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How to play Blood Bowl without supporting GW
"Смысл "Dark times are upon us. The evil overlord that is Games Workshop has declared open war upon its customers and game fans. Unfortunately it seems Blood Bowl is being punished on the geek by those who seek to hurt its publisher. Like a people ruled by a ruthless tyrant this game has no choice on who its ruler is. But after many years of neglect and contempt by GW the Blood Bowl fans are long accustomed to its tyranny and have found subservise ways to take control of the game. Over time GW's grasp on this game has become very weak, sure they have the intellectual property, but this is no more then some words on some piece of paper. In essence, this game no longer belongs to GW, it belongs to the fans. Heck, the guy which led the LRB 5 rules rewrite is a co-owner of Impact miniatures which produces minis and accessories which can be used for blood bowl.
Let me show you how to enjoy this game without giving a cent to GW. It's really easy.
Viva la revolucion!
Rules
The latest rulebook is freely downloadable from gw's site. Yes, it's from GW but it's free. Enjoy it while it lasts.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/...amp;aId=4800003
Board
You will need one. You have 3 options: make one from scratch, print one out or buy from a different company then GW.
Build from scratch is the cheapest but will obviously cost you the most effort.
This blogger describes how to do it:
http://exponentwargames.blogspot.com/2009/...h-tutorial.html
Frank Becker also has an excellent site:
http://bloodbowl.beckerf.de/html/stadiums.html
From these sites you can download an image which you can print and glue to cardboard/wood to create your very own pitch:
http://www.creatish.com/core/sam/lord_of_t...n/bloodbowl.htm
http://webspace.webring.com/people/wp/pitch_witch
You'll also need dugouts. The dugout contains 3 spaces: reserves, knocked out and injured. Real easy to make yourself (can be done with a pen and a piece of paper).
It also contains the turn marker. This can easily be replaced by a generic d8. The reroll marker can be replaced by a simple d6.
Impact also sells dugouts:
http://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?option=gamemat
Templates and dice
The scatter and throwin template can very easily be recreated by reading the manual. You don't even need them if you make a clear agreement before every scatter/throwin roll: nominate a square which represents 1 and then count up the other squares clockwise.
The passing template is trickier but this can be replaced by the lookup table on this site:
http://www.dangermouse.net/games/bloodbowl/rules.html
Regular d6 and d8 are easy to get hold of. The blocking dice are harder. One way to get your hands on some is to join the NAF, these buy the dice from GW at production cost, so GW is not making any profit from it. GW is in no way commercially invested in the NAF:
thenaf.net
But you can also buy the impact dice:
http://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?...n=dice_profil...
Or just use regular d6's and use this lookup table:
1: Attacker Down
2: Both Down
3: Push
4: Push
5: Defender Down or Push (exclamation mark)
6: Defender Down
Often fans run tourneys and have a custom pitches/block dice/templates/minis made for the attendants. The leftovers are usually sold on www.talkfantasyfootball.com and Ebay.
miniatures
You don't even need miniatures. You could use lego, bottlecaps, meeples, tiddlywinks, little stuffed animals, cardboard/paper cutouts or even real people (as long as you have a matching board, it's been done before!). But the game does look a lot better if you use real miniatures. These companies sell fantasy football miniatures which are the right size to be used on a regular board:
http://www.impactminiatures.com/
http://www.shadowforge.com.au
http://www.rolljordan.com
Don't use gw stuff to paint them. All the painting tools (brushes and so on) you need should be available in your local hobby shop. Vallejo makes quality paints for painting minis:
http://www.vallejopaints.co.uk/
Obviously you could buy GW products from ebay, but you have no guarantee the seller won't spend the money on his 40k addiction.
Hopefully GW will see it's BB income decrease and it will sell the rights for BB to another company, like FFG, which will give this amazing game the support it deserves. It's not very likely, but maybe it is possible!
