Blood Bowl with 3 teams?

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:15 pm

Anybody ever come up with a way to play 3 teams at once? It seems we often have an odd number of teams and one player is left out. It would be nice in casual play to be able to have a game of 3 teams in that situation.

I haven't thought too much about it, but my first thought was to use hexes instead of squares, and have a hex shaped pitch.

fen · Post by **fen** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:33 pm

The best way to do this would to take a leaf from chess's book. I give you.

Three way chess!

Yes, it works. Exceedingly well.

The pitch would be unusual for passing on, it would be best to only allow passes that have a direct pathway that stays on pitch. No passing over the middle corners. Also scoring would be best recorded against a team rather than for the scoring team. So your objective is to have less touchdowns scored against you than any of the other two teams.

It might work best with 2 balls.

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:28 pm

fen wrote:The best way to do this would to take a leaf from chess's book. I give you.

Three way chess!

Oooh, I like that, thanks!

fen wrote:Also scoring would be best recorded against a team rather than for the scoring team. So your objective is to have less touchdowns scored against you than any of the other two teams.

Why do you say that? It sounds like it would lead to very defensive play or king making (3rd place choosing who gets the win).

It might work best with 2 balls.

That would be fun. Would have the kicking team kick off to both teams opposite?

landrover · Post by **landrover** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:38 pm

13 squares to the 'centre' line still? Or change the ratio slightly?

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:42 pm

landrover wrote:13 squares to the 'centre' line still? Or change the ratio slightly?

I wouldn't shorten the distance to the end zone, as so much of the game is tuned towards that. Make it 12, and suddenly all those 9 MA players only need Sprint to get 1 turn TDs.

fen · Post by **fen** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:38 pm

TheGonk wrote:
fen wrote:Also scoring would be best recorded against a team rather than for the scoring team. So your objective is to have less touchdowns scored against you than any of the other two teams.
Why do you say that? It sounds like it would lead to very defensive play or king making (3rd place choosing who gets the win).

Well, no matter what you do in a three player game 3rd place almost always gets to king make. If you score "for" then it's possible for 3rd place to clear a pathway for one of the other teams, especially if 3rd place is sat to the right of 2nd place.

Similar if you score against, but it becomes more defensive.

Other options could be, you can only score against the person to your left Or first one to score wins. The Chess rules are "first one to score" so the person who gets the Checkmate is the winner, the person who is Checkmated is the loser and the other guy is 2nd.

It might work best with 2 balls.
That would be fun. Would have the kicking team kick off to both teams opposite?

Certainly could do it that way, the other option is to roll a D6 for each ball and place them in the relevant center square.

As for 13 squares long for each pitch. It makes for a huge board but that's the way BB is designed, on the other hand a shorter pitch would keep the game faster paced and encourage scoring. But it would probably need to be slightly narrower to compensate.

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:55 pm

fen wrote:
TheGonk wrote:It sounds like it would lead to very defensive play or king making (3rd place choosing who gets the win).
Well, no matter what you do in a three player game 3rd place almost always gets to king make. If you score "for" then it's possible for 3rd place to clear a pathway for one of the other teams, especially if 3rd place is sat to the right of 2nd place.

True.

fen wrote:Similar if you score against, but it becomes more defensive.

Yeah, but I'd rather encourage activity and offense than turtling and defence.

fen wrote:Other options could be, you can only score against the person to your left Or first one to score wins. The Chess rules are "first one to score" so the person who gets the Checkmate is the winner, the person who is Checkmated is the loser and the other guy is 2nd.

Hmmm...you could do something similar, 2-3 pts for a TD, 1 pt for not allowing the TD, 0 pts for allowing the TD. Maybe 3/1/0, to make scoring the best strategy, and helping another team score much less positive for you. It would also depend on if you stopped play after the 1st TD with multiple balls. I could see a few different ways to do it.

1. If you look at the BB pitch, it has a center column, whereas the chess board does not. This means that either the center squares at the line of scrimage have a "pointed edge" where they all meet or you could keep straight edges, and add a new space, a triangle, in the center of the board. There is no kick-off (kind of boring) but a "scrum" for the ball which starts in the new square (kind of interesting, but maybe favors bashy teams too much. And who would go first?).

2. 3 balls. 1st half starts with each team kicking to its left. 2nd half, to its right. Once a TD is scored, that team kicks off two balls, one to each receiving team.

3. Random entry of some sort. 3 balls thrown in by the crowd from the center of the endzone or some such. Can't really stategize on the kick off that much, though.

I think I like 2.

fen wrote:
It might work best with 2 balls.
That would be fun. Would have the kicking team kick off to both teams opposite?
Certainly could do it that way, the other option is to roll a D6 for each ball and place them in the relevant center square.

Like I said above, just placing it in the center, instead of at least attempting to place it deep, makes a possibly significant difference.

fen wrote:As for 13 squares long for each pitch. It makes for a huge board but that's the way BB is designed, on the other hand a shorter pitch would keep the game faster paced and encourage scoring. But it would probably need to be slightly narrower to compensate.

I was thinking about fewer players, maybe 9, to speed play a bit. Keep the length, but maybe narrow the wide zones by one square on each side (to three).

I did a quick bit of rusty math and keeping the same number of squares, and leaving the outside dimensions of the squares the same, I have roughly 40" (stright down one pitch 1/3rd to the far tips of the other ends) by 46" (across the tips the other way). Pretty big indeed!

tenwit · Post by **tenwit** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:25 pm

I think a hexagonal board with a hexes would be a more feasible design. Much more throwing options, every team has two sidelines to deal with, etc.

To avoid the scoring strangenesses, I'd suggest starting each team on the sideline furthest from "their" goal, and they can score only in "their" goal. Play with one ball, no team kicks it, it's thrown in my one of those flying goblins from the cards

Scatter it from the centre hex.

There'd be no LoS, but given that the ball-carrier is going to have 22 players after him and only 10 defending him, I think that this game could do without the LoS

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 3:13 am

tenwit wrote:I think a hexagonal board with a hexes would be a more feasible design.

Yeah, but then you could only get +5 on your fouls. I mean, come on!

tenwit · Post by **tenwit** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:08 am

TheGonk wrote:Yeah, but then you could only get +5 on your fouls. I mean, come on!

That is a downside. Umm.. how about merging the idea with the one I read a few days ago: big guys count as +2 for assists (blocks or fouls)? (And they have only one assist removed when in one other player's TZ.. it takes 2 players to cancel their assists)

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:59 pm

I dabbled a little with a hex pitch last night (I have a vinyl RPG thing which let me do it quickly...I started making the above distorted pitch with "squares," but my kids have hidden my protractor and I kept ending up .5" off with my math). I thought it played pretty well, although with a hex-shaped pitch, the pitch is VERY wide, and probably caters too much to speed teams. I think it would be tough to play Dwarfs on it, but I'll have to fool around more with it to know for sure.

One thing that I noticed is that crowd surfing is more dangerous...along half the sides, you can do it with 2 players. Not too big of a deal, as you have a whole lot more pitch to play with.

landrover · Post by **landrover** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:22 am

TheGonk wrote:One thing that I noticed is that crowd surfing is more dangerous...along half the sides, you can do it with 2 players.

Cool

TheGonk · Post by **TheGonk** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:52 am

Click through twice for hi-res.

Duke Jan · Post by **Duke Jan** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:53 am

fen wrote:it would be best to only allow passes that have a direct pathway that stays on pitch. No passing over the middle corners.

Or you could modify by an extra range if the crowd can intercept. The crowd can intercept on a 6 and it's a throw in where the ruler passes the sideline closest to the thrower. Safe throw would mean the crowd cannot intercept, but range modifier still exists.

Post by **Old Man Draco** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 11:06 am

I think I posted this link to the rules on my website before. Hope you like them. I know we did!

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ankemark/Spelletjes/tribowl.htm

Of course these are based on LRB 3 rules since I have not played Tri-Bowl for years, but I'm sure you can implement the LRB 5 rules as well.

As for The Kick Off restult High Kick, you should use Bad Kick instead.