Football and War

Only very recently, I bought a game called “Blood Bowl.” It’s an interesting mixture between football (Australian Football, probably) and war.

The computer game is adapted from a tabletop game created by Jervis Johnson and published by Games Workshop. It features various races from the “Warhammer”-universe and is indeed a mixture between strategy and sports game.

The rules as a such are easy: two teams, one ball, one goal (getting the ball to the touchdown zone of the other team). In this aspect, the game resembles American Football (or rather, because of the violent game play the rougher Australian Football). Two teams of ten players face each other on a playing field (or, as some may call it, a battlefield). The ball (looking like an American Football with spikes) is kicked off by one team, then each tries to get the ball and make it with the ball (which can be handed over or thrown) to the opposite side of the playing field, where there’s a touchdown zone.

But in addition to the sports tactics themselves, a lot of other tactics can be employed, such as foul play (which might result in the fouling player getting sent off the field – still, the fouled player will be out of the picture for quite a while), bribery (of the referee or a member of the other team), the use of (forbidden) potions and so on. It’s indeed very much like professional sports these days … just kidding, of course.

I have yet to try out the various races and find the one I’m most happy with. Currently, I’ve tried out lizard men and humans, but skaven (some sort of man-high rats) and chaos (beast men of various types) sound interesting as well.