We can draft and use star players irrespective of their team affiliation? So that an orc can play for a skaven team or a wood elf for a dwarf team? I realize this may be necessary since there aren't that many stars per team, but still, odd.

The youngest person is always the first manager? Why not just simply flip a coin or have another random method of choosing?

The victory goes to the third best manager if there is a double tie? And the fact that there is a possibility of a game having no winner if all managers double tie? I know the game is tongue in cheek, but shouldn't there have been an iron-clad tie breaker in place?

That we compete for fans instead of points?

That a game is an entire season and not just a game? I guess you could just simply consider these last two anything you want, but I guess I find it odd.

1) Seems OK to me, Star players are the mercenaries of the bloodbowl teams. Anyone who pays their fee, as long as they don't activly hate them.

2) So ignore the rules & roll a dice.

3) A good idea, when playing a tournament, I find the opposite "odd" a tie too close to call is still listed as a full win for one of the players. Personally i think the idea that eveyone can loose is better.

4) "Fans", "VPs" - "fans" is more thematic.

5) If they had designed BBTM as a single game. It would have to be two player. I prefer multiplayer, which makes an entire season more appropriate.

3. Due to good/back luck, it's possible by the end of week 3 or 4 to realize you're completely out of the running to win a game. This allows some *minor* possiblity of still being IN the running - instead of trying to win fans/upgrades yourself, you start trying to affect the totals of the top teams to try and manufacture a tie between them.

Likely? Nope. But better than being down so many fans that you know the next couple rounds of play are a waste of time for you - a mentality that can also determine who wins simply because someone with no chance will often play unpredictably (doing nothing but screwing over first, or playing so badly that second has no chance to catch first).

4. In context in the game, you're hoping to win the Spike! Manager of the Year - it's decided by Spike! readers who make their votes for their favorite manager... more fans = more votes.

If by 'points' you mean touchdowns and such, you have to keep in mind BBTM isn't about a game of bloodbowl. It's about a season. It's easier to think of it as watching the post-season highlights on ESPN.. where they start going through some of the best plays/hits/interceptions/etc of the season.

In sports... even losing teams can carry huge fan bases. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967 - but their home games still almost always sell out. A year after the Columbus Blue Jackets entered the league, my buddy and his girlfriend drove down to Ohio, stayed there for two nights and saw a Leafs vs. Blue Jacket game. He figured with gas, motel, meals and tickets, his Ohio weekend was STILL cheaper than what it would have cost him to get a couple scalped tickets to see the Leafs in Toronto. The point is, while *players* on a team want to win games, the management of a team really doesn't care - as long as the team is profitable (which normally means having rabidly loyal fans).

1) I also dislike having many Star Players with different race affiliation. They should have used the star player rules/races/names from the boardgame, where each team is allowed a select few stars. worst of all, in our games most coaches go for star players and by turn 3 many teams are composed of more players from a different race than their starting race. Ruins the thematic flow for me a bit.

1. Depends on what Blood Bowl "ruleset" you refer to. Earlier rulesets did allow for mixed race teams (dungeonbowl rules). And each star player in blood bowl had his own list of races he'd play for.. some were only their own race, some were only closely associated races, others had more variety to them.

Technically, this game is based on an older BB ruleset - dwarves have blockers in addition to longbeards.. in the current ruleset there are no dwarf longbeards (actually, there are no dwarf blockers, and longbeards have been renamed blockers)
If they wanted to make it more 'purist', I guess they could have added to each star player a list of teams they'd play for.. but that would complicate things and make it difficult to release expansions.

You could make house rules that only allow you to draw from a Freebooter/neutral deck or your own team deck of star players - or leave them all mixed into a single pile and force people to redraw until they get a freebooter or star player from their team. Of course, any sort of changes like that could affect the potency of various team/staff upgrades that add fans based on certain types or numbers of star players (the Reikland Reaver card is one that pops readily to mine.. so's the staff upgrade that gives you +5 (+4??) fans if you have a certain number of non-Freebooter starplayers at the end of the game.

But.. if we're going to list a bunch of things that are "odd" in Team Manager compared to Blood Bowl, why not a complete list...

a - Wood Elves can't have 3 wardancers.. burn that 3rd one, and play an 11 elf roster.
b - The 'tackle dice' should actually be 'block dice'
c - The 'tackler down" should be a skull not an X (but this might cause confusion because they used the skull to represent the cheat skill, so they need to come up with a different symbol for cheating and re-release a new set of cheat tokens)
d - wizards can't kill themselves in Blood Bowl, why is there a chance it happens in TM?
e - Frenzy shouldn't add Star Power to a tackle, it should let you make a second tackle if a 'target missed' is rolled. In fact, *most* of the named abilities don't work like the do in BB. Perhaps they all need to modified so they more closely resemble their BB counterparts.
f - The Passing skill. How do you pass the ball if it's in the other team's posession?

I could go on, but I think the sarcasm level of that list is high enough already.

Blood Bowl is a great game for two players. The depth of tactics, the need to be able to respond to changes on the pitch.. the tension that exists due to the turnover rules and the risk management aspect that turnovers add all combine to make it one of my favorite games.

Blood Bowl Team Manager is a great game. But it isn't deep.. it isn't about risk management - you can't really manage the luck risk in BBTM like you do in BB. I don't ever find it tense like a BB game can be. It's a lite game that I think does a wonderful job of conveying the feeling and theme of Blood Bowl while making it possible to play a 'season' with 4 players in as little time as it takes 2 players to finish a game of Blood Bowl.

I don't see how a slavish fidelity to Blood Bowl would improve Team Manager as a game. I, personally, would much rather have a game that works and is fun than one that was perfect thematically.

The Finn said:

Your suggestion to force a redraw from the Star Player deck was something I thought of too the first time I played. I like the thematic nature of Blood Bowl and keeping the teams separate in this way really supports theme.

To Titan's third point, I think the idea that everyone can be a loser fits thematically with Blood Bowl. The game is completely tongue-in-cheek, and there were often teams (Goblins) where winning was not the point. It was all about the experience of playing on the pitch, not the end result. This does not appeal to everyone, but I know for my personal play style it works just fine (I would love to see a Goblin team).