Yesterday, Games Workshop announced the upcoming supplement to DungeonBowl, Death Match. This was a bit of a surprise to me and though this is generally a hobby site, I had a few thoughts running through my head on this that I wanted to get down.

I’ve mentioned DungeonBowl a few times on this site. After my initial abysmal play I was ready to write it off, but come to find out, that game wasn’t enjoyable for multiple factors outside of the game. I’ve since played DungeonBowl many times and with my appreciation growing on each play. I’ve even gone so far as to paint DungeonBowl specific teams and not just re-use my BB teams. My College of Fire team is above, the College of Shadow and College of Metal are on their way.

Last year’s BB Almanac included multiplayer rules and I’ve also had the chance to take part in 4-player matches. Those sessions helped me enjoy DB even more. Flat out… from starting as a skeptic, I know _love_ DungeonBowl.

With that, I was pleasantly surprised by GW’s announcement. This is practically an auto-buy. Including College of Death and College of Life means a single sprue of: Shambling Undead, Necromantic Undead, Wood Elves, and Halflings. If you play Blitz Bowl, that’s four new teams in the box. If you already have these teams in BzB, this will expand those out to full BB squads.

Interestingly, of all these four included sprues there’s one model that doesn’t play for either the College of Death or College of Life…the werewolf. And per the copy, the expansion includes rules for using the werewolf as a wandering monster. That’s awesome. Creatures in the dungeon is something I was hoping to get with the new addition. However, I think I might sub out the werewolf and use the original Warhammer Quest poster boy….the Minotaur.

Regarding the other contents, this Death Match box looks fairly light. Four sprues, a fraction of the tiles (if the ad image is correct) and a thin Spike! Magazine instead of DungeonBowl’s hardcover book. However, the box looks to be about the same size as DungeonBowl’s. To be honest, if the contents are this light, I think I’d prefer a much smaller box. Blitz Bowl’s box would seem about right.

I’m also hoping this has a reduced cost compared to DungeonBowl, but I’m a little bit worried about the box size meaning a higher-than-need-to-be cost. Especially, if this is “The first expansion for DungeonBowl…” as advertised. I dunno that I want multiple boxes of this size for one game. That’s a personal storage issue though.

What I’m mainly hoping for in this set is that some of the tiles have endzones on the flip side. As I mentioned up-post, official multiplayer rules are out there, but they do requite more than one DB set as each team needs its own endzone. It would be a pleasant gift if this expansion assisted players with that instead of maintaining the current requirement of multiple base game copies or scratch made tiles.

My other thought on all of this is a slight concern for when GW rolls off this edition of the game. Gamers were able to use the contents of the classic 3rd edition box for over 20 years. We’re only about 2 years into the BB20 and we’re already at five, $50 (USD) hardback books and three large boxsets. This is a much larger outlay than any previous edition of the game. That itself is no biggie, but if BB starts following the frequent edition updates as the flagship GW games, this might mean re-buying more high priced hardbacks and boxes in the not-so-distant future.

All that to say, Blood Bowl is starting to feel as expansive as a GW flagship title. That could be good or bad. I’ll leave that to the reader.

Unlike the surprise Death Match, the 2022 Almanac was expected by this blogger. I skipped the Spike! Magazines this year to hold out for the Almanac. 2022 was a slow year for BB team releases with only the Norse and Amazons hitting the field. The 2022 Almanac is advertising eight new Star Players, but it’s probably going to need more than that to fill out a hardback.

My Hot Take in all of this is…The Death Match rules could have just been part of this 2022 Alamanc instead of in their own box much like last year’s Almanac included the multiplayer DB variant. A few tiles could have also been included shrink wrapped with the 2022 Almanac helping to pad it out to a $50 product.

But, on the upside, it looks like Ripper Bolgrot is finally looking for BB20 teams to join. Yay!