Rat Ogre Bowl

[Dr. Von Richten]

First off, I'm not sure where to put this; if the moderators feel it's better of in another forum, please move it.

Anyway, Rat Ogre Bowl!

A hilarious and quick Blood Bowl variant I learned about recently and would like to share with you all.

Needed:
- 2-8 players.
- A Blood Bowl Board, Templates, Dice and Ball.
- One Rat Ogre per player (you can use other Big Guys as substitute Rat Ogres, of course, but every figure counts as having the stats and skills of the Skaven Team Rat Ogre).
- about 20 minutes.
- a sense of humour.

Goal:
- To get your Rat Ogre with the ball in either endzone.


Set up:
- Choose one Endzone.
- Every player places his/her Rat Ogre on a square in the chosen Endzone, so that it is not in the Tacklezone of another player's Rat Ogre.
- Place the Ball in the middle square of the Line of Scrimmage on the other half of the field from where the Rat Ogres start.
- Determine who starts the game by dice rolling, highest roll wins. The game moves clockwise from that player. For subsequent games, the player after the previous winner gets to start the game.

Game play:
- On your turn, you may make an action with your Rat Ogre as if it was a normal action in a Blood bowl Match. Note that you will want to 'Blitz' nearly always, to (mostly) avoid Wild animal.
- You have no Rerolls, so any failed action (Pick-Up, Block, Dodge and Going-For-It are the most common dice rolls) ends your turn.
- You may Assist another player's Rat Ogre in making a Block (and also on defense, if you really want to), but you don't do so automatically, nor do you counter assists unless you want to.
- If your Rat Ogre gets removed from the field for any reason (K.O., Casualty, Crowd Surf), you may place him in any square in either endzone immediately. Note that this means getting your opponent stunned is often more effective than getting him off the field, and thus you may want to not use Mighty Blow.

And that's it! The game usually ends up as a big slugfest as you desperately try to keep hold of the ball that you finally managed to pick up and stay out of the hands of your greedy fellow Rat Ogres!

So when you have a few BB friends over and are in the mood for something silly, try Rat Ogre Bowl!

[ravyn]

actually it sounds like a lot of fun. I will have to try it out

[Thadrin]

I think you'll find that Rat Ogre bowl owes it's existence to members of this board. I first heard about it from Deathwing and Longfang iirc...many, many moons ago.

It's perfect "saturday evening of a tourney" nonsense.

[Dr. Von Richten]

I think you'll find that Rat Ogre bowl owes it's existence to members of this board. I first heard about it from Deathwing and Longfang iirc...many, many moons ago.

And now I bring it back to TFF. At last, the circle is complete. When I left, I was the student. Now ... I am the master!

[Deathwing]

Yeah... that was down to Longfang and myself back in the day, prob around 2005. We used to round off league nights with it, play the odd game at tournies in the evenings, en-route to tournies etc. Glad to see it's still about!

Few things we did differently:
i) Start closer (4+ to move can take a player out of the fun if you spread too far). Just a rough circle around the centre of the board depending on amount of players, but more or less within blitzing range of each other. Ball in centre, D8 scatter and bounce.
ii) Roll initiative at the start of each turn, play in that order, so completely random, adds to the fun and general chaos.
iii) No surfing. Any push out of bounds was just an automatic stun on the occupied sideline square.
iv) No KOs, just stuns.
v) Optional re-rolls, 2 per game, no Loner.

It was going to be published in the BB magazine at one point, but we never got around to putting the rules together and submitting them.

[longfang]

Yea, we lay claim to Ratogre Bowl!
Invented in Deathwings living room one day when I was comparing the painting on 3 Ratogres I had done over some years. It became very popular for a while. Still a lot of fun.
The rules as per Deathwings post worked well.

[Thadrin]

have to say, I rather like the "removed players are placed in the endzone" idea. Means that if someone is away with the ball you could try and get someone off to let that player stop them.

[longfang]

Rat ogre moves on a 4+ roll. Games take 5 mins or 30 mins. The idea was to keep it simple. It's not a strategy game.
Also we never used assists.

[garion]

This sounds like great fun are there any other versions of bloodbowl out there of this ilk, quick and crazy mini games?

[Dr. Von Richten]

Nice to hear from the game's creators!

About the 'Move' though, since you have only one player (your Rat Ogre), and Moving does not allow you to do anything that a Blitz doesn't, you can just Blitz every turn and suffer Wild Animal only on a '1', regardless of whether you intend to hit someone.

[Deathwing]

Declaring Blitz actions without actually intending to blitz anyone may be technically legal in actual BB, but a straight 2+ when you're in fact making a move action isn't within the spirit of Rat Ogre Bowl.

[Norse]

I recall Stick, Mrs Stick, Porritt and Gorbad playing ROBowl for about 4 hours at RDV a few years back.. never have four people had so much fun with their clothes on it must be said...

[Axtklinge]

Sounds funny!
Have to give it a try with my league mates.

[Ghost]

Sounds like a really fun idea. I love crazy spin offs like this, well done guys. And I could actually see it having a place within fluff too. If I was a spectator, I would love to see the random mayhem of stupid brutes just slugging it out gladiator style. Could be fun to make a tag-team variant too, where you team up 2 vs 2 vs 2.

[Dr. Von Richten]

Could be fun to make a tag-team variant too, where you team up 2 vs 2 vs 2.

Troll Bowl!

Same as Rat Ogre Bowl, but you have two Trolls (Clara, Annabelle and Katrina. You also have trouble counting. ) per player. This being the greatest gathering of Stupidity ever on a Blood Bowl Field, it'll be a minor miracle is you finish even one game in an evening, but hilarity should ensue anyhow!