How to get good at bloodbowl and sportsmanship

In 2018, I started playing bloodbowl at a local club, I took to the game quickly as it scratched a lot of my favorite things in gaming - Miniature panting, not painting a lot of miniatures, developing as much or little fluff as you want and risk management. Bloodbowl is undoubtedly a dice game and for its detractors, I'm sure they consider it only that. However, the skill of the game is managing the dice, a great representation of the "fog of war" that can happen on the field. Upsets happen in real life as they do in games, fortune can be fickle but if you do your best to mitigate misfortunes, you don't need to be fortunate to win nor a poorly timed statistically improbable die roll to lose. Nuffle (the god of the sport of bloodbowl) giveths and he taketh away! My dice screwed me they cry out! I cant argue that rolls will go bad, maybe a case could be made that people exist who are a statistical anomaly, people who the dice truly hate. If those people exist, their favorite game is bloodbowl. 

To an outside reader I will try to keep the rules of blood bowl brief. Its effectively football where you resolve a majority of actions by rolling a six sided die. There are ways to reroll the die, which can be done once per roll. Any die result that is a 1 will end your turn in addition to other possible bad things. In its simplest form, every time you roll a die, theres a 16% chance you turn will end. 

This is where risk mitigation comes in, some times you can roll two dice and pick which die to use. To play well you need to prioritize actions that are necessary, in addition to trying to reserve riskier actions for the end of the turn. Bloodbowl rewards this type of play, in my opinion more than rewards, it also punishes the opposition. Having one player take actions that are statistically more likely to succeed, will have that player making more successes, these successes can remove the opposition from the game, which allows the player who is doing well to take even statistically better actions because they now have the majority of pieces on the board. From this, a player who isn't taking the best course of action, who has players down or out, is now forced to take more and more improbable actions, leading to more failures on their part. Bloodbowl in my theory, is rewarding steady play that takes the route mitigating risk and punishes the bold. Obviously, there is a lot more depth to the game, positioning, screening, knowing when and why to take riskier actions. If two player both play their best game, unfortunate rolls are definitely a factor in deciding that game. However not all unfortunate rolls are bad luck. I remember the day I got decent at bar room pool, which is surprising cause I also remember being really drunk. I knew that pool is about making all your shots, but during this game I realized if there is a shot you cant make then you need to make sure they don't have a good shot either. In pool you aren't just sinking balls, but you're also trying to leave the cue ball in an advantageous spot for your next shot, and poor spot for the opposition. If an opponent fails rolls that you forced them to make, do the dice hate them? 

Sportsmanship

Bloodbowl as a game played correctly will have one player making statistically better rolls while another player will either be making less probable rolls, or in the case of some players, make no rolls at all. When the game isn't down to the wire, then making a bad play isn't the right call. Making an unnecessary improbable play isn't something that will garner a lot of sincere sympathy from me. As a player, in a casual league but also during tournaments, I've tried to dissuade people from doing bad stuff. As a player I also like to secure my win, so if you're down, I'm going to kick you. Bloodbowl isn't won by not taking hits given and I haven't seen many people not take a hit given to them. I don't want to kick a player while they are down from poor decision making, it's not fun and it doesn't feel sporting. Sometimes, I will do it, because abstaining from securing the win may lead to a loss. I'm not a good enough player to observe when the game is securely won, so I will keep trying to win.

Dice whining isn't my cup of tea if I'm honest, I will try to commiserate with people but sometimes seeing the risk mount until it fails doesn't feel like misfortune to me, it feels like you didn't get lucky. I don't want to come off as someone who hates dice whining, I've bemoaned Griff Oberwald - the second best player in the game - roll seven 1s in one game. This dude, all he needs to do is not roll a one, and if he does he can reroll them for free! A few of those ones I rolled, maybe I didn't need to and if I did, shit happens, Fog Of War, Griff wasnt feeling it. I was having him do most of the heavy lifting that game, so its a WTF Griff and move on. I don't have great responses to dice whining during or after the game, I get it, it sucks. I wish I was born into wealth, I wasn't and I do whine about it. That's how the dice roll so they say. Whining about other peoples dice is a bigger problem for me. I don't know what to say. Historically, in tournaments I've done well in, or even in clubs, I have had opponents really upset that I beat them. I think it hurts their ego because I act like an idiot a lot of the times, I also admit my mistakes and use self deprecating humor. I've experienced people blaming luck on my win, like I wasn't participating in the match. You didn't lose to me, you lost to chance. We can play again and I can win again but after my fifth consecutive win, maybe I'm not lucky, maybe I'm just good at this game, at this moment. What is the response to "your dice are too good?" 

Leaning into it

My response to repeated remarks that I'm lucky is to let people know I am lucky. It started with the phrase "TOP DECK" this is where I act like I drew the card I needed to win. Listen Homey, if our game is that close are you winning. Sometimes ill already have the card in my hand, I don't like dissuading people of their belief that my luck brought about their loss, I feel their ego is too fragile. Next was "CRITS ALL DAY" followed by my now favorite "CANT STOP HOT DICE." If I have to hear about how good my dice are and how bad yours are, can I participate? I played a game today and we commiserated about bad dice, at the end of the game however, my opponent acknowledged my good play and didn't leave the draw (which I was playing for) as a result of fate. Not to toot my horn but my opponent was about to make one of those objectively bad plays, real bad, unlikely to succeed, if it does succeed it gains him nothing and if it fails, it could turn my draw into a win. I talked him out of doing it. In a casual league versus a new player, that's sportsmanship, 

I'm definitely rambling- Leaning into it pt2.

My response to cries of luck is to reinforce their belief of my blessings and be jovial about it. Some could say I'm a poor winner and that would be true but often I'm more jovial when I lose. If I'm acting boisterous and having fun win or lose, am I the poor sportsman? I've heard people say I'm a sore winner, I've played games where they've thrown cards or models, insulted me, said I was worthless or lucky, that I'm annoying and vulgar. Usually the sorest losers are the biggest dice whiners, and the nastiest opponents. As I make myself smaller, so they can have a more comfortable game, as I don't take the best plays - so I don't have to hear their cries, who's being the poor sport? 

Conclusion - 

In my theory - less risky plays, plays in which you take actions that are likelier to succeed, while forcing your opponent to take actions that are less likely to succeed are going to have the effect of, the player making more rolls that have a higher probability of success, which lead to more rolls that have a higher probability of success, while inversely the opposition will be making rolls with lower probability of success and due to their failures will be making less rolls. Confirmation bias will be seeing one player make a lot of successes, visible at the end of the game while the other player will have more failures. "Youre lucky and I'm unlucky." This is what happens when you are forced to make bad plays, your dice don't hate you, you just didn't have the opportunity to make the best plays. The action of continuing to cry foul about these dice is asking your opponent to play worse. If I want you to not be upset that you don't have the opportunity to make good plays, then I need to play worse and give you good plays to make you happy. For everyone to have fun, I need to play bad,  That's why I don't like dice whining. This isn't for casual bemoaning about shit, this is for the dudes that lean into that bad behavior. Also, I guess it's for people who don't know how to get better. Don't make objectively bad plays!

I'm not going to proof read this, see you in 7 years!

Unpub at Origins

Put a hammock in the van and save on housing
costs!

I've been developing a game for a little over a year with a friend of mine called Bellum, you can check it out here if you'd like www.bellumgame.com. In developing a game its nice to get feedback and go to designer events. Last year we started going to Designer Nights at the Rook in Cincinnati. Then we started hitting local conventions like CincyCon, DayCon, AcadaCon, CinCity Con and an UnPub Mini Event at the Rook. We had our successes and some conventions were busier than others but the feedback has been immensely helpful. Last weekend I drove out to Origins to do some late stage play testing at the Unpub Network hall, again great feedback and good exposure. While I was there I got to check out some games in varying stages of completion and I'd like to go over them here.

Gods Of Tyn Harra 

From Ogre foot games designed by Mike Hopper 

Fireball is what took me down

From the site description: "This is a game of skill designed to take luck out of the equation by drafting your entire 25 card deck then placing your Vorpal Shard in the place that will benefit you the most.. Each player begins with the same base amount of Mystic Shards to cast spells each turn. The only advantage you have is your skill in drafting, casting and using your abilities.

There are 3 types of cards you’ll use to defeat your opponents, Creatures, Relics and Spells.

When you cast your angel, demon, dragon or wizard you must choose between the defense zone or the attack zone. You can move them later if you need more defense or attackers to finish off someone.

When your creatures die, collect Soul Shards and use them to acquire more powerful spells!

The best part, in a 3 or 4 player game, is you’re defending yourself against the player on the right while attacking the player on the left. This makes the strategy change throughout the game as you react to the other players. In a 4-player game, you cannot attack the player directly across from you or to the right; you may only attack the player to your left."

I really enjoyed this one. I got to play it with Mike and two other guys who seemed to have a hand in a lot of its play testing. It was extremely intuitive, so much in fact that I had to get bumped out of the game because I was wrecking everyone. This didn't feel like a classic kingmaker scenario more the opposite, if I wasn't contended with I was going to win, with me out of the game the other three had a fair fight amongst themselves. Thats an interesting piece of this game, since you are attacking the player to your left and defending the player to your right, you want the player across the table (in a four player game) to fair well but not too well because he will eventually be attacking you. If you threaten the player to your left too much he will spend his actions defending against you which will in turn leave the person they are attacking to not feel the heat as much per say. Another great aspect is at the beginning of the game you are drafting among a pool of cards then during the game you are buying other cards from a central location, those are purchased primarily with the souls of your lost creatures. Add in asymmetrical player tableaus with additional customization by placing a 'vorpal shard' to denote which additional ability you want creates a lot of variation of game play. I believe he is running a Kickstarter in July of this year and I recommend checking it out.

Stellar Leap by Weird Giraffe Games 

The gentleman in the white shirt trounced us.
#AllTimeHighScore

Oh man, I played Stellar Leap twice. I really enjoyed this 4X game in a small package or as I may have joked, "A 4x that fits in your JNCO's pocket." This runs like what you would expect from a 4X but plays a bit faster, about an hour (maybe I just play a lot of heavy ones.) At the start of the game players are placing their starting planet to the same galaxy represented by placing the planet card in a row. There are 6 columns to the rows and they represent values 1-6, this is what is used to gather resources off a 2d6 roll counting each die individually and the difference. A roll of 5 and 1 would produce resources for all inhabited planets in columns 5, 1, and 4. However there is more to those dice because at the beginning of the game the players have a random global dice manipulation and a player specific one. This allows players to have more agency in what the 2d6 roll produces. The game has multiple ways to score points from completing missions, exploration, attacking, population growth and a secret player objective where a lot of points are earned. My favorite part of this game is the end condition, everytime a certain condition is met like completing a galaxy the player who took the action draws a card from the event deck and resolves the event. After a preset number of events have resolved the game finishes the turn, points are tallied and a champion is determined. I really enjoy games where you have a hidden number of VPs and can speed the end of the game to wreck other peoples plans, the balance there is obviously you aren't taking the most optimal actions. I don't think thats a popular or well used mechanic. Its one of favorite strategies of expediting the games end, it doesn't always pan out but you got to keep people on their feet. Really looking forward to this release because its a 4x I am pretty confidant I can get people to play with me.

Flummox by John Moller

flum·mox

ˈfləməks/

verb

informal

1. perplex (someone) greatly; bewilder.

This 2-5 player trick taking/hand management is deceivingly complex which is true to its name. In this surprisingly deep game you are moving the Flummox, a token represented by a large meeple in our game, around the board to collect the variable victory point card. You draw your hand and lay it out on the table in any order, the first player places the Flummox anywhere on the table and takes 2 actions, the first will affect the table by either drawing, stealing or trashing two cards. The second action is to expend a card on your side to move it a number of spaces and a direction both represented on the card expended. The player who has the flummox land on their side draws a card from the victory card deck. The game has a predesigned length determined by the number of players which is also the victory point deck, this deck has victory point cards valued in the positives or negatives. So when its showing a negative value you don't want it on your side. This is definitely a game I'd pull out for more casual players and I would not be surprised if when published more hits big box retailers. 

Mayan Conquest by Andrew Duryea 

Card artwork/Business card artwork

I sat down to play this game and looking at the table set up could honestly not see a game initially. It was just a whole bunch of wonderfully illustrated cards with zero words and a single d6. Skeptically I listened to the overview and it quickly became clear there was almost a completely hashed out game before me. The mechanics are pretty straight forward, at the beginning of your turn you flip the event deck to see what conditions your turn takes place under, then you roll a die which determines what type of dude (card representing a Mayan) you receive. You then have one additional action to take of three: trade your dudes for another dude, attack an opponent or build. Buildings are the win condition and require you to trade your dudes in to acquire them. I say almost fully fleshed out because the action deck wasn't finalized which was no biggie. Also there was some discussion about adding some game effects to the cards, which I either recommended or seconded, Andrew if you read this leave them as just art. The additional rules can fit on a player card, it's great as is and how many games are there of cards with no values besides the Art? Probably a few but I like yours just the way it was anyway. 

All in all, I had a great time at origins and really enjoyed the Unpub Networks room. If you haven't checked it out before I recommend it, look em up on social networking stuff, hit there local events and if you don't have one maybe even make your own! Hopefully I can make posts more often than annually in the future.

Frostgrave: Adventures in a frozen city that I am slowly building.

Frostgrave:

Adventures in a frozen city that I am slowly building.

Last month at Origins I spoke to the US rep of Osprey games about their campaign based Skirmish game, Frostgrave. This game has peeked my interest since its launch last year but I have had very little exposure to it here in the states. I ended up purchasing a great hidden movement game for the Arkham House games game library called Escape from aliens in outer space and the rep threw in a free copy of Frostgraves core rulebook for me, Go Osprey Games! Since then, I have devoured the fairly basic rules of this casual "beer and pretzels" miniatures game. It has many appeals to me like the story driven aspect of the rules, the ability to use a wide range of models but mostly the need for a 3 foot by 3 foot table littered in terrain. The general rule of terrain density in Frostgrave is no more than 6 inches without cover. So I have set out to make my own table to run a campaign at Arkham in the fall. I need to give myself a realistic amount of time to complete this table. To get this project started I was lucky/impulsive enough to already own some Hirst Arts from five years prior, I also had 50 lbs of dental plaster called "Merlins Magic" and the makings of a shake table. Its like past me knew that future me would be doing this someday.

Hardy board and insulation foam acquired!

Left to right: wet water, way to small storage totes and entirely too
aggressive shake table

Making casts

This is the center stairs for the ruined tower 

Gluing 

This is with base foam cut and the ruined field stones in place. 

For what has been done I have only used Molds #72 and #75. The biggest lesson i have learned so far is that I need to cast on a much more level surface. As for the rest of this project I need to basecoat, throw ballast down, highlight and add snow. It's going to be a lot of work but so far it's fairly enjoyable. 

Learning the Game Play-Thru: Guild Ball

Learning the Game Play-Thru: GUILD BALL

Welcome to this semi-introductory play-thru of Guild Ball, a game by Steamforged Games, LTD. You can find their website at:

http://guildball.com

Guild Ball can be simply described as a tabletop medieval football (or soccer) game played in a fantasy world. In a normal game, teams are composed of 6 players who compete to score victory points either by scoring goals or by knocking opposing players out of the game. The rules for the game can be downloaded for free. The player cards can be downloaded for free. Steamforged even made paper-doll models that players can cut out to play the game with until they decide which guild to invest money in.

This play-thru will be focused on walking through the basic mechanics of the game.  It has two purposes:

1.  Offer new players a step-by-step example of a game in order to learn basic rules and game play flow.
2.  Walk myself through the rules to make sure I understand them better in order to teach our local community who are just starting to play the game.

2014 C.O.G.S. Warmachine Fantasy Draft

2014 COGS Warmachine Fantasy Draft

Draft to be held July 23rd, 2014 at Art of War Gaming.  Draft will start at approximately 8:00 PM.  Draft will probably last 4+ hours.

League will last until the end of September.

Twilight Struggle

Boardgamegeek.com is one of the main databases used to find board games, rate them and talk about them.

Currently in over thousands of games, Twilight Struggle holds the first position in ratings. Made by a company focused on war games, GMT games, Twilight Struggle takes you back to Cold War era. Take the side of Russia or the USA and change the tide of history in this game, constantly referred to as the Cold War in a box!

X-Wing

Fantasy Flight is the current holder of all things Star Wars in the board gaming community. As many of you know, Fantasy Flight is also one of the biggest names in board games. So when I tell you that, as of last year, X-wing miniatures (released 2012) was the highest grossing game for this company in their history since 1995, there's got to be something good.

The newest releases for this game include Wave 4, with TIE Defenders and E-Wings and big ships like the Tantive IV.