If you’ve been playing the game for a while, it’ll be no surprise to you that there are quite a few ways to play Blood Bowl. The first ever version was the tabletop game in 1981, released by Games Workshop and the first digital version was actually made in 1995, 14 years before the first Cyanide version! Of course, over the years we’ve had many different updates, culminating in various different ways to enjoy, or despite our favourite violent fantasy sports game. Over a couple of articles, we’re going to run through two different ways of playing the game, the first (and the one you’re reading right now), covers the actual methods of playing the game to begin with, and then we’ll cover different competition styles at a later date.

So if you actually want to play, what are the ways to play Blood Bowl in 2023 and beyond?

Tabletop

The original and to many people the best way to play Blood Bowl! Pretty much all of the other methods we discuss today are based upon the official tabletop rules, which at the time of writing are currently using the version made in 2020 (called either Blood Bowl 2002 or Blood Bowl Season Two, depending on who you ask).

To play you will of course need a set of miniatures representing your players, a pitch and dug out and the correct dice to get yourself started. The primary way is to buy these directly from Games Workshop and it’s certainly the most convenient way to do so, either by buying just the teams you want or by getting the starter set, which includes the Black Orc and Imperial Nobility team along with all of the accessories you need to play beyond that. It’s honestly pretty decent value, all things considered, the teams individually are £31.50 (or your regional equivalent) so you’re not paying too much more for the other bits and bobs which if you got them separately would be much, much more. It also means you can pretty much use them anywhere you like, whether it be official GW stores/events or your local game store and some of the NAF events.

There are other options, however. Many third-party vendors exist with their own take on the teams and often can be better value when buying individually. GW usually supply their teams in packs of 12 and some of the older boxes (Humans and Orcs are prime examples) require you to buy two boxes in order the get all of the positionals. They made booster packs on Forge World but, they’re expensive for what you get. With other places you may find some designs more to your liking as well, for example, Greebo Games does a bunch of cool alternative styles such as an All Women Norse team or even a Pig-Themed Black Orc team! The only issue here is, you won’t be allowed to use these miniatures at GW official events and some of the positionals can be a little hard to identify. Not only that, it’s very rare that any 3rd party minis are supplied in plastic, they’ll often be cast in resin or metal, or 3D printed. Therefore the quality will vary and those materials will be harder to use for beginners. Not only that, they’re not always better value than GW and getting two boxes of GW minis sometimes works out cheaper.

Tabletop is also THE place to play in some of the bigger events and competitions. The NAF World Cup was recently held in Alicante with a whopping 2500 player count and the upcoming NAF Championship for 2024 in Nottingham is already sold out! But, for you newer players, you should be able to find local events and leagues either at your game stores or hopefully GW stores, should either of them run those. If you’re in the UK, it’s not hard to find these at all or players wanting to play one-off games.

And that is the one negative of tabletop. It is a physical game after all and if you’re not near a FLGS or GW that actually plays Blood Bowl, well you’ll be out of luck sadly. There are usually Facebook pages or Discord channels dedicated to these local ways to play Blood Bowl, so see if you can find them near you.

There’s also the cost, especially if you want more than a handful of teams. It’s not just the players either you’ll need to buy, it’s all the modelling equipment to assemble the minis plus any paints and brushes you’ll need to turn them from grey to… not grey! Some events will only accept painted miniatures as well, although the Speedpaint (Army Painter) and Contrast (GW) ranges greatly help with this and allow newer painters (or those less inclined) to field good-looking teams with less investment.

If you can’t find any or anyone to play with or feel like spending less (sometimes)… you do have some alternatives!

Digital

As it stands, there are a few ways to play Blood Bowl digitally. The benefit here is the lower price to entry, assuming you already have a PC or console capable of running the game and the fact that you can play with anyone anywhere in the world and the games we’ll be discussing below all come with matchmaking capabilities, so you’ll be able to get a game pretty much anytime, assuming someone else is online. They also tend to play MUCH faster than tabletop as there’s no physical moving of minis or rolling of dice, it’s all done for you along with most of the setup.

The first way to play Blood Bowl digitally is the official, Cyanide-developed Blood Bowl 3. Currently, this is the most up-to-date version of the game, using most of the 2020 ruleset. I say most because, as of the time of writing there is a lot missing from the game, having been launched in February of this year in what the community considers to be a very undercooked state. There are still many league functions missing, Multi-Block and Ball & Chain aren’t currently in the game and quite a few other options are still waiting to be implemented. Not only that, the game only has 14 of the 29 available “official” teams so if you wanted to play Amazons or Halflings, you’re out of luck unfortunately. Sadly the game is in a less-than-recommendable state, but if you want to play the new ruleset in the most convenient manner, it’s the better choice. Hopefully, it’ll improve as time goes on and once the proper league tools come into place a lot of the larger leagues will be moving over properly, giving new players spaces to play without having to hit the official ladder. The DLC/Team system is, less than ideal and you will either have to earn or buy the new teams going forward, plus who knows how long it’ll take for all the current teams to be added and your favourites might be at the back of the queue.

The main alternative is an entirely free one, called FUMBBL. Not only is this site an excellent resource for new and experienced players, it also comes with a browser version of the game, with the entire official roster included as well as some fan-made ones. As mentioned it is entirely free so giving it a go will only cost you a bit of time and you’ll usually find some people to play with using the Gamefinder, although it’s probably best to find a league or tournament to play in for scheduled matches. The main issue really is, it’s not the best-looking browser game, I mean…it’s fine I guess:

They recently added a portrait version which is way better, but it’s very clunky and a bit of a mess visually if you’re not used to it. It doesn’t have the biggest pool of players either, perhaps due to the UI and a lot of the players are veterans so new players may struggle to learn outside of scheduled games where you interact with your opponents in either Discord or other comms. That being said, it is free so it’s worth a shot and probably worth finding a league to join.

Your last option to play Blood Bowl 2020 digitally is through a wholly different game called Tabletop Simulator. This is essentially a 3D engine designed to play various board and card games online and it of itself is well worth picking up. The game has a metric ton of mods, one of which lets you play Blood Bowl within the game and has various scripts and automation to help set up the game. It’s still a bit clunky, Tabletop Sim is just like that, but it’s a very, very good way to get a tabletop feel online. The only issue is you have to know the rules of the game, unlike BB3 and FUMBBL which do a lot of the work for you. Not only that, it’s a bit fiddly to work out if you’re not used to the intricacies of Tabletop Simulator itself, is a genuinely good and convenient tool (and is pretty good value at £14.99) but actually using it takes some getting used to. There’s also no matchmaking of any kind, you would need to re-arrange any games using TTS and you’re probably less likely to find someone who wants to play via that medium than BB3 or FUMBBL, as they’re dedicated Blood Bowl games.

As an aside, I am going to mention Blood Bowl 2 as well. The reason is, that it’s the most complete way to play Blood Bowl digitally, even if it uses an older ruleset (LRB6, so it even predates the 2016 tabletop rules). It has all of the teams you’d expect from the game (minus Renegades or any of the newly released teams like Snotlings or Old World Alliance) and is for the most part, feature-complete. Unlike BB3 it’s pretty bug-free, very rarely crashes and contains things like replays, post-game statistics and importantly, far more competition and league tools for admins to use. Of course, its biggest issue is, that it’s outdated and for the most part, the community has moved on from it with the launch of BB3. You’ll still find leagues and games on the official ladders, but the wait times for the latter can be quite long with the dwindling player base. The game itself isn’t too bad cost-wise and goes on sale regularly, just make sure you get the Legendary edition for all of the teams.

Overall there are plenty of ways to play Blood Bowl! I would recommend to everyone, even if you play digitally exclusively, to give Tabletop a try. Learning the actual rules and how things work, honestly makes the game much more fun and you’ll certainly understand why things are happening as opposed to sitting there, confused as to how the ball keeps bouncing between the sidelines over and over again.