Warhammer Blood Bowl

This has been available for some time by direct download and has undergone numerous patches that have fixed the bugs in it. What it has finished as is a very faithful rendition of the board game with a mixture of the tactics, violence and quirky humour that has made Blood Bowl great over the years.

Only 8 races are available at present (Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Chaos, Skaven, Goblins, Lizardmen) though more are expected to be added through patches/expansions. However this does give a fairly good spread of speed, strength, toughness and mutations to appeal to whatever you like to play.

It should be noted that Blood Bowl has something of a learning curve and the tutorial is not the most helpful. It would pay to download the Blood Bowl Living Rulebook (free) and have a read of it as it explains a lot of the rules (and more importantly game mechanics) a lot better than the manual. After that, visit the Cyanide forums and read some of the forum posts that deal with how to get the most out of your blocking and the order in which to perform certain actions. This will save you a LOT of heartache down the track even if it seems like a bit of a time investment.

All in all, a great game that will suck you in. There's plenty of folks online waiting to give you some serious opposition once you get tired of the fairly decent AI. There's nothing like killing your oppoent's star ogre to put a smile on your face!

Have you ever been playing your favourite table top wargame or board game and wondered how cool it would be if you had all the sounds and effects to go with it? Well finally this is here in the form of cyanides Blood Bowl.

A very accurate and true rendition of the rules that we have been playing for the last series of Blood Bowl.

Great game play and the ability to keep your teams to play with later on keeps you sucked in for months. Also being able to create your own leagues and competitions to play with all your mates just keeps it going.

There are a couple of points that detract a little -
The commentary tends to get a little repitative at times and doesnt really vary all that much.
With the "blitz" mode or Real-time, the computer AI leaves a lot to be desired, and with the use of "concentration mode" you may as well play the turn based mode.

But enough negativity, for anyone who loved Blood Bowl or wants a sport game with a fantastic twist, I truely recommend Blood Bowl.

Based on Games Workshop's excellent table-top game, Blood Bowl may be a step too realistic for most average PC gamers. However anyone who has ever played the original will love the amount of care and detail that has gone in to this adaptation. If you like the idea of a brutal sports game set in an amazingly detailed fantasy world - this game is perfect.

I used to play this years ago and I am pleasantly surprised about how much fun it is on the PC. Basically it is an adaption of American Football in the Warhammer universe and pits Human, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf, Goblin, Orc, Skaven, and Chaos races against each other. Each race has certain advantages, weaknesses and challenges. I play the turn based game as it was originally designed and you move each of your players once per turn or until you fail an action and give your opponent their turn. It is played in two halves with 8 turns per half with random events at each kick off. Your team can try and knock down (or ideally knock out) your opponents to create space to run through so you can pass the ball or group your players together and try to grind your way to the opponents endzone. Touchdowns are scored by having your player cross into the opponents end zone with the ball in their possession.
I'll quickly get the downsides out of the way: the user interface is a little confusing at first as you try to navigate menus and the load times are quite slow (machine speed dependant of course, but I don't have a top end machine!).
The actual game play itself translates well and makes working out moves easier than the board version. The graphics are good with some nice animations such as trolls throwing (or sometimes eating) goblins. The AI is ok and the real challenge comes from playing human opponents on the net. The game is just as frustrating with dice rolls as playing in real life: you can get some very bad results even with rerolls. I haven't bothered with the real time adaption as I bought the game for the original experience and this more than satisfies my needs.
After getting a campaign going it wasn't long before I was telling myself: just one more game then I'll go to bed. Creating a team from scratch and improving players along the way is rewarding especially with the risk of them dying!

This game is great but pretty complex - the tutorial isn't much cop so be prepared to learn the rules on your own. Awesome game if you like deep strategy.