The history of Blood Bowl
- Jonathan Merry
- May 5
- 5 min read
So if you are here and reading this, I am going to assume you know what Blood Bowl is - if not then just do a quick Google search! :) This post is just a quick trip through my memories of Blood Bowl, it may not be completely accurate (although I will try to keep it so) and will no doubt leave out things that didn't feature highly in my relationship with the game. Blood Bowl is the brainchild of Jervis Johnson, created in 1986. He wanted to make a sports game that combined the violence of Warhammer Fantasy Battle with American Football. The First Edition of Blood Bowl featured card standees and an interlocking board to represent the pitch. Nominally set in the Old World, Jervis Johnson saw it as an alternative universe where the game of Blood Bowl replaced the warfare between nations. It had a more humorous feel than the usual Games Workshop grim fantasy, with the added mayhem of chainsaws, pogo sticks and grass rollers converted into machines of destruction. The system was clearly still rooted in Fantasy Battle with several statistics directly copied and others just renamed. The official history of how Blood Bowl came about is told in the First Edition rulebook.
And so began the greatest game ever created by Games Workshop. In my humble opinion that is. I was given a copy of these rules (and still have the original rulebook) "Free from a Troll", a forgotten practice by GW of including free items in mail packages. This would have been sometime around 1988.
First edition lasted for 3 years before the vastly improved and much loved Second Edition came along in 1989. Known for the dozens of tables and the amazing Astrogranite pitch, this was the edition the cemented Blood Bowl as a game that was going to be around for the long run. While the minis in the box were crude by today's standards, there were a load of white metal miniatures that were produced for this edition of the game, and they remain some of the most characterful and sought after minis ever made for the game. The rulebooks (with multiple expansions) and background book further expanded and brought the world of Blood Bowl fully to life - helped in no small part by the wonderful artwork of Pete Knifton!
Expansions to the Second Edition included Blood Bowl Star Players and Blood Bowl Compendium, which were beautiful hardback books packed full of additional teams, special players, and more extra rules than could fit in the Dwarf Giants' Book of Grudges. Why punch someone if you could kick them? Or push them? Or perhaps give them a gentle shove and then run away? Then you added rules for fans, referees, special skills, mercenaries, and special weapons—because who doesn’t want a chainsaw-wielding goblin on their team? For many (myself included), this was peak Blood Bowl, full of random madness, more like a sports roleplaying game than a board game. Naturally, it was bloated and contradictory, with rules that were broken and a playtime that could run into the small hours of the night—perfect for those who wanted to practice their sleep-deprivation skills. But man, was it FUN!
Oh, and lets not forget the lovely Dungeon Bowl expansion, well more of a separate game in and of itself really.
1994 saw the release of Third Edition, which introduced the mechanic which has come to define Blood Bowl as we now know it - the turnover rule. This was the beginning of modern Blood Bowl. A new pitch, two new sculpted teams and refinement to the system that simplified the game into a much neater play style. Where games had previously been played as the first to score 3 touchdowns being declared the winner, games were now limited by a number of turns - greatly improving the speed and predictability of game length. Something that would enable Blood Bowl to become the popular tournament game it is today. Another innovation in this edition was the introduction of special blocking dice, as far as I know the first time GW had created bespoke dice for their game. This further streamlined the game and did away with the multitude of tables from Second Edition.
The streamlining of the game certainly got the attention of players and the gaming press, with Blood Bowl winning the 1994 Origins Award for Best Miniatures Rules. It spawned an expansion, Death Zone, which gave more Star Players, rules for 6 extra teams and a system for league play by which players could gain skills and experience.
In 2001, Jervis Johnson produced a new official Fourth Edition and presented the rules in the Fanatic Game's Official Blood Bowl Magazine Issue #1, with follow-up rules presented in Issue #2. These new rules were a large departure from the previous Third Edition with numerous changes, some of which Johnson later admitted, "...would have have benefited from rather more rigorous playtesting." The Fourth Edition rules, newly revised and corrected, were retitled 4th Edition Gold, and were placed on the Games Workshop website as a downloadable pdf file. Physical copies of the Fourth Edition of the game, released in 2002, were almost identical to the Third Edition. All pieces remained the same; distinguishable elements included the 2002 copyright date and the editorial change from two rulebooks in third edition, to the same material (updated to Fourth Edition rules) in a single "Handbook"
This newest edition was now considered "experimental" and Jervis announced the creation of the Blood Bowl Rules Committee (BBRC), which consisted of Blood Bowl players and some Games Workshop staff, who would gather annually to look at the rules with the intent of keeping the game updated through a “Living Rulebook” that could be downloaded for free from the website. This culminated in the Competition Rules Pack in 2009 that also saw the disbandment of the Rule Committee. It was in this period that I started Da Leeg (2003) and the first Shaka Shield (2005), but more on this in a future post. Eventually in 2016 Games Workshop decided to bring Blood Bowl back into the mainstream fold, and released the Fifth Edition of the rules. These were essentially the CRP rules with a few minor tweaks. Great news for all the Blood Bowl coaches who had refined and improved the rules over the years. What's more new miniatures were finally being released! In some ways the release of Fifth Edition marked the end of a golden period for Blood Bowl. While it had been out of the GW spotlight it had flourished in the hands of the players and had truly become a product for the players by the players. One could argue that things had become a bit stale but the attention of GW was sure to shake things up again - for better or worse...
Fifth Edition certainly brought a lot of new blood back into the game (pardon the pun) and reinvigorated the tournament scene. Just 4 years later GW would capitalise on the new energy surrounding Blood Bowl and release the Sixth Edition (or Season 2 as it was strangely called) of the game. This came with the biggest overhaul of the rules since Third Edition. Despite some grumbling from old coaches and convoluted rules additions that have harmed some of the game play (IMO), Blood Bowl is now healthier than ever. The last Blood Bowl World Cup in Alicante had 2300 coaches in attendance, playing a staggering total of 10,000 games over the weekend. To my knowledge, no other table top gaming system can draw numbers like these.
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