of these, I found the following transitioned into BB2020: "Keep It Moving", "Assassination Attempt", "Technicality", "It's All To Play For", "Magical Sponge" and "Ego Trip". That's 7 of 8 cards copied (title at least). The only card that is actually "new" in this deck is the "Training Trouble", which uses the new Loner (X) mechanic.

When BB2016 came out all the cards costed 100k. It was only the optional rules they added later where the cards had different costs. I did not collect all the 2016 decks so do not know what some of those cards that were not converted from LRB do. You only listed six card titles but said seven matched...

• "Magical Sponge"I already mentioned has been reduced so that the player now dies at the end of the match. Clearly not a 200k card any longer.
• "Assassination Attempt" uses the new Stalling mechanic. Making it almost unplayable in most games. I have no idea what it did before.
• "It's All To Play For" was a Blitzmania card that that now as a 5+ roll added to get the extra score. A very big reduction in effect. It has also had the turns in which you can play it changes from Turn 5-8 to Turn 2-4. Again not a 200k card.
• "This Beer tastes Funny" The card you did not list from that deck has the main effect, but without adding the Decay trait, of the Warhammer World Exclusive card "There's something in my Beer". It is actually a fairly good card if they had added it to a cheaper deck. Like all the exclusives it was not worth adding to a 200k deck. You may disagree? Either way what has been printed in BB2020 is not as powerful.

I have no idea what "Keep It Moving", "Assassination Attempt" & "Technicality" did in BB2016. Of the three "Technicality" is the only one I would say is the same power level as "Ego Trip" and would have been worth 200k in LRB.

[TopsyKretts]

Right, there are 2 new cards and 6 reprints (in name at least). I'm not good at value judgement so I leave that to you, but some of the effects surely are reduced as you say. "It's All To Play For" is strange though, because the original card allowed you to catch up the score regardless of what the opponent's score was, which mean you could basically get a draw. The new one allows you to get 2 TDs instead of 1, so it could be used to win the match (if you're only down by 1TD).

Didn't know about the warhammer exclusive card, google gave no results for it!

On a different topic, Skrull Halfheight lost 1 AG, many weird micro-changes in this edition! The new system for assigning star players to teams is also very strange. Like Morg no longer plays for Vampire, but Skrull Halfheight plays for Dwarves and Chaos Dwarves. Roxanna Darknail no longer plays for Amazon, but can join Wood Elf. And Jordell Freshbreeze doesn't even exist

[zamerion]

the human and orc team was in unavailable on the web for weeks( I thought that due to factory problems), but now they have totally disappeared from the web.

for repacks they don't usually do this, right?


PD.neither are mixed teams like underworld.



Are there rumors about new designs of these teams? or any speculation about the next team?

[Mystic Force]

Maybe they are going to release the existing teams in updated packaging to match the second season stuff and there is a delay while this happens. But for the human/orcs from the last starter set I could see these being redone.

[Colin]

No maybe about it, they are planning to re-release all the teams in new packaging. The same goes for the custom pitches, but these will come with the new style smaller dugout boards. They've already done that with the double sided Skaven/Dwarf pitch. Already sold out. Wish they'd have learned there lesson from the last edition and release more copies of the custom pitches and dice sets, as these get sold out very quickly.