Recently, I’ve found myself in the position of teaching the king of all games, Blood Bowl, to new gamers. I thought this period was behind me and that I had moved on to Blitz Bowl and the occasional Blood Bowl tournament. Well, it turns out Blitz Bowl is an intriguing step onto the pitches of the Blood Bowl universe for new coaches. I have my full orc team for me to take to tourneys, but nothing to loan new players to learn the game with. What teams should I provide?

Since my Blitz Bowl teams are painted up for general use, I figure I’d just paint a second sprue of a few of those teams. Which teams though? Well, since my Blitz Bowl teams are on dungeon style bases and not green fields like my BB proper team, it made sense to me to give a nod to the original dungeon based sporting event…Dungeonbowl…and go Elves v Dwarfs (old school spelling)

Dwarves are a very reliable Tier 1 team, some would even say boring. I say, they’re a great team to learn the game of Blood Bowl with. The dwarfs don’t worry about risky tricks like passing so a new coach can focus on the fundamentals.

The current Elf Union team is the closest in aesthetic to the old DungeonBowl elves, so they were the elf flavor I expanded out. As a Tier 2 team with probably the best passing game in the…well, game… this team made sense as the best follow-up option for a new coach from Dwarves.

Blood Bowl Second Season Edition also comes with its own nod to the Second Edition of the game with an Astrogranite pitch on the underside of the traditional grassy field. The squares are clearly lighter than my models’ bases, which were originally designed to match the darker Blitz Bowl board, but this is still cool. Old school Elves v Dwarfs on an old school pitch. I’m pleased with myself how well this game together. It’s interesting because neither of these teams personally interest me, but are perfect squads for new-to-the-game players to try out, so it’s good to have these full teams available.

In a crazy turn of events, a new version of DungeonBowl was announced shortly after I finished these two teams. Elves and Dwarfs are still included, but this time they’re joined by Ogres and Skaven for the true mixed team experience out of the box. I’m not sure how often I’ll find myself playing DB, but it does come with a hardback rulebook and that has me wondering if there will be league rules for DB that i’m going to want to try out. At any rate, readers of this blog know that I have many Blitz Bowl teams painted up and two can be combined to make a full DB team, so I through Blitz Bowl I’ve fallen into having a lot of the DungeonBowl team options already painted up. So, you can probably bank on a DungeonBowl post from me in the future.