Blood Bowl is a miniatures board game created by Jervis Johnson for the British games company Games Workshop as a parody of American football. The game was first released in 1986 and has been re-released in new editions since. Blood Bowl is set in an alternate version of the Warhammer Fantasy setting, populated by traditional fantasy elements such as human warriors, goblins, dwarves, elves, orcs, and trolls, as well as elements unique to the setting such as the rat-like Skaven.
In late 2016, Games Workshop released a new version of the game – the first in 22 years. It featured a double sided board and new plastic miniatures.
In November 2020, Games Workshop released a new version of the game, titled Blood Bowl Second Season Edition, which included miniatures for two teams and referees, a board (pitch), templates and the rule book. The rule book was also available separately, both physically and digitally. Cyanide Studio confirmed that the next videogame adaptation, Blood Bowl 3, would use the new ruleset.
Gameplay
Blood Bowl is a two-player, turn-based board game that typically uses 32 mm miniatures to represent a contest between two teams on a playing field. A board containing a grid overlay represents the field. Using dice, cards, and counters, the players attempt to score higher than each other by entering the opponent's end zone with a player who possesses the ball.
The "Blood" in Blood Bowl is represented by the violent actions available to players. Game play is based on a hybrid of gridiron football and rugby. Players may attempt to injure or maim the opposition in order to make scoring easier by reducing the number of enemy players on the field.
The player races are drawn from the ranks of fantasy races and have characteristics that reflect the abilities of those races. Elves tend to be agile and good at scoring, while dwarfs and orcs are more suited to a grinding, physical style of play.
All teams offer a choice between player types with different statistics: related races (e.g. skeletons and zombies in undead teams, various lizardmen types), guests of allied races (e.g. trolls in orc and goblin teams), exotic or monstrous units (e.g. ghouls, wights and mummies in undead teams), and specialists of different roles (usually some combination of Blockers, Blitzers, Throwers, Catchers, Runners and Linemen). Teams can include any number of players of the most basic type (usually Linemen), while the stronger units are limited to 1, 2, 4 or 6 per team.
In league play, players gain additional skills and abilities based on their accumulation of experience points. Players face potential injury or even death on the field throughout their careers. Teams improve by the purchase of off-field staff such as cheerleaders, assistant coaches, and apothecaries. Disparity between team values is offset by the purchase of ad-hoc star players or mercenaries, as well as bribes and additional temporary support staff, such as wizards or a halfling cook.
Rules Teams consist of eleven to sixteen players, of which eleven are allowed on the pitch at any one time. Each player is represented by an appropriate miniature and has statistics and skills that dictate their effect on play. To avoid confusion, the human playing the game is always referred to as the "coach" and never the player. There are five player statistics as of the 2020 Season 2 update:
MA (Move Allowance) indicates how fast the player is. ST (Strength) indicates the player's basic fighting ability. AG (Agility) indicates how well the player handles the ball and evades opposing players. AV (Armour Value) indicates how difficult it is to injure the player. PA (Passing) indicates how well the player can throw the ball. This is the only stat which some players do not possess. In addition, players may have special skills that affect any number of circumstances in play. Some of the more commonly used skills are Block (for fighting), Dodge (for dodging out of an opponent's tackle zone), Sure Hands (for picking up the ball), Pass (for throwing the ball), and Catch (for catching the ball). These skills are not necessary to perform their corresponding actions, but will give the player an advantage.
In their turn, a coach may have each player take one of the following actions:
Move – Move the player through empty squares (opposing players may try to trip the moving player if they move close to them). Block – Fight an adjacent opposing player who is standing. In addition, the following four actions may be taken by one player per team turn: Blitz – Move and then Block an adjacent opposing player who is standing (or Block and then Move). Foul – Move and then foul an adjacent opposing player who is prone (or just foul an adjacent player who is prone). Pass – Move and then throw the ball (or just throw the ball). In certain circumstances, players may instead throw their own teammates with this action, who may or may not be carrying the ball – for instance an Ogre might throw a Goblin teammate. Hand-Off – Move and then give the ball to an adjacent player (or just give the ball to an adjacent player). Some skills also allow for special player actions.
Teams, and in a few cases players, have a limited stock of "re-rolls" which can be used to re-take failed rolls (not more than once per turn in the original rule-set of the game).
Whenever a player action fails (except throw teammate (unless also carrying the ball)), a "turnover" occurs: the team turn ends immediately, and the opposing team begins theirs. This turnover rule is arguably the defining feature of Blood Bowl. It sustains tension throughout the turn, rewards effective planning by coaches who seek to prioritise actions which are the most vital to improving their position, and can result in dramatic moments from unexpected outcomes. Further, a turnover automatically occurs after 4 minutes of play, to encourage fast-paced play.
Just as Blood Bowl has rules to encompass fouls and other forms of cheating by players, so too do the rules involve in-game consequences for actions by players that in most games would be considered either neutral book-keeping or downright cheating. For instance, players are responsible for policing each other's accounting for game turns; failing to move the turn marker at the start of one's turn is an "illegal procedure" which costs one of the offending team's valuable re-roll counters. Along the same lines, in some editions coaches are welcome to attempt to set up with more than 11 players on the pitch, and it is down to the other coach to spot this behaviour. Other rules are strictly off-limits.
Teams Each team represents one race (or closely linked group of races) based on those present in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, though Blood Bowl has a more extensive roster of races including a number that were only briefly, or never, supported in Warhammer.
The game box supplies the coaches with players enough to field human and orc teams, which are also the teams recommended to newcomers for ease of learning. Teams may also contain individuals who are not part of the group of players used on the pitch, e.g. cheerleaders.
Each race plays differently, thanks to the different skills and characteristics of the players on offer. For instance, Dwarves, Orcs, Chaos and Undead teams all tend towards a blocking-heavy style of play, grinding down the opposing team as far as possible. Elves, by contrast, tend to have high Agility and plentiful movement, passing and dodging skills, so are more suited to avoiding contact while scoring through running and passing plays. Some teams pose challenges for experienced coaches because of inbuilt imbalances. For instance the Lizardmen team has a mixture of fast-moving Skinks and slow, heavy Sauruses, the challenge for the player being to make good use of these two complementary player types; the Halfling team is mainly composed of Halflings, who on the face of things are entirely incompetent thanks to being weak, slow, and unskilled, but can nonetheless be played effectively
The different races progress at different rates, with some having peaks at certain experience levels.
The most recent, official edition of the game, published in November 2025 has rules for playing the following teams:
Official Rule Book Amazon Black Orc Bretonnian Chaos Chosen Chaos Dwarf Chaos Renegade Dark Elf Dwarf Elven Union Goblin Gnome Halfling High Elf Human Imperial Nobility Khorne Lizardman Necromantic Horror Norse Nurgle Ogre Old World Alliance Orc Shambling Undead Skaven Snotling Tomb Kings Underworld Denizens Vampire Wood Elf
Background The Blood Bowl universe has its own fictional background story which establishes the tone and spirit of the game. Additional background exists to describe the demeanour and character of the Blood Bowl players with frequent reference to rule breaking and excessive violence in a lighthearted manner. The over-the-top nature of the game is reflected through the game's mechanics, including the use of stylised secret weapons ranging from chainsaws to spiked steamrollers, the ability for large teammates to throw small teammates down field (even while they possess the ball), as well as in-game effects like fans throwing rocks and injuring players prior to kickoff.
Blood Bowl includes numerous tongue in cheek references to real life products and companies. The deity overseeing Blood Bowl is Nuffle – a pun on the pronunciation of NFL. The game spoofs at least four real-world trademarks, including McDonald's (McMurty's), Budweiser (Bloodweiser), Adidas (Orcidas), and Gatorade (Kroxorade). Many team names in the game's background are spoofs as well such as the Orcland Raiders (Oakland Raiders) and the Darkside Cowboys (Dallas Cowboys). Famous sporting personalities are parodied as well, with the most famous (and oldest) coach in Blood Bowls background being Tomolandry the Undying (Tom Landry), and one of the most recently added stars being the Ogre thrower, Brick Far'th (Brett Favre).
With the advent of the 3rd edition, Blood Bowl moved closer to the traditional Warhammer Fantasy Battle world by changing the miniatures to look more similar to their Warhammer Fantasy Battle counterparts. Jervis Johnson, designer of the game, believed this was not the best direction for the game, and has since stated that the Blood Bowl world is similar to, but definitely not the same as, the Warhammer world. Recent changes to the rules reflect this, and newer miniatures for the game look more sporty in nature.
History Blood Bowl has evolved through a series of rules revisions, boxed set releases, and electronic media.
First Edition Released in 1986, the first edition of Blood Bowl was a simple game that used many of the elements of Games Workshop's existing tabletop games. Players in the first edition boxed set were represented by small pieces of cardboard illustrated with their likeness. Citadel Miniatures did release metal miniatures to represent players for 1st edition.
The pitch of this edition consists of six interlocking cardboard sections (end zones and centre, split in halves) with squares marked by white lines.
In 1982, TSR published a game called Monsters of the Midway which was very similar in concept to Blood Bowl but significantly different in-game play. Discussions with Jervis Johnson at the Chaos Cup tournament in 2006 revealed that he had never seen Monsters of the Midway until after Blood Bowl was published and that the concept of a fantasy football board game was simply a concept whose time had come in the 1980s.
Second Edition The second edition of Blood Bowl, released in 1988, began to move Blood Bowl away from the battlefield mechanics of other Games Workshop systems and toward more brutal sports-oriented play. The game included plastic 28 mm miniatures of Orcs and Humans, with another set of metal miniatures available from Citadel Miniatures to represent most (but not all) of the other races.