Blood Bowl Team Manager Review - with Tom Vasel

Tom Vasel takes a look at this new card game from Fantasy Flight Games

Buy it at http://tinyurl.com/bloodbowlcardgame

For more info and reviews, check out www.dicetower.com

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Closed Caption:

and now it's time for another dice tower
review with tom vasel blood bowl team
manager who football football where you
can tackle the referee kill the referee
doesn't sound very fine well in a video
game or a double board game lots of fun
and a lot of people like blood was very
popular game this is not blood bowl this
is what bowl team manager I've been
looking forward to this game for a while
I was very curious she was like
initially that was a deck-building Game
where you draft players for your team
will you do draft players occasionally
in this game but it's kind of like a
complicated take that game does that
make it bad
let's look at it I'll tell you
yeah
ok
the goal of this game is to get the most
fans points whereas most of these is the
winner and each player gets a dial which
they will use players are picking from
amongst six different factions you have
works i guess these are the orcs and
elves we have escaped in we have the
humans and each of these factions has
different players that are in on that
faction each player has a star power
that's much people like them and when
the player gets tackled their star power
changes this guy it goes from 1 to 0
when he's tackled while this gentleman
here goes from 5221 he's tackled he's
actually not part of this faction so to
get out but some of the players are
considered star players and they will
have stars around the outside and
players will have different special
abilities on them so players don't start
with their star players so they start
with our 12 regular players and the game
takes place over a certain number of
matchups which you'll draw from this
deck sometimes that matchup includes a
tournament and sometimes it just
includes a special ability that players
have to follow some special thing that
comes in that round each time you do
this you're going to be putting out
highlight plays equal to the number of
players in the game so let's say there's
three players we would put out three
highlight plays like this now these
highlight plays are important because
players are going to be committing
players cards from their hand to one
side or the other side of that way
whichever side you commit players to no
one else can commit players of that side
and you can't commit players both sides
but when you commit players suicide
you're going to get the rewards of that
side so for example these flags mean
fans if I commit a player to decide I'm
gonna get to fans if I commit a player
this side I'm going to get another gonna
be able to draft the star player into my
deck and then whoever has a higher star
power on both side gets whatever is in
the middle so this instance you'll get
two more fans in an upgrade
while over here this card you can see
one player gets a star player their
presents an upgrade and then whoever
wins the match gets for fans
all the if you put your cards at the
tournament itself and any number of
players can go here but puts most here
is going to get three star players and 5
fans it's a big one so players into the
side where they're going to put their
players so it turns very simple on your
turn
you simply take a player from your hand
and you place him down on the field
somewhere and then you take any special
abilities that are on him and you may
use them so this gentleman here has a
cheating and a tackling special ability
now cheating is mandatory
how can you hear that the game you have
to take a cheating token and place it on
the card you have a pile of these tokens
to the side and you'll be putting one of
those on the card and at the end of a
match you reveal all them most cheating
tokens add more star power but some
cheating tokens are whistle like this
one which will eject your player from
the game other cheating tokens will add
fans because players love to watch
cheating i tackle 11 player attempts to
tackle another player
let's say for example that this or
players going to tackle this
skaven player here it's a three-on-two
when you do that you will roll dice if
you are higher than if your star power
is higher than a person you're tackling
you roll two dice and you will choose
which died to use if you are equal to
the player you're tackling 01 dice and
you take whatever that dice is if you
are less than let's say this guy was
tackling him you'd roll both dice and
your opponent would pick one so now
we're going to tackle him as if you roll
double tackle this means tackle which
basically means you exhausted card by
turning it sideways and black means
nothing and X means the person trying to
tackle gets tackled if you tackle
somebody who's down like this guy here
then they're injured and removed from
that match
there's a football at every match and
when you play a car with a football icon
they can take the football or someone
else has the football they can push it
back in the middle this icon here with
the arrow means that you can discard a
card from my hand and draw another card
and so there's all sorts of players with
special abilities and some of the
players have
social abilities that when you put them
down they also have some other things
like maybe they can take a tackle for
somebody else or like this guy here when
he has the ball he can't be tackled and
so once everyone has placed other cards
on each side
all six of the cars lay down you check
each match and the winners get their
things and now the winners will be
drawing from a deck of star players
that's made up of all the star players
that you have plus a bunch of neutral
players there's a different league for
the three different factions or each in
their own league so you might even get a
star player from another team and you
might get your upgrades that come for
your faction or team upgrades and
managers that you can put in front of
you and then you can use them at
different ones like this one here at
each matchup where you have at least one
down player you get a star power that
match up by one so these cards at to the
level of the fun of the game you play a
certain number of matchups depending on
how long the game you want and after the
Blood Bowl matchup the final matchup
the game ends and whoever has the most
fans is the winner
I really had a good time playing this
game but reactions in my group were
decidedly mixed on it
there were some people who i would say
those especially who liked what we call
eurogames and careful planning and such
date they did not enjoy this they they
thought it was kind of too repetitive
and random especially the dye rolling on
the other hand myself and a few other
people just loved it there were some
people who are like it's a little this
point that it's not blood bowl because
you're not actually moving players
around here distracting teams and kind
of taking the games in a much larger
context but man i just had a kick out of
it that throwing the dice four tackles
having weird things happen having your
own guy tackled drafting a massive
player for your team
there's just some really cool aspects to
it and the six teams really do have a
different feel to them for example the
skaven are really good at keep moving
that ball and getting cards we have to
get the cards you need while this war
just in there you know straight solid
and the chaos cheat like mad and the
whole team mechanic and the die roll
they do add a level of randomness to the
game which i think some people aren't
able to handle but we got into the
spirit of it like I said at the
beginning of the review it it to take
that genre why play card on you and I do
this to you and you do that to me and
normally i'm not a huge fan of those
games but this offers options and
choices and how am I going to put what
order they going to play the cards
because that really matters and then
we'll have what card am I can attack and
such so I like it's very interesting
drafting players is fun getting the new
abilities and I think there's a lot of
replayability in this box alone so for
me it's fun i certainly don't think the
games for everyone I think I look for
someone who would get into the theme
those are the kind of people i would
play with and when I do we're going to
have a blast so that's blood bowl team
manager the card game
thanks for joining us today for more
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www.itourcup.com until then this is eric
summer and you've been watching the dice
tower