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A BEGINNER’S INTRODUCTORY GUIDE TO NOT COMPLETELY SUCKING AT BLOOD BOWL

This guide is intended for total newbie beginners. The idea here is not to replicate the documentation of the rules (which you should definitely read), but to give you an introduction to ‘good play’: the way you should approach taking your turns, keeping your players alive, and managing to score. People unfamiliar with Blood Bowl who pick up the game and dive right in are likely to be very frustrated as their players flounder all over the place and even the decidedly flawed AI is able to walk all over them with impunity. The game’s interface does not help; although all the information you need is available, you have to know what to look for in order to understand fully what is going on and how to make good choices.

This guide revolves around four basic rules. Rules 1 through 3 are tied together by the over-arching Rule 0. If you want the tl;dr version, this is it: write these on a sticky note, put them on your monitor, and use them every single turn:

Rule 1: On Every Turn, Do The Safe Moves First.

Rule 2: Attempt Advantageous Blocks and Easy Dodges. Avoid disadvantageous blocks and difficult dodges. Learn how to tell the difference.

Rule 3: Balance Risk and Reward. Take calculated risks. Focus on low-risk, high-reward actions and avoid high-risk, low-reward actions.

Rule Zero: Plan Your Turns! Before you do anything, on every turn, make a plan.

OK, let’s start with the basics. Pick a race, build a team with some players, and figure out how to make a game happen. For your first game, you should play against the AI or a friendly and patient player, such as a Goon who knows it’s your first game. You’ll be taking a long time to take your turns at first and it’ll help to not have someone being impatient with you.

A Blood Bowl game consists of two halves totaling 16 turns. Each player gets 16 turns in which to try to win. On each turn, all of your players on the field can do something (unless they are Stunned; that makes them miss a turn while they flop over. Players face-down before your turn starts will be unavailable this turn; those face up can stand up this turn and are available to do something).

Each of your turns ends in one of the following ways:

-Every player on the pitch has used up his one action; or,
-A point is scored by making a Touchdown; or,
-Your time allotment runs out. (A normal turn is 4 minutes, but you can play shorter maximum-time turns with other players. Until you are much better at the game, stick to 4-minute turns.); or,
-Something Bad Happens, causing a Turnover. (In Blood Bowl, a game invented by Brits with an understandably vague grasp of American Football, the word Turnover refers to when your turn ends prematurely, making it the other player’s turn to play. In American Football, a Turnover refers to a change in possession of the football; e.g., the offense gives up the ball to the defense.) Avoiding Turnovers is absolutely crucial to playing well, as we will see in a little bit.

When it is your turn, you can click on your players in any order, and give each player an order, and he will then gamely attempt to carry it out. Each player has a Move Allowance (MA) which is the maximum number of squares he can move. You can move diagonally just the same as straight. Click on a player and the game will show you the clear squares, which is the most he can move without having to risk falling over. Then there is a border of two (or sometimes three) squares with little dice in them; you can push a player by Going For It. Doing so causes a die to be rolled, and if it rolls a 1, your player trips and crashes into the field and you suffer a Turnover.

If a player starts the turn face-up on the pitch, he can stand up at the cost of 3 of his movement points. Even if he’s next to an opponent, standing up is risk-free! If your turn ends on a Turnover and you forgot to stand up a player, you probably made a big mistake.

Speaking of risk, moving is not completely without risk. You can pick a player and then pick a square for him to run to, and the computer will route him to that square. Alternatively, you can select a specific path of squares for him to follow by right-clicking a path of squares. Figure out how to do this; it’s important.

Whenever a player moves, if he leaves a square that is adjacent to an able-bodied (standing and fully-conscious and not “titchy”) opponent, he will have to attempt to Dodge. The game shows this by shading the square the player is attempting to enter red. Red means danger! Some players are great at Dodging and some are terrible at it… but no matter how great, there is always some chance that a player will fail to Dodge, and when that happens, the player crashes to the ground and you suffer a Turnover.

Turnovers are bad, mkay? When you suffer a Turnover, you miss out on taking actions with some of your players. They spend your turn just hanging around doing nothing. That’s a huge waste.

So, you should generally avoid Dodging when you can. If your player has a MA of 6, and you only need to move him 4 squares over, why not route him around his opponent? Even players who are really excellent at Dodging should still always take the safest route to get to where you want them, and again, the game will not necessarily do this for you. I have watched many, many games with even accomplished players where they consistently make unnecessary Dodges, often because they did not decide in advance where they were going with a player.

So to recap; standing up is safe, and moving is safe as long as you stay out of your opponent’s tackle zones (more on those in a moment). That leads us to Rule 1.

Rule 1: On Every Turn, Do The Safe Moves First.

Of course, sometimes tactics will dictate that you leave a player lying down or standing out in the open until you’ve done something important first, or force you to try a Dodge first in order to gain an assist or some positioning advantage. But the first thing you should do on every turn is look around and evaluate which actions you can do safely, and then do them first as much as possible.

Once you’ve done the totally-safe moves, there are still all the others, of course, and they are not all equally risky… so this principle continues to apply. You need to understand which moves are only a little risky, and which are very risky. Even if you don’t calculate every number, understanding the rules will help you get a good feel for relative risk.

As a general guide:

No risk: Standing up from prone, moving out of squares that have no adjacent opponent players.

Low risk: Ganging up your guys and then throwing blocks on your opponents. Specialist players doing their specialty (dodgy players dodging, strong players blocking). Going For It for one square.

Moderate risk: Making normal blocks and dodges with normal players. Trying to pick up the ball, throw or hand-off the ball, or catch the ball, with no opponents adjacent. Going For It for two squares. Short passes.

High risk: Blocking at a disadvantage. Dodging with low-agility players, or making a string of dodges. Trying to pick up, throw or hand-off, or catch the ball with adjacent opponents. Medium passes.

Very High Risk: long-passes. Dodging and ball-handling when surrounded by lots of opponents. Trying to block at a severe disadvantage. Dodging with extremely clumsy players.

Alright, let’s talk about Blocking. Whenever you pick a player and tell him to try to wallop an opponent, that’s a Block. Blocking always rolls the special ‘blocking’ dice. Depending on how advantageous or disadvantageous the matchup is between the blocker and the blockee, you will roll between one and three dice. In a very advantageous matchup, you roll three dice and then pick which one to use. This is a +3 Die Block and it is the lowest-risk block. In a normal, +2 Die Block, you roll two dice and pick one. Most of the time, you should be making +2 and +3 Die Blocks. These are low to moderate risk things to do.

If the modified STR score of the Blocker and the Blockee are exactly matched, you roll one blocking die and take the result. This is risky! You will occasionally find yourself wanting to make such a block for tactical reasons, but if so, this is the kind of thing you should try to leave till the end of your turn. Since most players have a STR of 3, most one-on-one matchups are even 1 Die Blocks.

If the target opposing player has a modified STR advantage against the Blocker, you roll a -2 Die Block. In this case, you roll two dice, but your opponent gets to pick which die to use! This is obviously terribly dangerous. You’ll have to get quite lucky indeed to do well, by rolling two good results at the same time, so your opponent is forced to pick a good result for you. As a beginner you should pretty much never attempt a -2 Die Block. Advanced players occasionally will try these as desperation moves, or when there is a huge reward to be had… e.g., it’s the only option left to avoid losing the game.

-3 Die Blocks are also possible. Never, ever try these. On three dice, the odds of you rolling three good results are vastly lower than rolling at least one bad result.

OK, so how do you know which type of Block you’re going to make? Well, pick a player and hover over an opponent adjacent to them, and the game will show you a number of dice. If they’re white, it’s a +, if they’re red, it’s a -. So, if it shows two white dice that’s a +2 Die Block. The game only shows you the dice matchups for adjacent players (or for a distant player, after you select Blitz for the player you have selected) though, so you'll need to learn how to figure this out for yourself pretty soon.

Setting up advantageous Blocks is a major part of the game. You do it by using strong players to Block weak players (compare the players’ ST (strength) stats), and by providing assists. Basically, assisting means getting more than one of your players adjacent to the guy you’re gonna Block. That guy also benefits from assists from his team, too. Figuring out exactly how an assist will work out is too complex for this introduction; go read the rules carefully and then try setting up some assists in the game to start to get the hang of it. Both the game manual, and the LRB (“Living Rule Book”), do a pretty good job of explaining how assists work; study either one carefully.

For now, just take this approach: At the beginning of your turn, look over your guys and see how they’re already matched up against the opponents. Look for your strong, blocker-type players, and also places where you can get two or three of your own guys, free-and-clear, up against one of his. You can select any player and hover over opponents to see what the dice will be. After you make your zero-risk moves, you can consider making a few advantageous Blocks. That 'free-and-clear' is important, by the way: unless a player has the special 'guard' skill, he can only provide an assist if the only opponent he's next to is the one being Blocked! (Or, when on defense, if the only opponent he's next to is the one making the Block action.)

There are two goals to making Blocks:

-Rearranging the opponents so that you can get past them, either with the ball or to go get the ball

-Trying to knock out, injure, or even kill the opposing players, so your opponent runs out of good players and you gain a numerical advantage on the field.

If that second bit doesn’t seem fair to you, understand that this is why it’s called Blood Bowl. Your opponent will certainly be trying to do the same thing to you. Of course, some teams excel at Blocking (these are ‘bashy teams’), and they rely heavily on these two factors to gain advantage and score points. Other teams are better at dodging, and poor at Blocking (‘dodgy teams’); these teams must rely on mobility and speed to keep away from the opponents’ Blocks and try to score.

Alright, one more important Blocking consideration is the Blitz. Every turn, you are allowed to use one Blitz. Ordinarily, a player can either move, or attempt a Block, but not both. However, a Blitz allows you to combine these actions with one of your players; that player can attempt a Block at any point in their move. Blocking costs the player one move point. Before you start shuffling players around the field and bashing your opponents, you need to decide how you’re going to use this precious commodity.

Often, the Blitz is your only possibility of putting a Block onto the opponent ball-carrier. Few competent players will deliberately run a ball-carrier into a square adjacent to an upright opponent, because they know that a single good block will put their ball-carrier on the ground, and when a ball-carrier falls over, he automatically drops the ball.

Two things to keep in mind about the Blitz:

-You have to declare it before you move the player that is blitzing. If you pick an upright player and target an opponent at some distance for a block (by right-clicking on him), the game will automatically declare the Blitz for you before moving that player. On the other hand, if you move a player a few squares, you cannot at that point decide it's going to be a Blitz and try to Block with him. This trips up a lot of beginners, because they don’t understand why the game lets them move-and-block sometimes but not other times. To declare a Blitz, select a player, then click the lightning button, then perform the blocking and movement actions you want to do. If you change your mind, you can always de-select the player (before he’s done anything!) and your Blitz won’t be wasted; but once you declare and then take any action (stand up, move 1 square, throw a block, etc.) you are committed.

-Blitz is the only way to get a prone player to throw a Block (unless he has a special skill), because standing up costs 3 squares. This is why you should decide what you’re going to do with your Blitz before you do anything else on your turn! Remember Rule 1? You’re going to stand up your players before throwing Blocks and making dodges, right? Well, here’s an exception… you might leave a man prone if you know you’re going to use him to Blitz, because once you stand him up, it’s too late to decide later that he’s going to be your Blitzer this turn.

Keep in mind that the Blitz action lets you move after a block, as well as before it. This is useful because it means you can move your Blitzer into position, Block with him, and then move him into an assist for another blocker, all in one action! Also keep in mind that throwing a Block still uses up 1 point of movement.

If you Block at the end of a Blitz, be careful; using up all of the player’s movement first, forces him to Go For It before making his actual Block roll.

One more thing. Some positional players are called ‘blitzers’. These guys are well-designed for Blitzing; they usually have decent movement, average strength for throwing good Blocks, decent armor, and almost always a useful skill such as the Block skill. That said, there is no requirement that you use blitzers for your Blitz action! These players can make excellent backfield defense, supplement your front line blockers, or be your go-to ball-handlers and scorers. Feel free to use your Blitz action with any player if it makes sense.

OK, so lets go back to dodging again for a minute. Just like Blocking, the risk of dodging is variable (but there is always at least a little risk). When a player leaves an opponent’s Tackle Zone (the squares adjacent to the opponent, including diagonally), he rolls a normal six-sided die. An Agility (AG) 3 player (most teams’ basic linemen are AG 3) has to roll a 3 or better on the die to succeed at dodging. That means a 1 or 2 will cause him to trip up and hit the pitch… a Turnover, and a possible injury as well!

A player with AG 4, on the other hand, only has to roll a 2+ to dodge out of a tackle zone. That means there’s only a 1 in 6 chance of an AG 4 player getting tripped up. That difference of 1 might seem small, but it’s actually huge; it means AG 4 players will dodge successfully twice as often as AG 3 players. Skills can make this even better (the Dodge skill, for example, allows a dodging player to re-roll a failed dodge once per turn. So, an AG4 player with Dodge has a 1/6 x 1/6 = ~3% chance of failing to dodge out of one square. Pretty excellent!)

Dodging is harder, though, if in addition to leaving a tackle zone, you are also entering an opponent’s tackle zone. In fact, it gets 1 harder for each opponent adjacent to the square you’re entering. Even a very high AG player is ill-advised to try to move through a big circle of opponents!

The game does not show you exactly how risky a given dodge will be, when you are planning a move. You just get those red squares. Consequently, at least when you are starting out, you should probably pick a balanced team (orcs, humans, necromantic) or a bashy team (undead, khemri, dwarves, nurgle, chaos) for your first few games, and avoid dodging entirely. (Orcs and humans are the classic teams that came with the original Blood Bowl board game. They're the best teams to pick to learn the game with because they both are flexible, have good positional players you can afford to start with, and introduce you to a reasonable subset of the skills. Orcs are a little more survivable and a little less good at passing than humans. If you have no idea what team to play, play orcs.)

So this brings us to Rule 2.

Rule 2: Attempt Advantageous Blocks and Easy Dodges. Avoid disadvantageous blocks and difficult dodges. Learn how to tell the difference.

Hot Tip: in the PC version of the game, during a game, hit the 'g' key. The game will show you all of the opposing players' tackle zones, along with the grid you are playing on and some other bits of info. Very useful when trying to figure out how hard a Dodge will be. Turn it on for a few plays to get a feel for the tackle zones. I leave it on at all times, just because it's such a useful overlay.

OK, that’s a lot covered already. It might not seem like it, but if you can manage your dodges and blocks, you’ve gotten 80% of the way to playing competently. Now let’s talk about what happens when a player’s face hits the pitch.

Whenever a player falls over, there is a chance of injury. When a player goes down, the opponent makes an Armor Roll of two six-sided dice. The result is compared to the player’s Armor Value (AV). If the roll is higher than the AV, the player suffers an injury! The Armor Roll can get bonuses based on various factors… for example, if a player goes down because of a Block thrown by an opponent, and that opponent‘s player has the Mighty Blow skill, they get to add 1 to the armor roll.

The Injury table is another two-dice roll. On a 2-7 the player is Stunned. That means about half the time, when a player goes down and then fails the armor roll, they’ll be stunned, all things being equal. When a player is stunned, the game shows them face-down on the pitch. At the start of your next turn, your stunned player will roll over to be face-up, and you won’t be able to use him that turn. Players who are face up are merely prone; if they were face up before the start of your turn, you can stand them up (at the cost of 3 movement points) and use them freely.

On an 8 or 9 on the Injury table, a player is Knocked Out (KO). They go to the sideline immediately, but they’ll have a 50% chance of recovering and being available for play again at every kickoff (so, after each score, and at the half).

A 10-12 on the Injury table means a player is a Casualty (CAS). Causing Casualties earns Star Player Points for your players, so it’s always a joy when you manage to do it! Casualties cause a third dice roll (a 6-sider and an 8-sider… for technical reasons, don’t worry about it.) This roll is on the Casualty Table; a third of the time (16/48), they’ll suffer some unspecified indignity and be Badly Hurt. Badly Hurt players are out for the rest of the game, but they’ll be back the next game so no long-term harm done. 1/6 of the time (8/48), they’ll suffer some more serious damage: a strained groin or gouged eye or something. These players will Miss Next Game (MNG). Sucks to be down a man next game, but at least your player will eventually fully recover. Another 1/6 of the time, the player will suffer a permanent injury: either a “Niggling Injury” (NI) or a penalty to MA, AV, AG, or ST. Many coaches will fire a player after suffering such an injury, preferring to replace them with a healthy recruit… although a highly-skilled player or one that loses an attribute unimportant to their main role is often still worth keeping.

Finally, there is a 1/6 chance of a CAS resulting in player death. This is the BEST RESULT because this is Blood Bowl and the fans want blood. When a player gets killed on the pitch, you should cheer! Even if it’s your own guy. This is the game, get used to it or go back to your copy of Madden.

If you have been reading carefully, you’ll recall that every time a player goes down, they have to make an armor roll. That means that, effectively, every move you make that could result in your own player going down, carries some risk of that player DYING. This should be in the back of your head whenever you make moves on the field. This is why unnecessary risks are poor play. Blood Bowl is about calculated risk; you cannot win without taking risks, but there should be some tactical or strategic goal to every risk you take, one that is commensurate to the level of risk. Insanely risky moves should only be undertaken when there is a highly lucrative reward possibility, and no lower-risk way to get it. In league play, where you want to advance a team through many games, it can actually make more sense to throw away a game than take a wildly risky move with a key player that has a longshot of winning it.

Of course, there are some moves that do not risk falling over. “Risk” is actually about two things: the odds of injury, and the odds of a turnover. Each of these factors is balanced against potential reward. Generally, blocking and dodging risks injury (as well as turnover), whereas ball handling only risks turnover (you can’t get injured merely attempting to pass the ball). You will find that the kind of team you field has a major affect on these calculations. Guys with high AV are less likely to get injured from falling over… guys with high AG are less likely to trip up while dodging… guys with lots of MV can route around opponents instead of having to dodge… guys with high ST can greatly reduce the risk of being in the thick of the opponents, because they have a much harder time setting up advantageous blocks against him… and so on. Don’t worry too much about this stuff yet, though. It’ll come with time and experience.

OK, briefly, it’s time to talk about (Team) Rerolls. When you make a team, you can buy Rerolls at half price; thereafter, you can buy Rerolls with your winnings. Every team needs at least two Rerolls, and eventually you’ll probably want four or more. For a beginner I recommend three as a good starting number.

Once per turn, you can spend a Reroll to (obviously) re-roll certain kinds of bad results. Specifically, you can re-roll all of the dice on a Block that you make, or the die on a dodge, pass, hand-off, or catch that you attempt. You can only spend one Reroll per turn, though, and if the player has a skill that also re-rolls the dice on a failure (such as the Dodge skill), the game will automatically re-roll the failure and you cannot then also spend a team Reroll afterward. In other words, you only get one shot to reroll a failure – whether that comes from a skill or a Team Reroll . Your Rerolls are refreshed at half-time, and various kickoff events can give you extra Rerolls.

Rerolls are a precious commodity and it is important to use them wisely. If you have been following my Rules, you will leave the riskiest plays for last, on a given turn. The riskiest plays are the ones where you are most likely to need to re-roll! On the other hand, there may be an action on your turn that is critically important; for example, your ball-carrier will be forced to dodge once to get into the end-zone, and you have no prospects of Blocking the guy marking him. Try to conserve your Rerolls for these situations, and avoid spending them reflexively whenever you get a bad result on the dice. If you are making some +2 Die Blocks near the end of your turn and you roll double-skulls, stop and think a moment. Yes, it means a Turnover AND your player down (and an Armor roll!) but maybe that’s not so bad. Is he in a key position? If he goes down, is your scoring drive ruined? Or will it mean your opponent will definitely be able to score? If not, it might be best to save the Reroll and suffer the indignity of the Attacker Down result.

Of course, you should keep your eye on the turn counter, as well. You rarely get a chance to re-roll something on your opponent’s turns, so in general if you have three rerolls left and it’s your turn 6, you might as well use one every turn between now and the half.

Each turn, you should have in mind at the beginning of the turn a general idea of which actions are critical and worth a Reroll, and which (end-of-turn!) actions are less important and not worth wasting one on.

Sometimes, you’ll be forced to use a Reroll on a trivial action, strictly to avoid a Turnover, so you can get to a more important action. That’s OK, it happens. Also, get used to the agony of using a Reroll and still getting a bad (or even worse!) result. That’s Bloodbowl!

Now lets talk about scoring. You want to win the game, right? Well, the only way to win is to score points, and to do that you’re going to have to get ahold of the ball and then get it into the opponent’s end zone. That means three things;

-Ball handling. Picking up, passing or handing off, and catching the ball.

-Moving down the field with the ball. That means protecting your ball carrier and finding a way past the opponent’s defenses.

-Time management. You must score before the half ends, or all the progress you made towards the end zone is for naught!

There is a great deal to learn about ball handling, especially because there are lots of specialized skills that help you do it, but let’s just cover the basics here. First, ball handling is all about Agility (AG). High AG players will do better with all aspects of it; picking up the ball, throwing it, handing it off, and catching it. Ordinary linemen usually have an AG of 3, which is just barely adequate to the task. Most normal and bashy teams only start with AG3 guys… often though, they have a Thrower positional who comes with a skill that helps with picking up or throwing the ball. Dodgy teams have access to players that start with AG4; these players are always better for ball-handling. If you have just one or two Passer or AG4 players, they're the guys you want to put in your backfield when receiving a kickoff.

Any time you try to pick up, hand off, or throw the ball, you risk a Turnover. Remember rule 1? That should push you to making such moves nearer to the end of your turn. On the other hand, you don’t want to let your opponents grab the ball! If it’s just lying out in the open, waiting till the very end of your turn to try and grab it can backfire; some low-risk block goes badly and you get a Turnover, and now your opponent can run in and grab the ball! Consequently, you need to balance the risk and reward (which, it turns out, is Rule 3!)

Rule 3: Balance Risk and Reward. Take calculated risks. Focus on low-risk, high-reward actions and avoid high-risk, low-reward actions.

When picking up the ball, it is a good idea to position extra players around the spot where the ball lies, before trying to pick it up. That’s because if your ball-handler fails to pick up the ball, it will Bounce, moving into an adjacent square at random. Whenever the ball moves into a square that a standing player occupies, he will automatically attempt to grab it! By having several of your players near the ball, you are hedging the risk of picking it up; it might wind up in another players’ hands, or lying at their feet, but at least that makes it harder for your opponent to come over and snag the thing.

There is always a chance of success when ball-handling, too. A natural 6 on the die is always a success, so no matter how clumsy or terrible your player, you have at least a 1/6 chance of grabbing the ball. Often if you know you can’t pick up the ball, it’s better to position your players around it, because tackle zones on top of the ball make it harder to pick up… but sometimes it makes sense to let your AG1 brute try for the ball, if it’s the only chance of keeping those damned agile Elves’ mitts off of it!

This same positioning principle applies to handoffs and passes. Usually you can’t manage to get a whole lot of players into your opponents’ backfield for a pass, but if you can get two or three, keeping them nearby reduces the risk from the receiver dropping the ball near your opponent’s defenders.

When one guy has the ball and he’s adjacent to another guy, he can Hand Off the ball rather than pass it. This is pretty much always safer than passing. When you throw a pass to another player, you actually have to make two die rolls. The first is for the player throwing the ball, to see if he’s accurate. Assuming the passed ball is accurate (or an inaccurate passed ball winds up landing in a square with another of your players!) the receiver then has to roll to see if he manages to hang on to the ball. Since there are two rolls, there are two chances to screw this up, which is why passing is fairly risky for unskilled, ordinary players! For the thrower, the distance thrown affects the roll; very short passes are much easier than very long passes (and the harder the pass, the higher the risk of it being fumbled). For the catcher, a pass that was accurately thrown to them is easier to catch than when a ball just arrives in their square through accident.

With a handoff, the handoff is always accurate; the only roll you have to make is for the receiver of the ball. That’s why handoffs are almost always the better option when you are just moving the ball a short distance. (The only exception is when there are so many passing-related skills that their bonus makes it an easier roll than a hand-off… but don’t worry about that right now.)

If you are going to be moving the ball, you need to think ahead. Are you going to have the ball-holder move? If so, where? Can you set up defenders to surround him, so that your opponent cannot easily send his Blitzer in to knock over your guy? Building a ‘cage’ around a ball-runner can be challenging, but it makes for a much safer (albeit often slower) march down the field.

If you are going to pass or hand off the ball, you need to think about the order of operations. Long passes are riskier than short ones, so, the least-risky proposition is to FIRST move the passer up as far as you can, SECOND throw the pass, and then (if it works), THIRD move the receiver with the ball. That’s the ideal way to keep passes short, but move the ball down the field a bunch.

Keep in mind you can only throw the ball once per turn, and you can also only hand off the ball once per turn, but you can do both in one turn. So, if you set up your players right, it’s possible to move the ball a huge distance down the field, without risking a long-bomb pass! Of course, you’re still risking fumbling the ball in the hand-off or the pass, so plan accordingly. You will quickly find that these dramatic, huge moves require players that are free to move; either a Dodgy team, or, players that do not start their turns adjacent to opponents.

Whenever you push back an opponent with a Block, you have the option of following up. Doing so is good if you want to pin down that defender with your blocker, but sometimes you might think ahead to the next turn; keeping your guys freed up improves mobility. (Of course your opponent is also thinking about this!)

Keep your eyes on the turn counter, too. Nothing sucks more than spending your whole turn grabbing the ball, making risky dodges and blocks to clear a lane, and then realizing there is no possibility of you moving the ball into the end zone before halftime. If you need a touchdown and are running short on turns, consider sending one or two players downfield towards your opponent’s end zone, even if you don't have the ball yet or you could really use them as blockers. Even if your team is not particularly agile, having someone who has a chance of receiving a pass and then running it into the end zone in a single turn keeps your scoring option open. When your opponent has the ball, leaving one guy in range of his end zone prevents a situation where you luck out and he drops the ball, but you have no way to capitalize.

Managing the clock is also important when you are ahead. If you are up by one point against a team that is capable of scoring quickly, it can make more sense to stall, running down the turn-counter rather than scoring quickly yourself! A lot of expert players will delay if they have the ball at their opponent’s end zone, and there is no way for the opponent to reach the ball-carrier to try a block. This is a zero-risk delaying tactic that can really frustrate some beginners (and crybabies), but expert players understand it and will use it mercilessly.

Another good time to run down turns is when a series of injuries on the field leaves you with a temporary advantage in numbers or strength. If you push a player or two into the crowd, score a couple of KOs, and so forth, you could find yourself in a scoring position that you likely won’t be able to replicate after the next kickoff. Many players will accept a tie, running down the clock and scoring a tying touchdown in the last turn, rather than tie the game early and then have to handle two or three turns with the opponent restored to full strength, even if that means giving up the (perhaps very low) chance of scoring again and winning the game!

All of the tips and guidelines I’ve provided so far should be leading you towards a single, fundamental concept to rely on for this game, which takes me to Rule Zero:

Rule Zero: Plan Your Turns! Before you do anything, on every turn, make a plan.

It might not last past the first die roll, but if you don’t have a plan, you will flounder and lose consistently. You must examine your options and form a basic outline of what you’re trying to do, at least in broad terms. Advanced players will often plan what every player on the pitch is going to do before they make a single move, but you don’t have to go that far. Just look around and figure out a basic strategy for the turn. Who needs to be stood up? Who will be your blitzer this turn, and where is he going? Where can you get advantageous blocks? Is it possible to make a hole in the defense’s line to get the ball through? Which side of the field are you focusing on for your drive? If you’re on defense, what is the most likely way to get to the ball-carrier? Do you need to cover a receiver near your own end-zone? If so, which player(s) are you going to use for that? In your first few games, you should be taking at least 20 seconds or so at the beginning of every turn to think. If you find yourself immediately focusing on a tempting +3 Die Block or immediately running your guy in for the touchdown as soon as your turn starts, you’re going too fast. The most obvious action is not always the best, or at least, there may be something else you should do first. Rule Zero is the key to Blood Bowl, the thinking-man’s bloodsport!

*****

So far, I’ve only covered the basics. There is a great deal more to learn and understand about Blood Bowl before you’ll be an expert, but if you follow these guidelines, you’ll at least be competent. I think once you reach that basic level of competence, the game starts to be fun instead of frustrating, even if you still lose a lot of games… you can now access the rich tactical experience of the game, and you’ll be much more likely to understand what has happened when you make an error.