Moving Blood Bowl away from the minis on the pitch to a deck of cards in Blood Bowl: Team Manager is a brave move.
Title: Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game
Year Published: 2011
Designer: Jason Little
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Players: 2-4
Game Time: 90+ Mins
Set-up Time: >5 Mins
Ages: 12+
Theme: Blood Bowl
Mechanic: Deck Building, Hand Management
How to win: Get the most fans
Game Description
Blood Bowl: Team Manager – The Card Game is a bone-breaking, breathtaking standalone card game of violence and outright cheating for two to four players. Chaos, Dwarf, Wood Elf, Human, Orc, and Skaven teams compete against each other over the course of a brutal season. Customize your team by drafting Star Players, hiring staff, upgrading facilities, and cheating like mad. Lead your gang of misfits and miscreants to glory over your rivals all to become Spike! Magazine’s Manager of the Year!
I also want to put the Sudden Death Expansion into this review…
The Dark Sorcery Syndicate union features dabblers in forbidden magics who just don’t know when to stay down. Undead Champions of Death tear up the pitch – sometimes literally as they raise new zombies and skeletons from the corpses of former Blood Bowl players. The vampires of the Black Fangs are always thirsty for victory (and blood). And the Dark Elves of the Naggaroth Nightmares are happy to give both teams plenty of fresh corpses with which to play.
Blood Bowl: Team Manager Set Up
In Blood Bowl: Team Manager, each player chooses a team and takes the respective deck of players and a Scoreboard. The rest of the set-up involves shuffling decks and turning the foul tokens face down.
The only fiddly bit is setting up the Competition deck.
This involves putting the Blood Bowl aside, taking 2 Tournament cards at random without looking, adding two Headline cards, again without looking, shuffling those 4 cards together face down and putting the Blood Bowl at the bottom.
Blood Bowl: Team Manager Game Play
Blood Bowl: Team Manager is played over 3 Phases
Maintenance Phase
At the start of the Maintenance phase, players will refresh used cards and draw up to 6 cards. This is, of course, skipped on the first turn so players draw 6 cards from their team deck.
Then the top card of the Competition deck which we prepared earlier is revealed. Then highlight cards are revealed from the top of the highlight deck equal to the number of players.
So now players have a hand of 6 players and there are 3-5 highlights/tournaments to commit them to. These are known as Match-ups.
A ball is placed on each Match-up card, this is known as ‘Midfield’.
Get ready to kick-off!
Match-up Phase
This is the beef of the game.
Players, in turn order, commit one player from their hand to a Match-up.
Two teams can be committed to a highlight at most, one each side. All 4 teams can commit players to a tournament.
When a player is played you resolve any ‘When played…” abilities on a card. Then you use Skills on the player card from left to right, in that order.
Skills
- Cheating – (Mandatory) Take a cheating token from the pool and put it on the player. These are either Fans (or points), Star Power (explained later) or Ejections, meaning the player will be removed from the Match-up during the Scoreboard Phase.
- Passing – (Optional) If the ball is in Midfield, this allows the player to pick it up. If an opposing player has the ball, this allows you to put the ball back into Midfield. You can also move the ball to this player if another member of your team has the ball.
- Sprinting – (Optional) Draw a card, discard a card.
- Tackling – (also Optional) Tackle an opposing player. Choose the target and roll the dice. If the tackling players’ star power is HIGHER you roll two dice and choose the outcome. If it is the same you roll one die and accept the outcome. But, if it is lower you roll two dice and the opponent chooses the outcome.
Tackling is important and requires a bit more detail. When a player is standing and they are on the losing end of a tackle, they are downed and turned sideways. Now, usually they are worthless Star Power when down so this is important when it comes to scoring the Match-up.
A successful tackle against a downed player results in them being injured which puts them in the discard pile.
So this phase continues until players run out of cards, which is 6 rounds. You may pass which ends the Phase for you. At the end of this phase, if you passed and still have player cards left in your hand, you may discard any you do not want for the next Phase.
Scoreboard Phase
Now the Match-ups are resolved, starting with the Highlight furthest from the Tournament card.
Firstly, Cheat tokens are turned face up. Ejected players are removed, fans are added to the players’ scoreboard and foul tokens with stars are left on the player for now.
Then any cards that say “During the scoreboard phase…” are played now.
Then the Star Power for each side is added up, including any star power for carrying the ball. Highest wins!
Players collect the payout on their side of the Match-up and the Winner collects the payout in the centre of the card. On a tie, no one collects the central payout. If the Match-up Phase ends with only one team having players at a Match-up, that player gains all 3 Prize Payouts.
The pitch is then cleared of all cards and tokens.
The start player token is passed to the left.
End Game
After the final tournament, the Blood Bowl has been completed for, the game ends.
Any “End Game…” effects are used and the player with the most fans wins.
Blood Bowl: Team Manager Round-Up
The first comparison for Blood Bowl: Team Manager always seems to go to the Tabletop game. For me, the main problem with the tabletop version is it takes a very long time for a 2 player game. I’ve played the tabletop version since the first print and have loved it ever since, even the video game versions.
So a card game version that plays 4 players is a bonus.
It plays similar to Smash Up where you’re trying to control and area with cards by having the most strength.
I like how this game works. The dice rolling is like the tabletop game, the tactical choices are heavy enough that they need a bit of thought but light enough that it’s fun.
Teams
The teams also feel well balanced but different. Speaking of the teams, here they are divided into their conference.
OWA
- Reikland Reavers – Humans
- Grudgebearers – Dwarves
- Athelorn Avengers – Wood Elves
CWC
- Skavenblight Skramblers – Skaven
- Gouged Eye – Orcs
- Chaos All-Stars – Chaos
DSS
- Naggoroth Nightmares – Dark Elves
- Champions of Death – Undead
- Black Fangs – Vampires
The DSS teams are from the Sudden Death expansion. They have abilities when they are knocked down which works really well, including the ability to get back up! The expansion brings in a few other things too.
Game Effects
Contracts are rewards that can be earned in Match-ups and are worth 2-5 fans each at the end of the game.
Enchanted Balls offer more than the usual 2 Star Power that the regular balls have. They are randomised for each Match-up and offer different values of Star Powers, fans or abilities that activate when a player becomes the ball carrier.
I haven’t really mentioned Team and Staff upgrades yet. Team upgrades are taken from your team’s personal deck and are extra abilities that are related to your team. Staff upgrades are similar but drawn from a central deck and are more generic.
I do have to say, Staff upgrades are VERY powerful. They give a lot of endgame fans and can make the difference between winning and losing.
It’s a shame as recruiting Star Players is fun but as they are weak compared to the upgrade cards. Plus, as the recruitment is a tad deck-builder-y and the game is quite short you may only get one use out of a Star Player.
Sudden Death Update
I’m adding this in from the future as it came out after my review. It adds a new conference and 3 new teams…
PPG
- Nurgle’s Rotters
- The Lowdown Rats
- The Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats.
The teams are good, each brings a bit of unique gameplay. The referee is not, he pulls focus too much and kinda ruins the game a bit.
The stadiums are great and add variety to the game and I’ll never play without them again.
Check out my Ups & Downs video below for a more detailed review of this expansion and the rest of the game.
Blood Bowl: Team Manager Rating
I love the theme, and the game itself. But Staff Upgrades seem to be much more powerful than all those awesome Star Players and it lets the game down a bit.
Update: (10/05/2018) The Foul Play expansion is a must-buy! Shame it’s out of print! 🙁
I give this 8/10
This game is a member of my Board Game Hall of Fame!
Blood Bowl: Team Manager Ups and Downs
These are my Ups & Downs of each aspect of the game and both expansions recorded on the 7th May 2018. Find more videos on my YouTube channel.
Initial Blood Bowl: Team Manager Review
This is my initial overview of the game from Tabletop Day 2013:
We had TableTop Day a day early, and at home, we’re rebels like that.
We could go the whole day playing brand new games but decided to start off with one we technically have played before, Blood Bowl: Team Manager, but with the never-played-by-us Sudden Death expansion.
Sudden Death
Blood Bowl Team Manager – Sudden Death has 3 new teams and we played with all 3 in our 3 player game.
Champions of Death – Undead
Black Fangs – Vampires (Played by Me)
Naggaroth Nightmares – Dark Elves
Enchanted balls, contracts, new teams, regenerations, knockdown effects etc add to an already good game.
Staff Upgrades
It still feels that Staff Upgrades are more powerful than Team Upgrades or Star Players.
I usually go for Staff Upgrades when I play but I wanted to get Star Players for a change, as the results show, I came last.
The Champions of Death had the most Staff Upgrades, and it shows.
Summary
I did enjoy playing it. It’s been a while since we got this game out and I forgot about the tactical side to the match-ups and how much thought and planning is needed.
Last place but enjoyable, a good start to the day.
Top 5 Blood Bowl: Team Manager Star Players
OK, so I don’t like star players in the game.
They’re stronger than Linemen but nowhere near as strong as Staff Upgrades.
But anyway they can turn things in your favour so these are my Fave 5 from the game…
(Note: I did this top 5 list before the expansions came out and all 5 were from OWA. DSS has changed that, BIG TIME)
5 – Janglin’ Jack
Can turn around a match-up by standing up one of your big guys. Often I will take out one of my own players to stand up someone better.
4 – Eldril Sidewinder
You get the ball, you don’t drop it AND your star power is increased by one while holding the ball. Very good at a match-up where you want the ball.
3 – Emil von Carstein
A bit random I guess but very strong. The bonus of randomly picking up the ball is very strong, doubly strong when you think it’s hard to drop the ball into midfield in the first place.
2 – Griff Oberwald
I have a soft spot for Griff as he was my fave player in the board game from 20 years ago. But he’s still good in this game as the ball carrier his value is 5, one of the toughest in the game.
1 – Luthor von Drakenborg
My previous entries in the top 5 all have cool abilities like Nerves of Steel, Dump-Off or Sure hands, Luthor negates them. VERY useful when your opponent is hiding his weak ball carrier behind someone with the Guard ability.
Not only that, you can stand friendly players up when you get the ball, awesome.
Jesta Tha Rogue