Post by Lord Draconiroth on Oct 24, 2013 13:26:44 GMT
"DreadBall – The Futuristic Sports Game is a fast and fun tactical miniatures sports board game, written by Jake Thornton and created by Mantic Games.
Two coaches compete for victory with teams of beautiful miniatures, on a highly stylised and finely detailed sci-fi pitch. The game is easy to learn yet tactical, with carefully orchestrated plays and counter attacks hinging on positioning and the mercy of the dice gods."
Two coaches compete for victory with teams of beautiful miniatures, on a highly stylised and finely detailed sci-fi pitch. The game is easy to learn yet tactical, with carefully orchestrated plays and counter attacks hinging on positioning and the mercy of the dice gods."
That's Mantic's description on their site, but I'll take it a bit further.
When most people talk about Dreadball they all seem to start off with "it's like Blood Bowl, right?". I normally reply with a heartfelt "No, it's better!" and I mean it.
The similarities with Blood Bowl are the following:
They are both sports games.
There is a ball to get hold of.
You can kill players.
And that's it!
Dreadball makes me think more of the Speedball computer game. Fast moving, never stopping and brutal. Your teams are relatively small, consisting of a minimum of 6 players, the amount legally allowed on the pitch, and a maximum of 14. The players can be one of three standard positions. Jack, Guard and Striker.
Guards are your heavy hitters, they're the ones that protect your lines and deal the damage when you need to bash through the opponents. Strikers are just that, strikers, they're the ones that deal with the ball and are good at it. Finally jacks are the ones that fill the gaps, they can do both roles but just not as well.
The game is played on a board pitch made of hexes, three goals on either end. The idea is to get your player with the ball into the strike zones to score. The further from your side, the more points you score. It's played over 14 "rushes" meaning 7 apiece. The score board is a to and fro affair, so if your opponent scores a 2 point strike and you score 3 that means the overall score is then 1-0 to you.
To do things in the game are actions. Each turn you have 5 actions to spend on your players, with a maximum of 2 actions per player. The dice part are opposed tests, usually 3 dice each looking for success roles depending on the test requied and team being used, if you get more successes than your opponent you win. If you get double, you win even better!
Currently with the release of season three there is 12 teams. Each team has it's own variations and specialist abilities that mark them out for that race. Some examples are: the Human Corporation teams are not experts at one thing but can do everything well, the Judwan teams have a background of being pacifists so are a team of strikers that can't hit but are very quick. Forgefather Dwarfs are slow but stoic and don't get knocked down easily.
With all this variation it's easy to create a team of your own, throw in the fact that Mantic encourage leagues means that built into the main game rules are easy ways of building your teams up, getting experience and new abilities but also a chance that your star player could be brutally killed by the Orx guard with a grudge!
I for one am loving the simplicity of the rules, the speed at which a game can be played and the images of strikers showboating a score or of a guard slamming a player, stomping them when they're down thinking the ref wasn't looking and getting sent off.
Prices: (from Mantic's site)
Dreadball Box set: £50
Includes 2 teams, Corporation and Marauders, with extra models for team expansion
Fold out Board, Ref bot, balls, cards, dice and tokens
Full sized A4 rulebook
Rulebooks: £10
Team box sets: £15
These range from 8 to 10 models depending on team chosen (for example robot team has 10 models, but represents 6 players)
MVPs: £5
