TheBattlehammer

Welcome, gentle readers, to the first friendlies of the Battlehammer Guildball League (BGL), HUZZAH! That’s right, Mr Straw and I finally got a chance to sit down had have a bash at Guild Ball.  Yay! We decided to start with a couple of small games, a 2′ x 2′ board with the starter set of our respective teams (me with the Butchers and Straw with the Morticians) to six victory points. Now, we’d both flicked through the rulebook a few times but had also printed out a couple of cheat sheets from the forum to give us a hand, just in case. Turns out, this was all we needed. The rules are wonderfully elegant with all the player stats on the cards that they come with. Take attacking for example: I’ll roll as many D6’s as the TAC stat on my card, needing to roll the DEF or higher on the opposing players card on each dice to give me a number of successes. I then use these to get a result on the back of my player card. No need to reference a chart in the rulebook, phew. Kicking works in much the same way. Now this may sound simple but when you realise there are buffs, the order in which you activate players, influence to spend and momentum generation to worry about it adds incredibly engaging tactics without having to resort to a million special rules that need to be checked in a dozen or more rulebooks. It was so refreshing to focus on what was going on in the game rather than looking up something on page 426, checking how it interacts with the army book and arguing whether we’re going to pay attention to the latest FAQs. Bliss.

Outside of the main rules there was loads of character too. We both really enjoyed Cosset, the resident bunny-boiler of the Morticians. Her fluff describes her to be as nutty as squirrel poo and her rules convey the same. She gets to charge for free and she can take damage to up her own damage output. She’s also got an attack result called “Screaming Banshee” if she rolls high enough. This combines to make her devastating on the charge but a bit of a glass cannon as she can lose health quickly. I know that Straw had loads of fun running her up and down the pitch getting her stuck in. My best moment was just after Cosset missed a shot on goal (snake eyes, she was probably thinking about torturing a kitten), Boiler had just come on the field after being treated with a couple of Icy Sponges and as the ball went whizzing past the butchers goal post he caught it on his chest, sprinted up the field and scored the winning goal. And the crowd go wild!

The Butchers are looking to do well in the upcoming BGL but can the Morticians make a comeback and how will the other teams fare? To find out keep reading The Battlehammer. Please let us know your tactics for the Butchers in the comments below (and I suppose other teams too, bah). Would you like match reports? Tactical articles? More general rantings? Let us know below and you could get the chance to play Guild Ball in the BGL (no, we won’t pay for transport).

Until next time gentle readers.