Excellent rendition of the classic board game. Will attact old and new fans to Blood Bowl.
I will try to cover most of the game concepts but there is not enough space to mention all the details.
The developers did an excellent job re-creating the old BB board game. Maybe too good. The team management and player progression is great. The aging concept and injuries (everything from KO'd to Death) keep your star players from dominating forever. You can also try to attract veteran players to your team in between seasons. Although, you have to make your teams consist entirely of one race. I am hoping for an 'all-star' mixed race crack or expansion soon. The 8 different races have different specialties so play around and see which style of play works for you. Some races even have secret weapons like chain saws and steam rollers.
Team management allows for many different paths to victory. Team roster allows up to 16 players but only 11 on the field at a time. Playing a fleet-footed fragile race? Have replacements on hand. Match set up allows a myriad of choices to improve your chances for victory. Also, a rather ingenious balancing system gives a lower power team more money to buy pre-game perks. Some examples are: bribing the ref, hiring mercenary players, getting mages to cast powerful spells or having the opponents star player drug tested. All in all lots of fun choices catering to many differerent styles of play.
For those not familiar with BB, it plays more like rugby than american football. All 11 players run around with no huddles smashing into each other. Which is my favorite part of the game. KO'd or injured players are removed from play and replacements brought on during the next kick off. Game play is really good, but here is where it drops from a 10 to a 9. There are two game play modes: real time and turn-based. Both have flaws. Real-time is very chaotic. There are only 3 basic AI modes for your players and none seem to make them do anything intelligent. AI is very lacking. Single player allows a concentration mode where you can pause and issue orders to your players. In multiplayer you can't pause and so the faster races seem to have an advantage. In turn-based careful planning is very important. If you fail a roll for a planned action your team suffers a turnover and you forfeit the rest of your turn. This is REALLY annoying! This seems to favor the stronger races that rarely fail a block attempt.
Very easy to just jump in and play. But don't think it is a simple game. I have been playing non-stop for almost a week and am still refining my strategy. There seems to be many different paths to victory. Want to be juggernauts of the pitch? Play Chaos and smash your opponents into the mud. But good luck scoring, Chaos players are not the adept at ball handling. Want to see the end zone a lot? Try an Elven passing game or the fleet-footed Skaven. Willing to do anything to win? Goblins can bring a chainsaw out to clear the way. It seems there is enough variation to satisfy any taste.
All in all this is a great rendition of one of my favorite board games. The two game modes should satisfy every type of gamer. Blitz mode for frantic, chaotic, click-happy gamers. Turn-based for Type-A, OCD control-aholics.
With the following improvents I would give BB a perfect 10: More races (The board game had undead and halflings), a patch option to get rid of the turnover(SO ANNOYING!!!), better AI for Blitz (real-time) mode would certainly help and Multi-racial teams would be awesome.