My group is looking into setting up a bracketed BB:TM tournament, and I was curious if anyone else had tried something similar? Did you alter the number of weeks in a season? Did you make the players stay with one team (provided you had 6 players)? Did you use the tournaments differently?

We have lots of ideas, but I wanted to see if anyone had already tried them, and how it worked.

Not sure by what you're looking to do, but I've ran a "league" system via Microsoft Excel and all. I kept score of every single match-up each time we meet and play, and let everyone rename their own teams. It's a basic win-draw-loss thing that I kept track, with the team "standings" being determined by "percentages". (A win would give 3 to 4 points, a draw 1 to 2 points, and a loss, 0 to 2 points.)

This was a more long-running, football-league style where I kept score of even things like tournament wins (how many Blood Bowls, Spike Magazine Trophies, Chaos Cups etc).

For a few months, we also experimented with self-contained "semifinal" and "final" rounds, for each tournament. For example, if we draw the Far Albion Tournament in the opening round, no manager may commit players to it. Play the round as per normal, with the top "four" finishing teams, "qualifying" for the semifinals. (We frequently had up to 6, sometimes 7 players - I just combined multiple copies of the game, or had custom-made "dream teams" ready as extras. All pre-Sudden Death )

So the semi-finals would pair 1st and 4th, and 2nd with 3rd, in a "crossover" format. Now, each manager will draw another six card hand, but the hand will last both semifinals, then the "final". So THREE cards for the semis, then the final three for the final. Ties were resolved by sudden death "penalties": each manager draws a single Cheat token until ties are broken.

My group ended up playing so much of BBTMCG (over 2 years!) that we ended up fielding different teams. I stayed with Skaven, Human (even customised the artwork by pasting Bad Bay Hackers art from the Matt Forbeck graphic novel), and Undead. Both the Skaven and Undead had the better percentages, while my Humie Hackers remain pretty much poorest of the lot

So we had the first night of our tournament last night.

5 players committed to the tourney, so this first night was round robin. Everyone played everyone once, for a total of 10 games. We played simultaneous games (drawing from common decks and cheat token pool, but we had to mock up some additional dice) of 3 weeks each (two highlights and a random ending Tournament). Once we had our play order in the round robin, we drew team tokens from a hat to identify the team we would be using for the game, drawing again from the hat between each game. Due to the odd number of players, a different player got a "bye" and sat out each round, so everyone got a break during the tourney. After about 4 hours we'd all played each other, and we tallied our wins (and total fans for any necessary tie breakers). Even picked up some spectators who were interested in learning the game as we played.

Tomorrow night we'll go into the finals where the top 4 players will play 2 player, 4 week games (3 highlights and a random ending Tournament). The winners of those finals will play in the Blood Bowl (5 weeks, 4 highlights and the Blood Bowl) to determine Champion and Runner-Up. At the same time, the losers will play each other in another final to determine 3rd place, or "Waterboy".

So far we're having a blast. One person has already been eliminated (me, unfortunately, but I'm not complaining at all), and tomorrow night one more will be out after losing both the Finals and the losers bracket. Top three will get small prizes. Not bad for our first go around, and after we pull in a few more players and pick up the expansions (and maybe another base set), we'll put on another, bigger tournament with bigger prizes.

Last night we finished the tournament.

Apart from who played which random team, we thought it would be interesting to tally how each team did in the tournament, too. I kept a small notepad like a bookie and kept the stats. Here's how the teams were doing at the end of the Round Robin:

Team: wins | losses - total fans for the games they were involved in

Humans: 2|2 - 26,5,23,28

Elves: 1|1 - 11,20

Dwarves: 2|1 - 10,25,8

Orcs: 1|2 - 10,28,17

Scaven: 2|2 - 33,9,23,18

Chaos: 3|1 - 26,16,41,26

THE FINALS

Two simultaneous 2-player, 4-week (three highlights and a random tournament) games formed the Finals.For these games, the Round Robin determined a pecking order for players to choose their teams instead of drawing at random. Winners proceeded to the Championship Bracket to play in the Blood Bowl for "Champion" and "Runner-Up", while the losers went to the Losers Bracket to compete for the the coveted "Waterboy" prize. Scores for the Finals are as follows:

Dwarves (41) vs Elves (11)

Scaven (34) vs Humans (19)

The Losers Bracket and Championship were very exciting, full (5 week) games, with the Championship coming down to the final fan count and the reveal being only 2 fans apart.

Loser's Bracket: Orcs (41) vs Chaos (32)

Championship: Dwarves (40) vs Scaven (38)

Final Tournament Statistics: (We're thinking of including a non-monetary "betting pool" for the next tournament as sort of a side/mini game for our spectators.)

Humans: 2|3 - 26,5,23,28, 19

Elves: 1|2 - 11,20,11

Dwarves: 4|1 - 10,25,8,41,40

Orcs: 2|2 - 10,28,17,41

Scaven: 3|3 - 33,9,23,18,34,38

Chaos: 3|2 - 26,16,41,26,32

All in all, it's fitting that the Dwarves took home the prize. The reigning Waterboy chose Orcs for the Loser's Bracket after seeing the running stats because he felt it was time for a comeback, and he certainly gave the Orcs their due. The Champion chose Dwarves for both the finals and the Championship, and now he chooses Dwarves for every Fantasy themed game we play because "Dwarves don't lose".

sounds Great yeah I only had one tournament with the the base game when I first bought it, unfortunately I wasn't a member on this site let alone know of its existence lol but I was amazed to see how well the dwarves did in your tournament too

My personal favorite is the skaven, but the dwarves happened to place third in the tournament that my friends and I held. but it is funny to see the complaints about the inequality of the teams on this site, especially the miss leading opinions ive seen towards the dwarves. like when I first started reading the blogs about the balance of the game, my first thoughts were, most fixes are to go for an upgrade lol no seriously though like I find the game to be incredibly balanced due to the fact that no matter what your team is lacking, there is an upgrade for that lol. I mean yeah your odds of getting a "sprinting coach" is slim but if ya shoot for the star players your odds of getting say a free booter with sprint or even a regular star player with sprint, happens more often than one would think. and the fact that the game is super random when its all said n done lol like in the blood bowl round everyone thought the elves would win against the skaven cause they had morg n thorg and just tackled the rat ogre and then used a war dancer to eliminate em outa there so it seemed really slim to none chance for me to win at the time, but when I used my gutter runner as the last card valued at 2 sp getting the ball = 4 sp when all said n done morg n thorg was EJECTED !!! lol and that's the fun of the game ya know and yeah even though I won the blood bowl it was a super close match like some of those staff upgrades are ridiculously awesome when it comes to adding fans to your scoreboard and we totaled at 68 to 71 fans and the skaven won with a 3 fan lead. It was great like what had happened was, since the rules for two player sais to use all of the tournaments for magazine cards the elves kept winning the bulk of em but since I had two staff office upgrade cards and eventually getting the hall of famers lol while they had a few weill get em next seasons lol it was a double up on everything fiasco lol at the end game there to see who really won.

but over all ive won with every team but the orcs, and ive seen the orcs win a few times soo nothing is too unbalanced in my book keeping of he over all view of the game. another complaint ive seen about the dwarves were that its upgrades mostly focus on being downed, and really they are the first team with downed skills let alone the ability to get back up when downed. and the way that bear the grudge allows you to tackle with full standing sp, works wonders when you do role a flopy two x's with a big 5 star player and he drops so you can use it and get some playability out of him, and if you have the up grade that lets you get back up after rolling one die and successfully getting a block symbol I mean the odds are just way better of doing that than getting an x lol so you can effectively tackle with the full star power twice and stand em back up if needed. but I love the set up you guys have.

our set up was everyone pull from a hat for teams(started off the same) but then two on two matches lol it took a few days to do all of it lol and we like made it last for a week started on a tues day visited back on Thursday to resume and then had the final bloodbowl match on Saturday.

but we had a two losses and your out factor, everyone had two on two matches till the first two teams to loose twice were out and then we had a four person tournament and then then after that, the winner of that tournament go amnesty for the next two on two match up, and the chaos team was eliminated in that round, the humans only lost to them by 1 fan in the pre four player games. and then after that the rest is history the elves beat the dwarves and the skaven beat the elves. but yeah its a lot of fun to play no matter what team you get, its how you play the game that really helps the most lol and in the new expansion sudden death my fave is definitely the black fangs cause it kinda helps the linemen be less useless after guarding, and I can not wait till this Saturday lol I know the new expansion foul play gets released on Thursday but it wont get to my favorite store I ordered it from till Friday and I wont get to my hometown till Saturday lol but I cant wait to play it

not sure which team I like the most yet but the stadiums seem like it will make the highlights alittle more interesting

oh and since were on the subject of tourniments, the last game I played was a six player game and all we did to keep it short and doable in a timely mannor, is we played a regular game with six people, there are enough highlights to do so, just sayin lol we did the math and said hey we can do this lol and picked six teams and the rules state to draw as many highlights as there are people so we just drew six of em, and it was great we managed to play a full game of blood bowl without running out of any resources grant it, we only had like 3 star player cards left in the OWA lol and like 17 left in the dss lol, but we managed to do it and it was sooo fun ... and we didn't need to buy another base game set. and we have all decided to push the envelope and get a eight player game going lol if we runb outa stuff and its un doable ill let ya know how it plays but I can honestly say the six player game went smoother than what any of us would have expected. the only stipulation was that you needed to write down the scores of two of the teams on a piece of paper or you can make your own score board if ya had the time.

but I do have to give you props, the idea to hold off till the very last tournament between two people to have the bloodbowl is Brilliant:) and effectively ups the value of the Bloodbowl itself, that is legit man and I woulda never thought of it lol

and I think if you don't mind ill try implementing that style into the next tournament I hold that and I feel I might get to use more of the headlines this way which really does change the way the game is played.

thanks for sharing your experience, hope you've enjoyed reading mine, and may you win many tournaments to come with none other than the underestimated dwarves

Thank you for sharing your experiences! My family ran a tournament like this in 2019, and I attached the results. The Undead ended up winning it all.

We just stared our 2020 version, what with social distancing and all, we figure to be staying home with games a lot in the coming days... so why not a tournament!

bbtm tournament 2019.pdf