Dungeonbowl Project

[axiom]

That's a really interesting scheme on the Skaven - peach and purple? Looks great - very distinctive. I love the large surfaces of colour you can get on the 2nd ed Skaven

[yggdrasil]

Cool Bull Centaur!

Where's the dragon from?
The guy is huge!
Do you intend to give him a base?
Any rules for him yet?

Thank you. The dragon is from a toy company called Safari, and comes up when you google for "safari ice dragon". I've already given him a base now, and it looks nice. I think I will have to have a go at painting him, even though I think I will start by using the existing paintjob as a base - I am too lazy to spray him white and start over.

I did have a go at writing some rules, before I found the model actually, which is one of the reasons I decided to get it. Dungeonbowl monster rules are a bit weird because since the monsters are an enemy to both teams and effectively an environmental hazard, it's hard to know exactly what is too much and what would just make the game more exciting. But this is what I came up with.

Cave Dragon MA 4 ST 7 AG 2 AV 9
3 Slash attacks (ie. straight AV rolls), 1 Block attack, Piercing 3 (ie. slash attacks give -3 to AV)
Skills/Traits: Mighty Blow, Stand Firm, Bone-head
Special:
Flame Burst - If the Dragon is not adjacent to any players when its activation begins, but there are players within Short Pass range and in LOS of the Dragon, roll a D6. On a 3+, make a Flame Burst attack against the nearest player in LOS and within Short Pass range instead of moving the Dragon. Place the scatter template over the closest player. All players under the template must either go voluntarily prone (no AV rolls needed) or must make an AV roll or suffer an injury.
Humonguous - The Dragon takes up nine squares in the dungeon, and is treated as nine players moving in unison.

That's a really interesting scheme on the Skaven - peach and purple? Looks great - very distinctive. I love the large surfaces of colour you can get on the 2nd ed Skaven

Thank you. It is meant to be pink and purple, but I've gotten into the habit of giving all my models an agrax earthshade wash nowadays, which has made the pink go a bit peachy.

[axiom]

Just another quick question...dungeonbowl is undeniably cool in concept (I love the idea, the mixed teams etc), but do you actually enjoy playing games of it?

In my experience the searching for the ball can be fun, but once one team has the ball it ends up being a slow, dull drudge of a game as corridors get blocked, stalemates happen all over the pitch and the team with the ball steadily meanders to the end zone while the other team has minimal chance of getting it back.

I played another game of DB last w/e and afterwards remarked to my opponent that if I'd played DB rather than BB first, I might never have got caught by the BB bug. Perhaps we're playing it wrong

[yggdrasil]

Just another quick question...dungeonbowl is undeniably cool in concept (I love the idea, the mixed teams etc), but do you actually enjoy playing games of it?

In my experience the searching for the ball can be fun, but once one team has the ball it ends up being a slow, dull drudge of a game as corridors get blocked, stalemates happen all over the pitch and the team with the ball steadily meanders to the end zone while the other team has minimal chance of getting it back.

Very good question. I'll start by saying yes, I/we do enjoy it, though that much should be obvious. Why we enjoy it, ie. how we avoid the problems you mention, is difficult to say. However, the way I look at it is that what you describe as what happens once a team gets the ball is in principle what happens every game in games of Blood Bowl - one team has the ball from the beginning, and depending on which is the better coach, the team with the ball either slowly grinds its way down the field or slowly gets worn down by the opposition. DB can be like that too, but the fact that you never know where the ball will be, that the players will always be spread out, and that there are teleporters everywhere, means that the game is so much less predictable than in BB in my view, and this unpredictability is to me the opposite of drudgery.

In DB, the corridors are narrower than the whole BB pitch, but the players are also scattered around the board in small pockets, and you have several different angles and approaches to the different end zones, so we don't tend to have the clogging up problem. If a path seems to be completely blocked, back up and run down a different passage, or smash/leap your way through, or find a teleporter and try to get around that way. The options are always there.

I guess the main factor that influences games of DB is the dungeon layout. If you haven't given up on the game completely, I'd suggest trying to use more big rooms and fewer narrow corridors, and having multiple access paths into the end zone regions. You want a roomy dungeon, not a space hulk board. If your players don't teleport because it is too dangerous, consider letting all players roll two dice and choose the result they want. And you could try setting wandering monsters loose in the dungeon and seeing if that breaks up the steady meandering to the end zone that you describe. Try having three balls in the chests instead of one, most touchdowns wins. Put in some fire pits that you can push players into the clear up the board. And/or try playing with three teams in the dungeon instead of two.

I don't think that just because I enjoy the format that everyone else must too - playing style, temperament and inspiration play a huge part in the enjoyment of any game I think. But my suggestion for those who like the idea, but find the gameplay lacking, is to open it up a bit. Remember (or experiment with) that everyone can leap in DB, and make more use of teleporters, and open spaces where passing plays make sense. *Everything* is customisable in DB, and that's one of the best things about it I think.

[velvet mark]

Cracking thread yggdrasil! Its been said before but I really want to build a bloodbowl dungeon now!

Some lovely conversions too. Love the armoured elves and the minotaurs.

[Axtklinge]

(...)dungeonbowl is undeniably cool in concept (I love the idea, the mixed teams etc), but do you actually enjoy playing games of it? (...)

Been there too.
I've always found the concept absolutely amazing, but the game turned into a stalemates, and dragged for countless turns very quickly once the ball showed up.

The first and more important problem IMO is the size of the passages/corridors/doors, and the bottleneck effect they create.
I believe yggdrasil has very valid points on the tweaks the game needed to work more dynamically, specially the multi entrance ways to rooms, and those multi level passages, so kinda like in BB pitches it would be increasingly difficult to get stuck in one corner endlessly.
Also the 3 ball game would definitely put everyone much more on their toes and would induce more spreading of the players through the entire dungeon.

[Videador]

watch this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQ6SH5 ... ture=g-u-u

[axiom]

Those are brilliant suggestions for improving DB fun. I think universal leap would be the single key fundamental change to how we play the game, but all would be massive improvements. Thanks for the suggestions!

[yggdrasil]

Cracking thread yggdrasil! Its been said before but I really want to build a bloodbowl dungeon now!

Some lovely conversions too. Love the armoured elves and the minotaurs.

Thank you! In principle I would have liked to just use 2nd ed BB models throughout, but the facts that I am on a budget, love converting, and wanted to add new stuff to the teams meant that converting up lots of stuff has been an integral part of the project.

Those are brilliant suggestions for improving DB fun. I think universal leap would be the single key fundamental change to how we play the game, but all would be massive improvements. Thanks for the suggestions!

I'm really glad you think so, to Axtklinge as well. I think I posted a suggestion for how to implement the leap thing on a previous page, but I'm sure there are many good ways of doing it. I hope that if you try out the game again in the future, that you work out some modifications that work for you.

I always thought it was funny that the DB rulebook specifically mentions the clogging problem. It states that when the game was first invented (in-setting that is), that there were no teleporters, and that the games therefore ended up centered around bottleneck doorways with marathon slugfests, which was very violent but very boring. Hence, the wizards decided to install teleporters as one means of alleviating this. I'm sure that story stems from the actual story of the boxed game's development.

In other news I've been working a bit on the dragon, and also started making a couple of statues that can be used as decorative ornaments and obstacles around the dungeon layout, as mentioned in Jervis' DB update article.

[yggdrasil]

Here are another three skaven, bringing the Grim Reapers up to a total of 15 out of 16 done. There is also a reason why I haven't done the 16th - he is a blitzer, but converted from a 3rd ed lineman because I didn't have a real one available. I've finally decided to just get another blitzer from ebay, and I should be winning one in a few days. In the meantime I think I will repaint one of the blitzers from my other skaven team, and then the new one can take his place...



Rather than referring to this team as the Grim Reapers, and all the other teams by their names, I guess I should just call them my Amethyst team. When playing league games with these teams, it really makes more sense to consider them to be a selection of college-sponsored teams, not *the* original teams who went by those names. But since I've painted them all in the colours of the original teams (or very close to it), it would be hard to break the habit of calling them by their "real" names.

[yggdrasil]

I managed to get a hold of the pictures from the game I was talking about, but it is taking a while to get them sorted, so I think I will post the game report in two parts. Here is part one.

Dungeonbowl 3-player League Game
War Hawks vs Grim Reapers vs Black Widows

On a rainy November evening, I got together with my two friends Mark and William to play Dungeonbowl. Mark is my regular opponent, and it was William's first time playing. For our first three-player game, we used two team rating 100 teams, Black Widows for Mark, War Hawks for William, and one team rating 115 team, the Grim Reapers for me. The Widows were entirely new, freshly painted, and I know Mark had expressed an interest in trying something totally different. William picked the Hawks just because he liked the look of them, and to save the time of having to build a team from scratch, he took over a team I had played one game with before. However, all that they accomplished in their previous game was gaining 5 SPP and losing one Fan Factor, so their rating was still 100 (to explain, we are using an older set of campaign rules than in the current BB rules). The Reapers had played a couple of games before, and had one Skaven Runner with the Sixth Sense skill, letting him roll two dice and pick the result when teleporting.


The Hawks getting ready for action.

Because the Reapers had a higher team rating, we decided to give the other two teams a Special Incentive each, which is an alternate handicap system. The Widows decided to use experimental magic to make themselves more resilient (a 4+ chance to reduce each injury they receive by one level), and the Hawks decided to send a pre-game assassin against one of the Reapers’ two Minotaurs. The assassin managed to take the Minotaur out from being able to play in the game, much to my chagrin.

Mark set up the dungeon for us to play in while I was telling William about the rules, and we got ready to start the game. As you can tell from the pictures, Mark is quite fond of having lava beneath the edge of raised platforms, so you can push a player off a platform and into the lava. We added together the two highest fan factors to determine the Gate, and worked out that 46,000 fans were watching the game on CabalVision.


The view of the dungeon as the game is about to start. The last chest and teleporter are just off the shot to the left.

As the game started and the players started spilling into the dungeon, the Hawks’ Ogre lumbered towards the Reapers. In a feat of vengeful fury, the remaining Reaper Minotaur launched himself at the Ogre, pushing him into a lava zone, which seriously injured him, burning his hand and causing him a niggling injury as well as having to miss the next game. Ouch.

The Hawks then managed through teleportation to spread out a bunch of Orc Linemen over the dungeon, and set them to guard four out of the six chests. The two unguarded chests were soon opened, but with just explosions, no balls.


The players are spreading out through the dungeon, and the Minotaur is just about to pound on the Ogre.
At this stage I had just remembered to add team tokens to the end zones to show off which was which.

As the game progressed and players started clashing, more chests started to get opened, and a Hawks Orc Lineman managed to find the ball in the second to last chest. However, it was in an out of the way corner of the dungeon, so getting the ball back to an opposing end zone proved difficult, especially since this section of the dungeon was separated from the rest by a deep chasm that was risky to get near, with the risk of falling in.

[yggdrasil]

Part Two


The Orc Lineman discovering the ball after several other chests nearby turned out to be booby-trapped.

At this stage, a lone Orc Lineman has just discovered the ball. Not seeming like he'd be able to cross the dungeon with the bulk of the enemy players between him and the two end zones, the Orc ended up teleporting. He landed on the other side of the dungeon and stayed on the teleporter, but while standing there, several other players started teleporting around, starting chain reactions that ended up with the Orc back near the place he started - on the wrong side of the chasm.

At this time, several Skaven Runners, Dark Elves and Mummies had converged on the area, and a desperate three-way scramble for the ball began, with ball possession switching every turn. Players were pushed into a nearby teleporter to get them out of the way, and one Skaven Runner was pushed into the chasm, plummeting into the abyss and getting lost in space.

The dungeon was essentially divided by a line of walls and lava running down the middle, and the two remaining big guys were on one side each. The Reapers Minotaur was pacing back and forth in the middle, trying to keep his area clear and waiting for the ball to come his way, and the Widows Troll was staying back near his end zone, occasionally beating up a lone Skaven Lineman that had tried to sneak into the backfield earlier in the game.


The Troll has just smashed the Skaven Lineman into stunnedness.

After some back and forth, the ball ended up in the possession of a Widows Skeleton. With an amazing feat of agility, the Skeleton ran across a bridge spanning the chasm, and then passed the ball to a Dark Elf teammate standing on an elevated platform in the middle of the dungeon. Needing a 6, and rolling a 6, it was an accurate pass, and the Elf ran down towards the Hawks’ end zone, with two other Dark Elf Linemen as bodyguards.

The game seemed just about over, but a Reapers Goblin decided to go for broke to try and stop the Elves. He tried to leap across two squares of lava to land on the other side, which he needed a 6 to succeed at, and managed to roll a 6. Climbing the stairs on the other side, he prepared to blitz the Dark Elf ball carrier. He hoped to push the Elf off the platform he was on, but managed to knock them both down instead – which resulted in the ball falling off the ledge and onto a pool of lava.

As Dark Elves ran down the stairs to retrieve the ball, a Skaven Blitzer beat them to it. However, stepping onto the lava, the Skaven was knocked out by the flames, dropping the ball onto a safe patch of ground. A Dark Elf Lineman ran in and grabbed the ball, passing it up to his teammate who was previously knocked down by the Goblin, and who ran the ball into the end zone for the winning touchdown.


The Dark Elf Lineman runs into the Hawks end zone to score the winning touchdown, with the heroically athletic goblin prone behind him.

After the game, the MVP awards went to the Dark Elf Lineman who passed the ball to the scoring player, one of the Orc Linemen, and the Minotaur. All of these awards triggered new Star Player rolls: The Dark Elf acquired the Leap skill, the Orc the Brace skill (which lets him go prone instead of be knocked down by exploding chests, meaning no turnover), and the Minotaur rolled an 11 and got an Agility increase. Since there had been a massive 46,000 fans watching the game, and the teams rolled a 3, 2 and 1 for their income rolls, the winning Widows got 60,000 gold, the Hawks 40,000 gold, and the Reapers 30,000 gold. All of these went into the team treasuries for future purchases.

[yggdrasil]

Cheers! Now the Reaper Blitzer is done, the Grim Reapers are the next team (the second?) to have 16 fully painted players. Nice!



Also, one of the dungeon pieces we use a lot is an elevated bridge-type section that is 2x6 squares, with a column in the middle holding it up. One thing I didn't consider when I built it was that when you place a few metal models on one end of the bridge, and not on the other end, then the piece will sag towards the side of the weight, because it is made of such light material, and this has been a problem in several games.

So at last, I took steps to fix this, and added a base to the base of the column to help support it staying level at all times.

[Axtklinge]

That is a great report!


It sounded like a lot of fun, and that last Goblin blitz was fantastic!
Goblins always seem to accomplish the hardest tasks (and completely fail the easiest ones)!


Nothing like a good red wine glass in a rainy evening...

[yggdrasil]

Thanks, it was a lot of fun, though also a little taxing... at the end, I really didn't want to blitz with the goblin, because I was thankful that the game was going to be over momentarily. But I felt like I'd have been a bad sport if I just let my opponent win, so I went for it. Thankfully he was able to recover the ball quickly for a well-deserved win despite the temporary goblin-induced setback.

Even though the goblin leap was impressive, I was more impressed with the fact that Mark had just before made a successful short pass (the longest you can pass in DB), uphill, with an AG 2 skeleton. My move was based on that there was nothing else I could do - his passing action took some stones, I felt.

Since the second, less well posed Reapers Minotaur got an AG upgrade in the last game, I thought this would be a good occasion to go back and remodel him a bit. I always felt his horns were badly placed and his arms were too relaxed, so I moved his arms up and moved the horns. I like this better.



Now that everyone is done, here is a full 16 player team shot of the Reapers.



Here are a couple of new models I am working on. I originally wasn't going to have any Orc Blockers on the War Hawks team, but since I had two free slots left and available black orcs, I thought why not.



Finally, a new troll for the Green Destroyers. This guy is looking a lot spikier and more chaotic than his friend, essentially because I decided to keep the horns rather than remove them. We'll see how it goes.