Glad to see Team Manager gets yet another upgrade. My rant will not be about "moneygrabbing" or anything of the sort. It's about balance.

It seems that the game to begin with is very unbalanced. You could blame it on theme or "lulz factor" but IMO in the long run this game suffers from these issues. Some people don't want like the game because of this, since it does take a while to play, has a lot of randomness with simulated feel of strategy. Meaning a lot of people get hurt when they lose even if it isn't "their fault".

Complaints:

1. Some teams are too good. The skeletons are good, the humans are good. But more importantly..

2. The dwarves suck. I get the theme, but they have too little pass, and they don't have many heavy hitters. Their heaviest tackler is a 3 with dauntless, this basically means "4 against 4, 3 against 3 or less" which in any nonesoteric case is worse than 4. I get that 4s are reserved for "monster type" players, but this could easily be adjusted by giving it a downed tackle or other skill. This way, if you fail your tackle you could still go for high risk high reward type of play which is fitting for the dwarves. As it is now it's too much risk for not that much reward.

The dwarf with 3 star power and strip ball could have a skill that allows it to pass if it succeeds in tackling and still have the option of using strip ball instead of tackle. Now it's just a tackle or sh*tty pass.

These are just suggestions and I am trying to say that it is possible to fix the dwarf team without straying from the theme. Also, 2 of their team upgrades are matchup actions that either require your players to be downed. Too situational for too little.

One of these allow you to stand up a downed player, which for the dwarves isn't as useful as for other teams, since they lose less star power on falling down.

3. The vampires need a buff of some sort. Instead of letting the vampires feast on their own players, you could let the linemen sacrifice themselves. This way, the vampires would get their buff without sacrifing their whole action on attacking their own units. Maybe this would stray from the "play a card, read the text, pass the turn" playstyle, but adding a tiny tiny bit of timing complexity won't hurt the game and won't stray too much from the style of the game.

4. It's good that foul play will add the team upgrades from sudden death, but honestly they need to add more for the old teams. Either replacements for the units, giving the original six teams downed skills or adding more team upgrades. The original six teams are still fun to play, but no way nearly as fleshed out as the newer teams.

5. The stadiums and all other additions are nice, but some people will not play with these because of the "too much fidgeyness" factor, meaning there is a risk the expansion will be just 3 more teams. I think this is fine but it could be much more. Balance adjustments and old team improving is therefore even more important.

6. Just a quick glance at the new teams and they seem a bit too powerful. Hopefully I'm wrong.

TLDR: Retrofit the old teams. If possible, also add more team upgrades. If the game has gone to print too bad.

Everyone knows I'll buy this expansion anyway. I have been hoping for balance fixes since forever though, and I was really sad to see this expansion didn't offer that.

You do have a point; yes, Undead are freaking good, though based on my experience, my Humies are pretty much a hit and a miss. I think my consistently poor die rolls have something to do with that

(My group played it pretty much every weekend, almost two years straight, so we clocked a lot of sessions with this. Our own house rules and even custom teams and Star Players might have skewed some results, but the official FFG teams did see a lot of play so I'd think our results are pretty accurate.)

I think the reason why the Dwarves get so much flak is because of the playing style required. There was one guy in my group, who somehow always won the game with them (the awesome Star Players and amazing die rolls helped too!). But yeah, generally, their ability to gain fans does seem poorer.

And yes, the Vamps suck (pun intended). The Always Hungry bit seems like too much effort for not much reward. But errata-ing that might push them over the top, hmmm....

Honestly, I'm only buying Foul Play because of the Goblin team, and the extra bits. Stadiums look crazy exciting, am so gonna get everyone in my little "league" to use them regularly! Not a fan of Nurgle and Chaos Dwarves - gimme Amazons, Pro/High Elves, Norse, Tileans and Bretonnians dammit!

I like the idea of retrofitting the teams, though I'd be more interested in newer Star Players for the existing affiliations. They could easily add five Star Players across each team; by the time we have Foul Play, I think 60 new SPs will be sweet! Maybe print-and-play?

I was excited about this expansion at first, but the more I think about it the more I agree that the original teams need to be retrofitted to account for the new rules.

Fouling also seems very powerful...I'm sure its been somewhat balanced in playtesting, but the basic ability seems huge to me. Its just going to further gimp the teams that already suck due to lack of sprinting (ie Dwarfs).

Re: balance, I don't think its terrible. Its not perfect, as I've alluded to in a rather complex analysis elsewhere in this forum, but even between the best three teams in the game (undead, human, skaven) and the worst team in the game (dwarves) there's a fairly narrow difference in power level, and certainly its much less significant in determine outcome than luck is.

If Bloodbowl was a dice roll to win, and Dwarves was -5 and Undead was +5, it'd be a D100 roll, not a D6.

Skill is also a much bigger thing than the relative difference in power as well. On the above D100 roll, it'd be the equivalent of adding or deducting up to 40 points either way, I'd say.

Now if skill is evenly matched, then that little bit of balance difference makes for a big shift, so balance DOES matter, but not to the degree that the game is broken as it stands. Its just a little... untuned.

I think fixes can be put in place without errata or reprints. All we really need is a couple of new team upgrades per team with the weaker teams getting better ones, or some matchups/special rules/doodads that favour the weaker teams, or some stuff like that. Throw in a Vampire Star Player that auto-eats any player at a matchup with 0 strength, for example, and the dwarves are safer than most. Throw in a general upgrade that lets all downed players at a match make a block as a matchup action, and the dwarves are the only ones who can work it. Throw in an effect that doubles the star power of downed players... and so on.

I'd rather see this subtle balancing act going on rather than a brute force solution. Having said that, I guess it'd be equally easy to print a new decent player for each weak team, and write "replace one lineman with this player" in the expansion rules.

Re: the new teams, I think analysis of power level is very hard till all the facts are in. Humans, for example, are strong because of their team upgrades as much as anything else. Vampires aren't as good as first expected, because they have too many Thrall Linemen.

What we see so far though...

Rotters

I really like Spread Disease as a mechanic - its a clever design space, as it makes for more significance to blocking.

How, you ask?

Well, if you look at a Pestigor as being a 2/1 regenerator with pass, thats an okay player. However, I'm guessing the equivalent value here is just above a 3/1 player with a single decent skill. The Pestigor is easier to block than that player, though and though regenerate makes him harder to keep down, a human blitzer would still rather be attacking a pestigor than a 3 star character. However the spread disease means that any incoming player is also easier to block. All in all, overall effect is blocking is made easier.

Interesting thing here is Spread Disease looks to be two way, as in you'll get the disease if you commit another Rotter there. This is a fun interaction, as it means that if 2 extra power doesn't take you to the lead in Star Power, you've essentially made your own life harder.

Beast of Nurgle is almost certainly a 1x big guy. Great ability, but very comparable in power to other Big Guys. There's an anergy here, as their special ability is one you want in play ASAP, but Big Guys are best played near the end of the round.

It also looks clear that each of the Rotter players is a single skill deal.

The big question here as to how good the Rotters are is in how many of each player we get, and what Clinging Rotter does. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a Sprint or Cheat and that's it, with Nurgle's Rot being some synergistic ability that gives benefit from getting Disease Tokens.

We'll see how this pans out, but right now I'm seeing a team that plays Star Power math nicely, but which is easily downed and outmanoeuvred. We need to know their upgrades, but I'm tentatively placing these guys in mid tier.

Ziggurats

The left hand preview is clearly a star player, not a starting roster player, no matter what the text implies. The previous preview shows us more.

Now these guys look really brutal. The fouling downed skill is nasty: it basically discourages blocking anyone with that skill, as who can afford to be anti-sprinted? All of us save our tricks till near the end of the round, so a foul can completely screw our plans. It'll never be a positive for the other player, as there's always the option of just putting the card back. The only thing we can hope for is to lose a fairly good player and then draw an even better one.

Minotaur is an interesting big guy, and basically says 1 card = my presence at this match up sorted, thanks. Runner looks to have two skills, sprint and something else, and dodge/fend plus downed foul. If their second skill there is pass, I'm going to yell OP!

I'm not sure what I like what Chaos Dwarves bring to the game, as they essentially weaken the blocking teams, which were already low or mid tier, while being weaker to sprinting / passing teams, which were already mid or high tier.

All in all, I'd currently place Chaos Dwarves in top tier, or mid tier if their upgrades have no options to generate fans.

Rats

Foul as a standing skill is first thing I notice, and I have to say its a hard call whether this should be an early or late play. Play it early and you give your opponent time to plan, and to sprint out drawn dross. Play it late, and you might be playing into a clever player's hands, as they've deliberately held back dross for you to waste your foul on. Still, the info gained has more value late, even if you replace, so I'd say foul late.

I love that this team has terrible Star Power but cheats and fouls and a bunch of tricks. I also love how the bombardier carries the random of randoms, fully capable of dropping all your Star Player buddies or single handedly winning a matchup.

Its all wonderfully gobbo!

The balance of this team is going to be really hard to call. I think Foul looks to be the best skill in the game now, bar none, and they look to have the most of it. But printed Star Power is a really important thing as well.

But here's something: No Linemen seen! Every card is a good'un, at least as good as gobbos get.

This team will be a nightmare to play against, and my inclination in any multiplayer will be to avoid matching up against gobbos as much as possible.

Tier? I have no idea. Playtesting will tell, as will team distribution. If its 1x Bombardier, that could keep them off the top tier.

If its 1 x of each special weapon and a bunch of lineman level gobbos, then its bottom tier. If its no linemen and just specials, they'll be at least middle tier from virtue of never having dead draws and being effectively foul-proof

Could be top tier, or bottom tier, depending on how they pan out.

Either way, these guys look like the most crazy fun this game has seen.

I'm not sure what I like what Chaos Dwarves bring to the game, as they essentially weaken the blocking teams, which were already low or mid tier, while being weaker to sprinting / passing teams, which were already mid or high tier.

This is my concern as well, and why I don't like the fouling mechanic from what I've read. You coin it as an "anti-sprint", and I think that is a perfect way to describe it. Fouling seems extremely powerful and something that will most hurt the teams that are already hurting (Dwarfs, Orcs, etc).

We will see once we open the box and have time to digest, but that is my initial take and concern.

Played a game tonight with Humans, Orcs, Dwards, and Goblins. The Goblins are weird as hell. They cycle through their deck super fast, and to some extent want to avoid star players because the Goblin. They were fun and whacky, without being OP, just as I would expect Goblins to be.

Question: There is an ability for Goblins to move the ball from one matchup to another. Does this mean that if each team has a ball, it no longer acts as a tie breaker? Also, does this mean that the Passing skill can be used on either ball you choose? I assume yes both questions, but wanted to see what others thought.

On both teams having a ball, I'd say yes, it should be no tie-breaker. And the other answer is yes, IIRC it was mentioned somewhere regarding the first expansion.

good to see life in this forum, thought this game was forgotten. now that people are here I don't need to feel like such a 'geek'. Paycheck is due this friday. If anyone wants something to do this weekend, log in to this forum to HEAR ME ROAR/rant.

hmm ya know ive been thinking, I when this game first came out just about everyone in many groups ive played with freaked out, flipped their lids, and ranted over how the star players for their team had to be placed in the over all big deck of star players mixed in with everyone elses lol, now one thing abot football is that if you look at any foot ball team any where they have something these teams are missing, a team captain, and I think it would be kool to have a specific upgrade for each team to have a really awesome super player that has its own special rules and have the team captains be like the team specific star players that don't get mixed in but make it one of the team up grade cards saying gain the team captain lol and make its stats be things like for the dwarves have two sprint a block and a cheating token and just use it to you know fill in for what gaps the the teams do have. now in my experience the game has been super balanced but I have seen auto wins and auto looses so I can definitely see where some one would complain.

but to have a team captain expansion would be neat and it would bring a whole new set of rules and stakes to bring to the table lol im sure they would have something to add to make the game play with the captains like it could even add more stadiums sayin no team captains lol to make it harder to play in that stadium and all team captains could have the free booter ability but exempt the team captain from the shuffle to ensure he is placed on top to have that added benifet of making use of the upgrade u just got. I mean as a team captain who calls the plays theres all sorts of benefits they could lay down on the specific player with the Team Captain ablility lol. but yeah it is a shame though when you have a team and some one else grabs your teams star players and your stuck with like little free booters lol and theres nothing wrong with that its part of the game, but it is sad though lol when it happens. and of course it would bring three more teams

cause adding new players for nothing seems kinda off from how the game is played. and adding more star players wouldn't really effect the game play but add to the randomness. now, I gotta say it would be awesome to see like upgrade cards for specific players like a line men upgrade that adds a star player to each linemen in play or an upgrade that upgrades throwers but it would most likely go into the staff upgrade and it could be called like the equipment upgrade or something to help the linemen like that, or even as much as it talks and shows weapons I think it would be awesome to add weapon staff upgrades that gives an additional Block for anyone to use adding frenzy during that specific tackle attempt. and staff upgrades for helmets pads and shoes, each adding its own little effect lol like padding adding a star power when some one else is attempting a tackle and im just sayin when I played the digital version of blood bowl and I was able to upgrade my shoes, pads, helmet, etc... I was all who, that would be great to have in the bbtm just to add new stuff like that. oh and the like use of sorta like steroids its like the strength potions or speed potions in the game is great and it would be kool to add all of that as staff upgrades or even a different upgrade all together like have an equipment upgrade for that stuff, or have it all lumped into to staff its whatever's clever lol

oh and all of the equipment and stuff could all add new tokens to the game as well lol

and umm lets see what was that other thing my group was talking about, right that's what it was lol umm we talked abot how awesome it would be if each team had like a mascot as a team upgrade that gave a specific benifet for each team specifically at a match up now players could tackle em like a normal player but when it is present, the assumption is that its motivating the team enough to just add on to every player whether it add frenzy to every player at the match up or a sprint or in some cases grabs the ball at mid field or something like that lol oh and ya know all mascots should gain frenzy when tackling another mascot lol those things hate each other lol or even like have that hatred abillitly where if another mascot is present it has to tackle it if it performs a tackle attempt in the first place lol. and stuff like that I think that would be great,

im just saying there are way kooler ways to add to the game and make it more balanced with out any crummy reprinting and replacing any cards like that, however I do think it would be great to have upgraded players for each team to then when you get that team upgrade you gain replace all or one of those players with the upgraded one, that would kinda kick ass. and the upgraded linemen could even have like a skill and stuff, and that would be neat to have upgrades that lvls up your team players, but not all of them at once lol like that would be tooo overwhelming but to have it player specific like a linmen, thrower, blitzer etc... player specific to either replace all or just one of that player with the upgrade.

oh and it would be kool to have something like bribe the ref, I haven't played the foul play yet:( its supposed to get in tomorrow at 1:30 pm so im super excited to play. but if they don't have a bribe the ref system already lol than it would be kool to have a staff upgrade to let you bribe the ref to discard and get rid of a whistle token when exhausted, however I do believe that to get rid of that whistle is should come with a cost of say giving up a pay out weather it be one thing on the payout or a whole pay out section maybe, but I don't think it should be an auto bribe the ref with nothing scenario, you should have to pay the ref with something after all and it would definitely work best in the highlights where you just want that center so you give up your little payout to get that big one.

ok well that's just about everything lol I hope my ideas didn't bore anyone too much lol but I also hope no matter which way ffg takes this game everyone keeps having plenty of fun

or to bribe a ref it could be give up a payout or an upgrade card that you have in your hand like say if your a head on fans, and you get the cheer leaders right off the bat lol like half way through the game when you get the ref bribing ability you cold get rid of that thing thould would otherwise be useless. lol

ok now im done with all my thoughts to speak of.

I cant sleep cause im way too amped up for foul play tomorrow

those stadiums due seem wicked to play on

We didn't play with stadiums as we had two beginners and I didn't want to over-complicate things, but they seem pretty cool. My one issue is that they don't rotate every week, but remain all game. I will almost certainly house-rule that they are rotated every week so that the liabilities placed on certain teams aren't permanent. Its one thing to have a "No Tackle" stadium in your face for one week...but to have to deal with that every week is a bit much imo. I'm not sure how others feel.

I really wanted to play Nurgle, but again, with beginners, I didn't want to over- complicate the game with disease tokens. The Goblins and all their crazy shenanigans were enough as is...lol

Has anyone played with against Chaos Dwarfs yet? I have a general dislike for them in "normal" Blood Bowl, so maybe I'm biased, but they seem pretty strong and a team that really punishes bashing teams with the Foul abilities when downed. These are teams that already struggle so I worry about this a bit...

I still haven't been able to p;lay the new expansion yet... the truck was supposed deliver it to the store I ordered it from on Friday but it didn't come saying it would be there today and now thye are saying that it might be here tomorrow. if its not here tomorrow im just ordering it online, from this site directly. I mean I love to support my local community which is why I ordered it from them in the first place but I cant help but to feel a little sad due to the fact that the game has been out for half a week or so and I pre ordered it and its still not in my hands ... sigh but yes I do agree I think if the stadiums are like that then I would insist on changing out the stadiums weekly as well, just sayin it makes a great deal of sense due to the fact some people with certain teams will just be useless at the stadiums or take a chance at getting penalties or is it automatic penalty, man I wish I had the expansion pack already lol...

I mean yes id have to play it by the rules at least five times just to see how it plays out on average and stuff, but by no means would I make everyone playing like that with the stadiums not changing. but I am happy to hear they brought in disease tokens for the nurgles I cant wait to see what the strategy behind the team has to offer and how it effects the game play. so has anyone play with the ref yet? I read about how it walks from stadium to stadium handing out face up cheating tokens. how does it he work is it triggered or does he automatically get moved? and is it weekly move or like after each manager puts in one player a piece? oh and what kind of staff up grades are included with this one? im assuming it has a fouling coach or at least two of them. but I am curious of what all comes with it. oh and uhh one last question, how about those penalties? are they like super consequential? like if you get penalized your pretty much loosing the match up at that point? and is the penalties triggered by the whistles or is it just when someone disobeys the rule or rules of a stadium?

I have received my copy and will be testing the new rules next week with my playgroup.

I have early thoughts about what I've seen, bearing in mind the total lack of testing, though. They are the same as the ones I had originally about the expansion when they previewed the stadiums. All of these new rules turn the game into a randomness feast. I like randomness, I like dices, I like drawing cards, but I can see how these new mechanisms will generate huge plays coming from nowhere with no direct player skill implication, that will frequently ruin your attempts to strategize around your own plays. I have a problem with that, but more importantly I have some players in my playgroup who enjoy BBTM but already dislike the high luck factor in it (even before Foul Play) and these guys may turn out hating on these new rules. I have to take that into account.

I am going to test every rule, but I feel like nor stadiums, referee and penalty decks will stay very long in our games. I think they add nothing to the game (apart from randomness, which could be a reason to include these rules btw if all you're looking for is a chaotic session) and actually destroy the experience more than contribute to it. The biggest problem is that some players have the new penalty skill. What if you don't want to play with penalties then? Looks like either you are forced not to play with these teams, or you need the full randomizer set to your game. Meh.

I like the Goblins a lot. I really love the come into play effect and I really love their star players. The Chaos Dwarves look fine but are more of a regular team with no particular flavor. I would't mind drafting them, but it wouldn't make me jump off my seat directly. The Nurgle team has a very similar feel as the Vampires. I feel like this team can completely fall flat if you can't get your tokens out and use them to the best of their capabilities.

I haven't really checked at the team upgrades yet.

Penalties. I don't want to bash too much on this expansion, but removing payouts/rewards is probably the worst thing I can possibly think of introducing in a game. The game is fun because you can upgrade your team. Look, Rob struggles with his Vampires and managed to get a star player as a payout as he really needs to get hold of one of these Vampire star players to get his team's head above the water. To win the matchup he had to do whatever and got a penalty for it. Payout phase, he gets what he wants. But hey, the penalty removes it straight away. How FUN is this for Rob? Have you ever felt what it's like to end a round with no reward while everybody else is drafting upgrades and a billion star players?

I really don't like stadiums. I like the thematics but I hate adding restrictions of that kind to the matchups. It ends up nerfing a ton of teams and boosting teams that shouldn't have gotten away otherwise. Example. I play Wood Elves. Every round the two stadiums disabling Pass and Sprint skills are drawn. That's virtually two matchups I have to give away for trying to maximize my team's overall potential. I have 50% less choices in the game just for that. Same example, Vicky plays Chaos. Well, good for her, she can go in there with no restriction on her team. Cool. Oh sure, you can "cheat" and apply the skill despite the stadium's limitation. Now would you really take a minute to evaluate the risk of drawing one of these "remove payout" cards against the fact that thanks to the skill you "might" end up winning the matchup (and therefore potentially lose its reward anyway). Something does not compute. What about this Red Card? Does the game really need cards that powerful to remain interesting? So we remove your payouts, but we also remove your previous payouts? This is absolutely mindblowing to me, and will freeze many players capacity to make choices by fear of something horrible happening to them (read: lose the game on the spot). The worst is, I don't even think I'm exagerating.

All in all, still bearing in mind I haven't played the expansion, it seems like it will introduce chaos more than fun. If you are a player like me who likes to diversify his strategies rather than firing rockets at them, then it might end up being a disappointment. I love bashing at people and destroying people's strategies even if it implies a bit of luck, but this expansion seems to bring this luck factor to a far greater level than what I can actually enjoy. OK that you have to draw from a deck with different levels of penalties, but it feels to me like I would never put myself in a position where I need to draw from this deck after what I've seen was in it. I will test and revert on that as for whether my fears were confirmed or if the game plays out better than I thought it would.

Otherwise yeah, more teams is a good thing and that's almost all I would have expected from FFG for this new expansion. Sudden Death seemed more solid with regards to keeping the base game to its original level of balance/feel. It seems Foul Play will even out everything due to raw randomness and that's a shame, as the coaches' tactical choice don't have the same weight anymore as they can be blanked out completely due to the mechanisms of this expansion. We will see.

...

I agree that at this point some older teams and Vampires need buffing.

I also agree that so far this game seems to have poor balancing. Everything from the original Staff Upgrades to underpowered teams screams "playtest me better!"

The balancing issues or lack of playtesting is one thing. I personally don't think the game is so unbalanced between the teams due to the sheer luck factor in the game anyway, apart from two of them which clearly are at the bottom of the ladder, and potentially Nurgle as the third team if my concerns are confirmed. Aside from that any team can win so I'm not complaining too much about that.

What bothers me however is that some thoughts (analysis phase) have been given to remove payouts from players, to negate skills in matchups and to punish people heavily by taking a risk in the game. I don't understand how people could sit at this workshop and think how cool that would be to implement. I would have largely preferred a meteorite crashing on a stadium every round at random, downing all players at once instead of that **** referee giving you penalties which just take your roster and your upgrades, toss them in the air and wait them to land before throwing napalm on them.

This to me is nothing to do with playtesting per say, although one could argue that playtesters should probably have said: "man, the game is really tough on the coaches now, are you sure this penalty deck is not too punishing?".

I just want to hear from one person here when would be appropriate to defy the stadium regulations and get a penalty on purpose. Tell me ONE situation where this would be the optimal play to do. I don't want to hear "at the very last round for your last commited player in the Blood Bowl Tournament so that you can win the tourney and the game as well on the spot" because that's crap as a reason. Tell me instead when you would intentionally suffer a penalty during a normal game of BBTM and how you can possibly take the risk to gather these cards in a normal game of BBTM. Bearing in mind the destruction creep in this penalty deck.

Tell me also in what circunstances you would prefer to commit a player with tackling skill to a matchup with a stadium forbidding the tackling skill instead of a matchup without the restriction. Again "at the last round just to add his power to your team at that matchup" doesn't make it as a reason. I want to hear about real motivation for doing so during a game before you know you can win a matchup. Bar all marginal situations.

When I heard about the direction for this expansion I thought cool, they are going to introduce cards or abilities that alter other abilities or hidden cards that allow you to respond to abilities or skills. Maybe even introduce cards that allow a player to cheat in and execute a skill but at the risk of getting sent off or getting additional cheating tokens. Use that referee to indicate where such penalty is at greatest risk, maybe. You could introduce weather cards and upgrades that help your team to become resilient against weather condition, etc etc. I mean, it adds to the luck factor in the game, but you still keep your capacity to decide how to play your team without fear that it will backfire on you so much that you lose the game.

Having played 2 times with the expansion, I agree with almost everything Indalecio said. The randomness factor with the stadiums, ref, and penalties is too much and I dislike it. More and more I am considering just removing penalties and these added aspects from our games. I did not find the penalties to be fun.

I would disagree with Nurgle though. They are much stronger than Vampires from what I have seen. The Disease tokens as a mechanic are much more in the coach's control than the blood tokens, and thus they see more action and ultimately benefit the team more.

Based on only one play with my group, we love Foul Play, new mechanics and all. I still don't quite *like* the three new teams (give me Amazons and Underworld, now LOL), but we thought the Penalty and Stadiums mechanics really shook things up in a good way.

The Penalties are harsh, yes, but one guy in my group just became more aggressive in his plays (he played Chaos Dwarves BTW). The Stadiums were a total hit - immensely flavourful, and again, it just made us play differently in the end.

Only downer for us was the slight increase in playing time: we clocked two hours instead of the standard 1.5 hours. It'll come down no doubt, when we get more familiar with it.

The end result was quite exciting, in our inaugural session. Chaos Dwarves won resoundingly despite having a bunch of penalties, with 58 fans. Interestingly, my Humies placed second (45 fans - okay, so I did dodge a lot of penalties), third was Goblin (44!), Nurgle was fourth (43!), while Orcs were bottom & fifth (28 - his tackle rolls were awful BTW).

Will report in more, when we get more games in.

Foul Play's teams are all awesome in terms of gameplay. Each brings something different and interesting to the game. Some power levels might overshadow the teams that were already being overshadowed in the core set, but it gives the better teams more competition instead of adding more guys for them to beat up. That's a good thing. It'd be nice if they could give the previous weaker teams a boost too, but that's really hard to do without changing their deck (not within the capabilities of an expansion).

The debilitating Stadiums and Penalties are not for everyone. Neither is the referee. The point of an expansion is to provide many players with new options. Most of us can enjoy the three new cool teams and come away happy. However, there are also several new rules options for your playgroup to change up your experience. If you don't think these options will be fun, that's fine - you don't have to use them. If you enjoy them, awesome.

You can make changes/patches to cards from base game in an expansion. It's been done before, even by FFG, in Battlestar Galactica for instance.

We just had our first game with the expansion. We played a 5 players game with all three new teams, Wood Elves and Humans, and all of the additional rules as described in the rules book.

We all agreed that it was too much, a lot of things were going on everywhere, and that it took far too long to play the game, 4 hours I think, granted we were 5 and some of us really like to take our time... On the other hand, I think we all enjoyed the game despite the fact some players -including me- were a bit reluctant about the randomness. It turned out to be like I said previously, but I wanted to observe the new mechanisms even at the price of my capacity to strategize.

Before I go and explain what we thought about Foul Play, I need to say that we assumed that all the penalty cards saying "next time you would draw a <insert reward>, discard one of them" would apply in the next scoreboard phase, as opposed to affecting the current payouts. Penalties resolve once all payouts are stacked in piles before revealing them, so that's AFTER you draw the cards. If you think we did this wrongly please give a shout. It felt strange that some penalties would not apply straight away as you could intentionally decide not to go for whatever payout type because there's a penalty sitting there and waiting to remove it from you.

None of us went off with the penalties thingy, still we managed to draw 3/4 of the deck somehow. We only defied the stadium regulations a couple of times, one because of a misplay and one (me) because it would help me to win a matchup on the spot. Otherwise nobody dared applying skills in a stadium having the corresponding limitation. We liked the additonal payouts from the stadiums. It made us think more about where to commit players. The "2 strength or more" stadium should have been "3 or more" though. 2 or more is 95% of all players and some teams don't even have 1 power players, so this particular stadium felt a bit like a miss.

Because of the steeper rules, we were sort of forced to rationalize more and put our heads around the sequencing of things a lot more than what we normally in with this game, which added further to the time. The yellow card mentions about the replenish phase, which nobody except me knew about as there was no reason for me to even mention its name before. The resolution of the faceup cheating tokens, when to apply disease tokens, the referee mechanism etc. there are MANY more instances when you need to think about which phase you´re currently in and how it interacts with all of the upgrades and so on. Overall, we think it was a bit too much. The game needs to flow nicely.

Fouling as a skill is horrible and does a ton of grief, but I am biased because I absolutely hate discard strategies in any game. Still, I did not want this aspect in a game like BBTM where the cards you draw are already random and where you can force your opponent to play the wrong card at the wrong matchup by baiting him or faking your interest on rewards you are not intending to go for anyway. It feels like there were ways already to force your opponents' hand without having the need to hard-draw one card and force a discard. It led to tensions in our playgroup. Most of us like to keep a strong card for the last play and the Fouling skill nerfs this strategy by removing said card. So yeah, I feel a bit robbed by this skill, as including the new teams forces me to play with this mechanism.

The penalties that sticked around were really cool. The "no penalty" card was cool too, as it gave you a hope that you could get away with the penalty. Red card and yellow cards were really powerful as expected. The loss of fans really affected our total scores. The winner ended up with 45 or so, which is pretty low compared to our previous games sans the expansion.

We liked the referree more than I though we would, because it introduced a new element of strategy in the game, e.g. knowing when to commit players to a matchup in order to move him and therefore force players to get sent off or managers to get a penalty. The downside though, which kind of made the thing fall a tad flat tbh is that you need to commit players across more matchups to get a chance to get access to matchups where he stands, which is something not every team can afford. But when we could it was fun. I´m just still sceptical regarding the referree as it really interfered with my plans as a coach. I was either hoping that this **** ref would move away from my matchups, or that I wished he had been where I´m at to take away the whistles I had on my players.

I did not like the various restrictions in the game, following up on what I said earlier, so that I´m not going to expand on that any further. Stadiums, Fouling etc. This being said, I think it all comes down to your attitude towards the game. If you can adapt and accept the randomness factor then you can enjoy this. If you don't want anything to spoil your capacity to make choices then this is not for you. You see, I prefer CHOOSING to get a penalty for applying a forbidden skill at a stadium rather than suffering a random effect from the game or getting fooled by an opponent. I like the "you play cards, I play cards" aspect of the original BBTM game so to me moving on to a "I try to play cards, you try to play cards" is not an obvious move to make.

About the teams. I played Nurgle (and lost). I did not find the disease tokens being as double-edged as some people here said earlier, because I made sure that I was in control of the matchup and did not have to commit more players to it if these tokens sat in midfield. The team upgrades were really weak though. The one making your linemen stand up lost relevance very quickly as I aquired freebooters and got rid of said rotter linemen. The additional disease tokens from the upgrade can be nice but you are limited to 6 of them, and if you compare these upgrades to the ones your opponents get then you can feel a difference in game impact. Toying with one or two disease tokens was only situationally good. I found that the Beast of Nurgle was cool but hindered me more than helping me because of the Pestigors, also because I wanted to draft players with the passing skill as a way to remedy to the lack of... passing skill in my roster. All in all, I am not sure about this team. It was the weakest of the three by far for that particular game, but I have to say, also because the Goblins were present and sucked in all the disease tokens especially at tournaments, making them totally inefective since they have players ignoring player power upon tackling them. If the Goblins are not around then maybe it gets easier for the Nurgle team. I wouldn't go as far as saying they are weak and in pair with Vampires or Dwarves, but I haven't experienced a good sequence of play with them. No particular interaction or synergy, and an overall lack of firepower against the other teams.

The Goblins were really cool and nasty, but also very random. They are a huge chunk of the randomness effect in the new expansion.The bombardier player, the short fuse upgrade making you down all standing players if you roll a tackling sysmbol etc. They had a major impact on the game. Not sure yet if they are a top tier team, but I liked the potential. It felt however like they replaced Orcs and therefore made them obsolete somehow. Hoping that I´m wrong.

The Chaos Dwarves were impressive. I really liked the fact they could down a player, which would execute his down skill, for getting an additional tackling skill. Synergy-wise, they felt really strong, The best team of the three, at least most stable than the others, I like their players, they have insane star players, I like their upgrades. Really a team I would like to play with.

I think the new mechanisms put some teams ahead of the rest. I can plainly see Chaos being more competitive now as they can collect cheating collects in a far more effective way. I think top-mid tier teams will stil be able to compete, but I pity Dwarves and Vampires, No idea how to compete with that, unless you intend to surf over the wave of randomness and hope for a cheaty victory.

The goblins stormed our first try with them here. Foul is a really potent mechanism, and can be very harsh for a player to deal with (some teams are particularily vulnerable to this)...to the point it has our evil eye on it, but we'll have to play it again to see if it keeps doing the same.

And yeah, game lenght requires more discipline than before. The ref rule is optional though, so some circles may want to opt out to remove some added complexity/delays.

Agreed.

For our part we will need a couple of more games to be able to settle on which rules will be kept or not. Feels like something has to go. I wish it was Fouling, but unless I can photoshop away the symbol on the player cards and find a way to compensate for it, it looks like we are stuck with it as long as we want to play with the new teams :-/