So first up, is each Blood Bowl Team’s Playstyle! As mentioned in the first post, I’m going to try and keep away from the simple, Bashy, Dodgey, Passy, styles that most of us know about and are perhaps a little to vague for what I want to do. The aim here is to look at what one can do with a team, the strengths and weaknesses while hopefully giving a slightly alternative view on the game. Obviously, it bears mentioning I’m in no way an expert on the game and a lot of my experience comes from playing in a couple of leagues in both BB1/2 and the TableTop, as well as watching players who are much better than I am and reading about strategy and tactics online. There will be some overlap as well, due to the way some teams work and the myriad of different ways you can start and play the teams.

So with that in mind, let’s dive in! And yes these titles are 100% made up.

Aggressive Grind

Teams: Chaos, Orcs, Chaos Dwarves, Ogres,

Key Skills: Mighty Blow, Claw, Block, Piling On, Break Tackle

What a lot of people who call “bash” teams fall into this and indeed one would be right in thinking that. The goal here is to overwhelm the opponent’s team with strength and superior armour breaking abilities, with plenty of Might Blow, Block, Claw and of course, Piling On. The key here is just to do as much damage as fast as possible, targeting star units if possible but even taking out chaff to thin the numbers is useful as it reduces their options. This playstyle suits the “Killer” teams like Chaos, who can easily get Claw to help against high TV teams, but Mighty Blow should come first as it helps against everyone. Piling On is fairly infamous but another weapon in your arsenal, although it’s a little more costly in the Table Top compared to BB2 with its rule change. Tackle helps if you’re in a particularly dodge heavy league too. Block is just…. always good! Dirty player can be good too if you’re feeling up for fouling and a few cheap linos can perform this well for additional armour rolls. (get a bribe if you’re down TV as well!)

The teams here really want to put the hurt on constantly, thinning the opponent’s numbers drastically with injuries ideally, but also KO’s and timely stuns. These teams excel at constant pressure, forcing mistakes and risky plays, boxing in key players and getting the ball into the endzone with the least resistance. High armour value and high strength are paramount so that 2 die blocks are a regular occurrence and being hit back are fairly risky for your opponent. 

It’s still a grinding game though, so ideally you’ll want to score as late as you can and these teams will often lack a dedicated ball carrier until a few level-ups, meaning you need to be wary of steals, counter attacks and teams that are too fast to hit! Positioning is important and fast teams will exploit gaps even if they only have 2 players left on the pitch.

Passive Grind

Teams: Nurgle, Dwarves, Khemri, Orcs

Key Skills: Guard, Tackle, Tentacles, Prehensile Tail

Slow-moving, hard-hitting, immovable walls of either high strength or mass guard. These teams excel at shutting down movement, pinning down agility based players and frustrating their opponents with an indomitable wall of armour and strength. The typical 1-0 and 2-1 grinds are this, super defensive teams that just slow the game down, often with a strong cage to protect the ball while their other players tie up key units or batter them into the dirt. You still do a lot of hitting though and being so slow removals are definitely critical.

Again, high AV and Strength are critical here, to prevent removals and to make hitting your players as risky as possible, but there’s less emphasis on putting your opponents into the injury box although it certainly helps. Tackle and Guard are what you want, the former to shut down Dodge and the latter to help with your wall of immovable players. The plan is to slow down the game, put the hurt on where you can and score in turn 8/16. If you’re receiving, make the opponent score as quickly as possible if you can 

Weaknesses are teams that do well in getting out of base contact and slow your already snail pace down to a static crawl with well-placed screens. Braver (or stupid) coaches may even quite happily cage dive or leap at your ball carrier despite the red dice, and if they block/wrestle/strip ball then they’re going to make your life difficult and draw your frontline away if you’re not careful. Again, player positioning is vital, plug those gaps unless you want gutter runners spilling into your endzone.

Jack of all trades

Teams: Amazons, Norse, Humans, Undead, Brettonian

Key Skills: Any skill which allows a reroll, Block

These teams are often seen as “Middle of the road” teams that can do a bit of fighting and a bit of ball handling too. These teams have a lot of skills to work with early on, meaning they can specialise their players earlier on without having to take the “key skills” of Block or Dodge beforehand. They’re also annoying to put down, despite their lower strength, particularly in the lower TV brackets thanks to an abundance of block or other survival skills and relatively decent AV values. 

On offence it’s less about bashing for removals (although those are always a bonus) and more about creating gaps, pushing players into bad positions and putting bodies on the floor consistently to stop counter-attacks and simply walk through the defence. The cages on the attack are slightly looser, the teams often having an average or slightly higher movement to allow for position changes and putting bodies where they’re needed. Norse, Humans and Undead have the aid of a Big Guy (of varying usefulness) to assist with big hits or creating an anchor point to rotate around. 

These teams are all about reliability, with plenty of reroll skills to minimise turnovers. They also have relatively cheap, disposable linemen who can irritate more threatening players and essentially base them out of the game. Decent AV or some sort of survival skills will keep them up and just be a general thorn in your opponent’s backside. Pretty much every player can do everything if they need to in a pinch.

But with flexibility comes a lack of specialisation, most of these teams will fall victim to teams that do one thing very well, particularly as TV grows and their starting skills become less and less relevant. Against teams who stack MB or Guard, their lack of strength and AV7/8 just won’t hold up in extended fights. Agility or fast teams will run by as they can’t tie them down or get removals quick enough.

Blink & You’ll Miss ’em

Teams: Skaven, Pro Elves/Elf Union, Wood Elves, High Elves

Key Skills: Dodge, Sidestep, AG4, MV8+, 

The quintessential, fast, dodgy teams that will just whip past pretty much anyone if they get the chance, and they’re very good at creating and taking advantage of those chances too! High movement and AV7 is often a staple of these teams as they’re all about scoring and scoring some more rather than being bogged down in a long brawl.

Three of the teams I’ve listed here, all start with in my opinion, some of the best players in the game for their roles. Elf Catchers are my personal favourite player, Nerves of Steel is often overlooked and makes catching a doddle as they care not for your silly tackle zones. Gutter Runners are just ridiculous, their agility and movement means they can get anywhere and anytime and the fact you can take 4 of them means you can either flood the opponents backline with immense scoring potential, or use them as highly manoeuvrable sackers, seriously give these guys wrestle and they’ll work wonders at stopping last-ditch touchdowns. Wardancers are just, incredible. Blodge Leap to start with is scary, particularly at low TV, making them perfect cage divers and a real pain to knockdown despite their AV7.

They are, however, teams that will suffer in longer leagues thanks to their fragility, only the Elf Blitzers, Skaven Blitzers getting AV8 and you only get 2 on each team. There are, of course, the Rat Ogre & Treemen for some added muscle. The Rat Ogre is… OK, but volatile and frenzy means it’ll often find itself out of position, especially as you have to block or blitz to minimise Wild Animal. The Treeman, is also just OK, while he’s a great punching tool, he’s also practically static and has Loner, unlike the Halfling ones. You also can’t throw elves, for some reason.

High Elves are also here, and are a little more resilient than their Woody & Normal Elf cousins, meaning they can mark off players with less chance of being hurt in the process, thus they tend to survive a little longer in leagues. They’re not as up for hitting back as Dark Elves (who we’ll talk about in a moment), as they lack the starting skills to do so. They are, however, perhaps the best at the passing game thanks to very good catchers and the best passer in the game thanks to Safe Throw.

Tackle & Diving Tackle are your biggest problems here, they’re just so good at shutting down attacking plays and making you think twice about moving away thanks to removing the reroll.

If you like winning by simply outscoring the opponent, these guys are great at it. You might often find yourself down a few players each game or running with journeymen, but their effectiveness in scoring fast and frequently is unmatched.

Counter Attack

Teams: Dark Elves, Necromantic, Humans, High Elves, Slaan/Kislev.

Key Skills: Block, Dodge, Sidestep, Strip Ball, Wrestle, 

Not quite as fast as the previous teams, but still agile and capable of scoring quickly. More importantly, however, they can hold their own in a fight when needed and are adept at keeping the ball and moving quickly, often without the need of full passes, opting instead for handoffs. They can of course pass, but they’re not quick enough or lack the safe combo of AG4 & Skills to do.

What they are good at, however, is defending and countering, with mostly having AV8 on their players This makes them pretty difficult to both put and pin down, particularly if they have access to AG4, as they can take a hit and just float away to reposition. They’re very good at putting pressure on the ball as well, Blitzers with blodgestep are an absolute nightmare to shift without tackle and can stick to a ball carrier like a Beast of Nurgle sticks to…. well everything really. You’ll find that these teams are just very good at making the ball carrier worry, either with frenzy or leap threats keeping them relatively central, allowing you to either surround and harass, or pry open the cage and mark the carrier with too many players for the other team to deal with. Strip Ball & Wrestle mean that, with enough pressure, you can steal the ball and run off to score yourself, these teams often having just enough speed and agility to get away with their thieving player, while the others mark up or even screen off approaching opponent.s

On attack, they can move the ball quickly, often opting for a running/short passing game utilising screens rather than cages to keep the ball mobile and also protected. Special mention goes to the Werewolves, Witch Elves and Dark Elf Runners here, all of which really make their respective teams stand out and provide fantastic defensive threats and offensive capabilities.

However, they’re still not the best in a fight and can get bogged down into brawls themselves if they’re not careful, and at the beginning can lack the skills needed to deal with faster teams. You’ll find yourself on the receiving end of tackle, while also considering taking it yourself to hit back. There’s also not a lot of strength access going around here, so even when you do hit back, you’re more often than not going to have to expect the other team getting up for some revenge.

Hit or Run

Teams: Lizardmen, Necromantic, Undead

Key Skills: Block, Guard, Dodge, Break Tackle

I thought about adding a section for just Lizardmen, as they’re kinda their own beast. However, I think Undead & Necro can also be added in here as well. The idea here is that you play almost an American Football style running game, with a fast-moving ball carrier (Skinks/Ghouls), with tough to remove linemen and hard hitters to boot.

So what you get is a team that both hit & score very well, but have players with very specific roles that can’t shift between the two as well as our “Jack of all” teams. Thus they can be hard to manage, particularly at the early stages and very much suffer if they’re ball specialists are taken out early. What they are good at is getting down the pitch and unlike the slower, punchy teams, they don’t need to get very far either! These teams are very good at creating gaps in defences, thanks to either superior strength to punch holes (Saurus, Flesh Golems, Mummies) in the frontline, or push screeners out of position with fast-moving flankers (Werewolves, Saurus cos they’re bloody MV6!). They’re also fairly mobile, with mostly average movement and a few particularly fast players. Then, with their fast and dodgey ball carriers, they can just fly through the gap made and score. Then on defence, the opposition has a wall to get through with said fast movers in the backline to stop any breakthroughs.

Often their weakness is a lack of starting skills and somewhat unreliable players (Werewolves & Kroxigors), meaning that in comparison to similar teams, they’re more reliant on Team ReRolls and a few bad rolls can mean big problems. Their biggest weakness, however, is a reliance on AV7, easy to hurt ball carriers, who have massive targets on their backs. The bigger bruisers, without any skills to tie players day, are simply avoided while the carriers are focused on, often leaving the team without a way to score reliably.

Hopefuls

Teams: Halflings, Ogres, Vampires, Underworld, Goblins.

Key Skills: Luck & Faith

And lastly, we have the traditional “Stunty” teams, along with Vampires and Underworld. These are basically teams with harsh negatraits, or are just weak in general without the positives of being fast and agile. The strategy for these teams is to hope for some choice removals and often to cause as many problems as they can. I’ll do this one into subsections as they’re not quite the same but fall along the same path of “let’s hope this works”. That being said, they’re some of the more challenging and fun teams to play and worth at least a try.

Halflings: Expendable players who are too slow and weak to do anything other than supporting the Treemen, who in turn are too slow to do anything other than hit what’s directly in front of them. Still the best team to utilise Throw Teammate thanks to no loner on the trees and Strong Arm, but the ‘Lings are MV5 meaning they’re not as good at scoring as Goblins. Always try to get Deeproot and a Halfing Chef if you can, even if it means starting 300tv down which doesn’t matter too much. A bit better on Tabletop thanks to Hefties & Catchers. They’re fun as hell though and using your Halflings as ammunition is highly encouraged here at GRUMBBL. 

Ogres: Are pretty much forced to play “Aggressive Grind” as Ogres are only good at hitting things and even then aren’t that good at it thanks to no Block. Snotlings are bad but surprisingly annoying to remove, although they’ll die in droves once tackle becomes a thing. Ogres are unreliable as well, you will one day have all your boys Bone Head, so you’ll weep as your opponent skips past you, flipping you off as they go by. The new change to Snotlings is interesting and means you can take some star players or a chef thanks to plenty of spare TV, but you’re still outclassed by most teams.

Vampires: The Vampires themselves would be incredible if it wasn’t for bloodlust. It’s arguably the worst negatrait in the whole game as it either takes away a Vampire for the drive or stuns/removes one of your Thralls, who aren’t exactly tough to begin with. As a team they’re frustratingly tough to manage, often hurting themselves more than their opponents. You’ll Bloodlust at all the wrong moments and you have to babysit the Vamps with thralls if you want them to function even at a base level. That being said, when the Vamps do their thing, they do it well. Str/Ag4 is awesome, even while they’re only MV6 and can cause so many problems if they keep themselves in check, or have enough Thralls to throw away. But, you’ll very rarely end a drive with 11 players and are very easy to outpunch and outmanoeuvre.

Goblins: Along with Underworld, I’d argue these are the “best” of the stunty teams, mostly because they’re hilarious and cause a surprising amount of damage thanks to their Special Weapons. Two Trolls also make a scary roadblock and MV6 stunty is frustratingly quick, meaning they’re getting most places they want to. The real deal are those special weapons, but they’re only there for one drive unless you stock up on bribes… which you should absolutely do. But they’re all STR2, AV7 stunty, meaning you’re gonna die a lot, particularly with tackle or block. You’re also not that good at moving the ball around, you can’t really pass it and even with chainsaws, fanatics & bombs, you’ll probably be players down for the most part.

Underworld: I like to call these a “semi stunty” team, as they’re a wierd mix of Skaven & Goblins, although without the good players (Gutter Runners, Special Weapons). The great thing about them is mutations access, meaning you can cause some serious damage when you need to with Claw Blitzers and get around easily with Two Headded Gobbos, the latter of which is hilarious and should always been done. Again though, they just DIE easily, with AV7 everywhere except the single Troll & Blitzers, and a lack of real scoring potential without removals or cheeky Goblin throws. Animosity is 50/50 as a negative, it depends how often you find yourself passing to Goblins, although you’ll find you tend to play more of a semi-bash running game akin to Humans/Dark Elves, but not quite as well. They’re super fun though and my favourite team in the game.

I hope that helps! It’s always fun to think about which team to choose next and hopefully, this provides a little insight into how you want to play the game. There are more “styles” than here I’m sure as well! 

If you want to read more of my random thoughts regarding the tabletop game, you can go here! Plus if you’re new to the site, come hang out with us on our Discord.

-Aaron