The new expansion looks to be more of the same good fun, but one question that I haven't seen answered in any of the previews (or even in the rulebook) is whether it has been designed to add more players (the ones actually playing the game, not the cards). Anyone know/heard anything/saw something I missed/etc.?

I think that if no mention of adding new players was done in the rulebook, then the max number of players remain unchanged

But it is no problem to play with more then 4 players. We often play with 5 or 6 players. In the most cases someone that ownes the game too brings his scorbaordmarkers, but it is also adequate to count the fans with pen and paper.

Do you just add a fifth card to the Highlights draw (ie five players, five highlights) or do you also increase the players hand size draw, seems teams might be spread more thinly if there are more highlights available.

NTLBagpuss said:

I don't think so. Remember that there will be an extra player with his own hand of cards.

NTLBagpuss said:

We only add a highlight for each Manager in game, no increased handsize.

My friends and I do it this exact way too.

Keep up with fan score either with someone else's counters as well or with pen and paper, draw a highlight for each player, and the rest of the rules stay the same, turns take a little longer, but having more coaches has its benefits.

Turns do take A LOT longer if you play with 5-6 players if you only increase the number of highlights and keep it to 5 rounds. With all the decision making in the game, we found that a BBTM session would last around three hours with 5 players involved.

I would even say that 5 players is the worst case scenario, because it's an additional player (obviously), whereas 6 players means you better split the players into two groups and play 4 rounds with group rotation. It's a lot of fun, and above all, you can keep the game under 2-2.5 hours (which means you can play again afterwards, yay!)

When you guys do 6 players, you don't have it go one more round so everyone goes first at least once?

DaBoss said:

This is how we do it:

Up to 5 players: 5 rounds, no group.

6 players: 5 rounds, 2 groups with final FFA for the Blood Bowl.

7-8 players: 4 rounds, 2 groups with final FFA for the Blood Bowl.

9 players: 4 rounds, 3 groups with final FFA for the Blood Bowl.

6 rounds is too long for our session, we´ve done it once with 4 players and the game took a lot longer. The 6th round didn't bring much to the experience, 5 is perceived as being the most balanced.

So the conclusion according to the above scheme is that a Team may get to be the start team for several rounds, whereas another Team may never get the chance to be the start Team in any of the rounds.