Note: This article is a reproduction of an article at ideaswithoutend.wordpress.com
It was written before the Season 2 teams were available.
The board game Dreadball, one of a number of Kickstarter success stories begun late last year and now developing into their own product ranges looking to the future, is frequently compared to the classic Games Workshop gameBlood Bowl; both are based on fictional sports derived from rugby or American football, with stock genre fiction races and archetypes forming the teams. Yet Dreadball has several crucial points of difference which make it not only its own game, but also a significant improvement.
Blood Bowl is a slow game of positioning where a point may be scored once or twice a half – its sixteen turns per player can range from over almost instantly to full-length decision sequences based around mitigating the odds. It favours quite defensive play, with its heavy-hitting teams generally very poor at handling the ball and scoring points and so strategies such as “caging” where the ball slowly moves up the field are favoured. By contrast, Dreadball has all teams moving roughly the same amount; even heavy-hitters can get a turn of speed and move the ball as needed. Furthermore, the movement actions generally move a figure a good distance – around a quarter or half the length of the pitch – and so it is a game much more based around running play and positioning than hunkering down and grinding through the opposition. This immediately addresses the main criticism ofBlood Bowl; for a game based around something as fast-moving and exciting to watch as sport, it is very slow and based around cautious moves to avoid a “turnover” (failing an action and ending the turn). Dreadball still has “turnovers” but they are less likely to disrupt play because it rewards risk-taking and exciting actions rather than discouraging them.
