Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl's Next Top Models
When we're talking Blood Bowl, we're talking the same rabid dedication to miniatures you'll find in any Games Workshop universe. So just like the rules, Cyanide knew they had to pay close attention to how they executed on the player models in game. At launch the game will feature Humans, Dwarfs, Orcs, Wood Elves, Goblins, Lizardmen, Skaven, and Chaos races. Each with loyal fans expecting their race of choice to look just so. The big question for Cyanide was whether to target faithful interpretations of known game miniatures, or to add some of their own flair to the graphic designs for the game.

"Our first approach was indeed to take the miniatures and simply try to reproduce them," says Villepreux. "But it soon became clear, for us and Games Workshop, that it was not the way to go, and that with new support for Blood Bowl should come a new vision of the universe. So we worked a lot with Games Workshop to give this 'new look' to the characters, but keep the spirit intact. We had to find a good compromise between the old miniatures style and the more recent Warhammer miniatures style."

For those eager to customise their own teams, Blood Bowl doesn't have a team painting tool along the lines of what you can find in Dawn of War. But there are points of customisation included in the game covering colours, logos, equipment, and even skin and body variants to work with. Villepreux suggests that while they wouldn't consider what is available a 'tool', there is enough on offer that beta testers were modding characters and realising some great modified teams.

Blood Bowl as management sim?
Serious fans aren't going to be into this title for a quick match here and there, and to that end Cyanide offers an interesting, tangential pedigree that suits dynastic league and tournament modes where perfect coaching can be just as important as perfect play. While Chaos League showed its interest in the genre, the studio spends most of its time on niche sports management titles, including Pro Cycling Manager, Horse Racing Manager, and Pro Rugby Manager.

"We have a long tradition of management game making at Cyanide," says Villepreux. "And Blood Bowl did not avoid that treatment. You can build your own roster in several game modes."

When you start playing you can build a team from scratch, starting with a bunch of rookies who level up across matches and tournaments, gaining experience and skills as they become veteran and potentially even star players. But this is Blood Bowl, so managing your roster to ensure you always have new stars on the rise is important - your best player could be targeted and killed at any time, and dead is dead in this game.

In Competition mode you have championship and cup modes that run across multiple seasons, where you can also create your own custom competitions. Campaign mode offers different tournaments in a professional circuit, starting from small tournaments and then leading up to the greatest tournament of all, Blood Bowl, as you take your own team onto the field against the game's most famous teams, like the Reikland Reavers.

Online leagues can be played as private leagues played amongst friends or you can join the public leagues where you compete for standing on a world rankings table. Plus there are LAN and hot-seat modes so you can run entire leagues with a single game and a bunch of friends gathering at the one machine.