With a new Edition of Blood Bowl comes both new rules and changes to the old ones. One of the biggest draws of the beloved game is advancing your players and team through the use of Star Player Points, or “SPP” as it’s more commonly known by. Blood Bowl SPP is earned by players by successfully performing a series of actions, such as Scoring Touchdowns, Injurying other players, Completing or Interfering a Pass or being the MVP, all worth a different amount of SPP to the player.

There has been a major change to the SPP system compared to the one present in the 2016 edition and in the Blood Bowl 2 Video Game and a shift that I very much enjoy as it gives the Coach far more choice in how they build their players as well as feeling a little more “RPG” to a degree.

The Old vs The New

In the 2016 edition of the rules and of course, Blood Bowl 2, the SPP system worked more as a “Level Up!” type of advancement. Each “Level” of player was worth an amount of SPP, with the player advancing automatically once they hit the cap of that level. For example, once a player hit 6 SPP, they automatically jumped to Level 2 and gained a chance to earn a skill which was generated via a dice roll on 2D6.

• On a 2-9 you choose a new skill from their Primary Access column
• A roll of a 10, you can choose to increase the Movement or Armour value of a player
• A roll of an 11, you can choose to increase the Agility value of a player
• A roll of a 12, you can choose to increase the Strength value of a player
• If you roll a Double, you can choose a skill from the players Secondary Access

What this meant is most players gained their Primary skill most of the time, with the odd player getting Stat increases or doubles. It also meant those that got Double or Stat rolls were infinitely more valued by coaches and were often built into more powerful or specialised rolls that worked around the better upgrade. It also meant some teams could have a bunch of players with these more powerful upgrades, or if they’re unlucky enough, have none!

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Now, however, we have a  “purchase” system, where SPP is more of a stored resource compared to just a value that rose and pushed players into different levels as they gained more. Now SPP can be saved and used to select the type of upgrade you want, a little bit like how skill trees work in RPG’s where more powerful abilities are worth more experience or you could spend less to instantly get an upgrade.

Primaries, Secondaries, Characteristics all have their own values which increase as a player advances. For example, a Human Lineman can spend 6 SPP as a Rookie to grab a Primary Skill (for them a General Skill like Block), or 12 SPP to get a Secondary Skill (for them a Strength Skill like Guard). Once they’ve done their first advancement, the next skill has a higher cost, for example, this Experienced Human Linemen with Block, will need another 8 SPP to buy Tackle, a Primary Skill, or 14 SPP if he wants a Secondary Skill like Mighty Blow.

If you want a Characteristic, you’ll need to spend 18 SPP on the first level (which again, increases in cost as you advance), for a Random Characteristic. You then roll a D16 (GW really want you to use these!!!!) and depending on your result, will determine which Characteristic you gain, with a roll of a 16 allowing you to choose for yourself.

You can also, if you so wish, spend a bit less for a Random Skill (cost depending on your level and whether it’s a Primary or Secondary), for which again, you roll on a new table to determine. This is 2D6, with the first choosing which half of the table you choose from, then the second determining which skill you choose within that half, with the Coach choosing which Category (General, Agility etc) to select the skill from first before rolling, based on whether you chose a Primary or Secondary.

Another change is the TV increase the player gets depending on how they choose to advance. Primaries, of course, are smaller increases than Secondaries, then Characteristics are more depending on which one you get, with Strength +1 being the most expensive. Random Skills are cheaper than their chosen counterparts, with a Chosen Primary having the smallest effect on TV, only 10,000 GP.

It’s an awful lot to go through but has some overall good implications and the rulebook does an excellent job of laying it out with some easy to read tables.

What Does it Mean?!

Well for a start, it puts the choice in the Coaches hands which I am ALL FOR! Blood Bowl has a bit of a reputation when it comes to luck and RNG and it wasn’t uncommon for teams that got lucky in their Advancements to do better than those that didn’t by virtue of having more capable Players.

Now, it’s entirely down to the Coach how they want to build their Players and can now reliably take into account Secondaries when building them, whereas before you had to hope for a Double Roll which may never come. There’s still an element of RNG when it comes to Characteristics (There’s only a 1/8 chance of getting a Strength upgrade) but I think that’s ok for these and are infinitely more reliable than before.

As a Coach, you now can decide whether you want to save up your Blood Bowl SPP for a Secondary or Characteristic or spend what you have in order to get a Skill right away! For Blitzer style players or Big Guys, this is especially good as they tend to get SPP at a decent enough rate to save for something that will suit them better. While there is a cap on how much SPP a player can hold onto (when they get enough to spend on a Characteristic, they must spend SOME of their SPP), teams that need to keep their TV in check can keep their disposable players cheap rather than being forced to level up when they don’t want to.

It also means if you REALLY want a Characteristic, you can try to get one. At worst you’re going to get an MA improvement which is never really bad, in fact, it’s pretty great on most, particularly so on Treeman who will no longer have to roll to stand up. On average again, MA is what you’re getting which a chance at PA which for some players is fine, and you’re getting AV no matter what you roll, which you can ignore for MA. AG & Strength are in the high rolls and honestly might not be worth the investment of SPP for most Coaches. I’d say Agility is probably more worthwhile to attempt than gunning for Strength, mostly because the players who want an AG improvement will benefit from MA as well. Overall we’ll definitely see less AG and ST improved players, from Coaches opting to spend SPP on more skills as opposed to saving for a chance at a powerful Stat up. It’ll happen though and for Players that have those games where the SPP comes in spades, it’s probably worth a shot.

Random Rolls, More RNG in my Luck Based Game?

Let’s talk about Random Skills shall we? For a bit less SPP, you can choose to have a Primary or Secondary Skill generated by a table. It’s a puny 3 SPP for your first Random Primary and 6 SPP for your first Secondary (again increasing as you go).

Honestly, I LOVE this idea, but how often it gets used is going to depend on the team’s race, coach and how the team itself is doing in terms of advancement. What I think we’ll see is cheap Linemen or Stunty players grabbing a random Primary at the first chance they get just so they have something. The smaller effect on TV is also very tempting and for Goblin Linemen or Halfling Hopefuls, a Random Primary gets them a skill they can probably use while keeping them cheap enough for the team to get inducements.

We probably won’t see Big Guys or key players like Witch Elves, Blitzers or even Catchers/Passers getting randoms as it’s more important for them to get the skills they need rather than leave it to chance.  Most players will want to stick to choosing as opposed to randoms anyway, but the odd roll of the dice for a discount might just be worth it!

Conclusion 

It’s probably no surprise if you’re read this that I love the new system, anything that puts the choice in the players hands it’s always a good thing in my book and for a game that’s already so dice heavy, having something like this purely beneficial in this coach’s opinion. Overall I think it helps balance the game a little too, you’ll no longer have teams that are just straight-up better due to a couple of lucky dice rolls as there’s more emphasis on actually building the team, I think League’s are seriously going to benefit from it. I like that coaches have to weigh up their options now, do they wait a few more games to get enough SPP for that Secondary or Characteristic and potentially risk losing the player, or do they pick a skill now and have a slightly more standard, less specialise piece for the rest of the season.

It’ll be interesting and I’m really looking forward to seeing how Coaches utilise it, spending their Blood Bowl SPP to come up with some cool builds that maybe weren’t possible before!

If you’re already starved for Blood Bowl content, remember to check out our Blog & News page for tactics, team ideas and general ramblings about the new edition.

We hope you all have the best 2021 that you can have, we know it’s scary out there at the moment, but please stay safe and hopefully, you can find some fun and & enjoyment from this silly little sports game of ours. Don’t forget that we’ve also begun updating our player builds for you to see how to best spend that Blood Bowl SPP of yours!