A couple of weeks ago I had a friend over and pulled out the old blood bowl game from under its pile of dust. I'd played it a bit a long time before that, but had to start pretty much from scratch, relearning the old rules. We played for about 4 hours and finally someone got a touchdown.
Then we were ready for the veteran rules, so a few days later we set up again, played for 5 hours and didn't even come close to an end zone! Hmm.. I thought. There had to be some info online on how to make the game more interesting! Sure enough - among other things, I found out that the box was the second edition game and it turns out there's a whole set of new rules, more new rules you're not supposed to talk about and then yet another set of new rules that are being kept up to date.
I bought the new box the same day, was delighted that not all the figures look the same, and sat down to paint. Last night the same friend and I played the first game using LRB 1.3 rules and it was fun! My humans were pounded by his orcs (aided in no small part by a troll named Bolgrot, and only because I haven't finished painting Griff Oberwald yet - I wish painting miniatures were a valid reason for taking time off work!), losing 3-1 and suffering about 4 or 5 casualties.
Some things came up that weren't totally clear to me, and I thought I'd ask here and come out of lurkdom..
- The +2 to the roll for the ref spotting a foul, does that come into play after any foul, or only if the ref spots a foul in the first place? Likewise, when the opposing team to the one he's got his eye on commits a foul, does the eye switch immediately, or only if he spots that foul?
- Is the illegal procedure call for forgetting to move the turn marker a call by the ref? I ask because we got a "get the ref" result on the kick-off table and both ended up with the ref not awarding any penalties to our teams in the second half.
- Something that seems obvious, but I have to ask: Do big guys now only take up one square on the field? I said yes to this one (guessing that that's why the squares are bigger now), since there is no explanation for how to move big guys when taking up 4 squares as there was in the second edition rulebook.
- Does someone with Mighty Blow have to declare whether they're using the +1 for armour or injury before the armour roll?
- When rolling 3 times for scatter to see where the ball ends up on an inaccurate throw, do you keep track of squares outside the field? An example - when the catcher the throw was supposed to go to is on the right hand edge of the field, and the first scatter roll has it going one square to the right of him, the second one straight up, and the third to the left, does the ball end up on the square above him, or does it go into the crowd on the first scatter roll?
- When the ball lands on an empty square after a throw in, does it bounce one square or just remain there?