Injuring an opponent, say, or completing a risky pass. There are always three cards next to the board that will get you from zero to three bonus points for completing particular actions. Goals are not the only source of points in Blitz Bowl, however.

With experience, you’ll learn to hang back, cobble together a defensive line, and make more strategic plays. At first, this can lead to a lot of end-to-end dashes, especially when a lot of players are off injured or celebrating. But there’s no pitch reset: a new ball pops up in the middle and play continues even though you’re a player or more down. It takes a special reserve action to get them back on, the same as players who are injured in a tackle. Players who manage to score a goal by carrying the ball into the opposing end zone win their team four points and are taken off the pitch in the celebrations. You also need to be careful with your tackles because if you fail, you’re open to a one-action tackle in return. You need to spread your players out among the pitch scenery to try and stop runs into your end zone, which scores points. These two aspects are critical to the strategy and action economy of the game. It also means that it often takes all three of your actions in a turn to attack an enemy: a run to cover the group, a mark to move adjacent and finally the block action to undertake the attack.

If you read that carefully, you’ll realize that this means running players can’t move into squares next to opposing team members. Marked figures can only attack an opposing team member, which requires a dice roll, or step a single square away. Unmarked figures are free to run, throw the ball or make a short two-square movement to mark an opponent. The actions available to you depend on whether the figure is “marked” - that is, has an opposing model in an adjacent square - or not. On your turn, you can take three actions, split between your players as you see fit, as long as no one model takes the same action twice. All the cards are decent quality and decorated either with solid art or photos of painted miniatures. You can buy extra teams of six for some factions, for others you’ll have to buy the full twelve of a Blood Bowl team and choose the six you want to use. This extends way beyond the two included across the whole Games Workshop universe, running from Orcs to Ogres.

Rounding out the contents is a deck of cards, some custom dice, a range ruler and a stat card for each team you can field in the game.

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