Any Dreadball Players Here?

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Figured there might be some overlap - it and Blood Bowl are both in the same genre, even if they play completely differently to each other.

For those who haven't heard of it - Dreadball is a sci-fi sports board game from Mantic Games and set in the same universe as their Warpath tabletop wargame. Was funded through Kickstarter a few years ago and now has five expansions (leading to a total of 25 teams) and a spin-off game (Dreadball Xtreme, focussing on the illegal Dreadball matches organised by crime syndicates and other underworld figures).

I've linked a video showing how it's played below and there's a module of the game for VASSAL (a Java-based engine for playing board and tabletop games over the internet) out there as well. Still need the rules, but you can get the core book and stats for the Corporation and Marauder teams for free through the Mantic Digital service.

EDIT: Word of warning; the volume's a bit wonky in the video at times. Guess they never saved the microphone settings between recordings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9KboIh6lBE

[Meteor Bear]

I remember this when it was on kickstarter. I was disappointed it went the minitures direction instead of being a normal board game with plastic pieces.

[Procrastinating Gamer]

I can see some people being annoyed by that, but when you're making something like a spiritual follow-on to Blood Bowl (even if you'd never actually call it that for fear of bringing the Games Workshop copyright lawyers down on you like the fist of the God-Emperor Himself) which did use minis, I can understand.

Besides; they're actually pretty easy to put together - all L-shaped plugs so you can't accidentally fit the wrong limb to the wrong body. Only fiddly bits that I recall were the Goblin Jacks and, I think, the arms on the Corporation Strikers.

Hell; ever since Season 4 they've been getting even simpler - got a team of Sphyr (think humanoid hammerhead sharks) and the only gluing involved there was on the Guards; one arm and their head. And that was just so that you could build a Guard as a Keeper for League Play (Keepers just being Guards who got the Keeper ability when levelling up - explained in the fiction as them having taken one too many blows to the head and wanting to try handling the ball).

Granted, I haven't painted any of them yet, but that's mostly procrastination and, to a much lesser extent, totally stumpted on colour schemes. Only one I thought of was a red-and-gold armour colour for a Forge Father team and call them the Krimsone Smegheads (because that pun was too good to pass up and I love that show).

[Dr0W]

How is this game compared to Blood Bowl?
And what do you mean by minis? The player stats are attached to the mini you buy making it a colectible miniature game like Mage Knight?

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Originally posted by Dr0W:

How is this game compared to Blood Bowl?
And what do you mean by minis? The player stats are attached to the mini you buy making it a colectible miniature game like Mage Knight?

No, the stats are in the rulebooks - he just meant that they used detailed resin-plastic miniatures that come unassembled and unpainted rather than simple plastic tokens.

By pure mechanics, you could get away with a small disc of cardboard for each player and mark it with an arrow for which way they're facing, a letter for their position (Guard, Jack or Striker) and a number so you know which one's being randomly hit with the latest event card (the deck of which is in the base set).

[Dr0W]

Oh cool, then.

[Procrastinating Gamer]

And because I missed the very first sentence in your post; here's how it plays compared to Blood Bowl - a hell of a lot faster.

Rules and modifiers are easier to remember and you can bash out a game of Dreadball in about half an hour or so. Longest games I've had have been about 40 minutes or so and that was because either I was still learning the rules or I was teaching my opponent. Teams are smaller (most start with 8 players with a max of 14 and you can only have six on the pitch at once), players are more specialised.

Passing's more reliable (unless you're using the Veer-myn or another team that seems to be all thumbs) and there are fewer ways for your turn to end before you're ready (just on failures that cause you to lose control of the ball). Oh; and there's no half-time reset. Or any resetting - as soon as you score by throwing the ball into one of the three strike hexes, your turn ends and a new ball's launched onto the pitch. Dodging away from other players is more reliable as well (again, unless you're using a clumsy team like the Forge Fathers).

The Free Actions (mentioned in the video) make you have to really think about where your opponent could get to on their turn.

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Actually that's another source of speed for the game - there's nothing comparable to Blitzes, not in the sense of a once-per-turn thing. All Guards get to move up to their Movement stat before a Slam and that actually makes the Slam hit harder. It's just an inherent benefit of their player type. And a Guard could do that twice if you want to spend two action tokens on them (you get five action tokens a turn and a player can have up to two tokens played on them per-turn).

The game is also only 14 turns long all up - just 7 turns per player compared to Blood Bowl's 16 turns per player. Varied scoring zones as well - the two closer to the centre line are worth 1 point each while the one at the back is worth 3. Throw from the bonus hex (the one poking out of the side of the Strike Zone towards the centre of the pitch) and, while it's a bit harder to make that throw, you get an extra point. If either team gets a 7 point lead on the other, the game automatically ends in a landslide victory.

You also only track the difference in score - so if I get a 1-point Strike early on the score becomes 1 in my favour. If you then grab a 3-pointer after that, the score doesn't become 1-3, it becomes 2 in your favour.

[HobbyCathartic]

Love the board game and I field a team with the same name as my Blood Bowl team. I field Skaven or Vermynn in Dreadball.

[Procrastinating Gamer]

I want to like the Veer-myn in Dreadball, but that pathetic Skill stat - sure, their high Speed lets them easily dodge through enemy players and steal* the ball out of their hands, but then you go through all that to get your quick little rat into a scoring zone only to flub the scoring throw.

That actually makes me curious how they play in Xtreme since that game actually has a mechanic where you can score without having to throw it. Although I guess that's countered by most of the terrain being rigged with explosives.

[Dr0W]

Thanks a lot ShadowFighter. I found out about Blood Bowl because of Cyanide's game, but got so into the game that I crafted my own pitch and miniatures because I live in a country that simply doesn't have the cool boardgames available. Do you think that would be possible with Dreadball, or I would REALLY need to buy the game. And if I do need it, do you happen to know a good place that offers international shipment?

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Originally posted by Dr0W:

Thanks a lot ShadowFighter. I found out about Blood Bowl because of Cyanide's game, but got so into the game that I crafted my own pitch and miniatures because I live in a country that simply doesn't have the cool boardgames available. Do you think that would be possible with Dreadball, or I would REALLY need to buy the game. And if I do need it, do you happen to know a good place that offers international shipment?

Not off the top of my head; all of my DB stuff I either got from the Kickstarters (the original one and the second one for Dreadball Xtreme) or ordered off Mantic directly through their webstore. Can't recall how much the shipping was, I think it was about ten pounds or so to get it sent from England down here to Aus.

You could probably re-create it easier than you could Blood Bowl - BB's passing ruler didn't line up perfectly with the pitch's grid while DB doesn't use a ruler at all, just counting the hexes themselves. Only thing you'd be missing out on would be the Dreadball Cards. Each team starts with a certain number of cards as a supporting side of the team - a bit like how BB teams have Team Re-Rolls - and usually let a player perform an extra action, but there are some event ones in there as well (like one that inflicts a penalty on a player and explains it as last night's partying catching up with him). They're also used for Fan Checks (which are a way to replenish the Coaching Dice mentioned in the video I linked at the start of the thread) and for moving the Refbot between turns.

Even then, you could re-create the cards through the VASSAL module I mentioned before - it's got the whole deck re-created in there so you could just install VASSAL, download the module and just make an offline game to go through the whole deck. Here's a blog post with the module and links to get VASSAL and how to get it all set up.[boardgamesminisandmore.blogspot.ca]

EDIT: The module doesn't have the rules in it, though; so you still need the rulebook (or one of the expansions if you want to use a post-corebook team and they have an ability that's only in the book that introduced them).