As I said before Games Workshop at the time were just beginning their move to being the minatures focussed, eternally self-promoting machine they are today. It would take another 2-3 years before they resembled the GW you see on the high street today, but this was where it began. Around this time, with Warhammer Battle 3rd edition launched and WH40K out, they launched 2 big box set wargame/boardgame hybrids. One was Dark Future, GW’s take on Steve Jackson Games’ Car Wars, which was something of a flop. And the other was the 2nd edition of Blood Bowl, which is probably my favourite GW product of all time.
Blood Bowl is GW’s fantasy American Football game. The game came with 32 minatures (a team of Orcs and a team of Humans) and the distinctive polystyrene “AstroGranite” pitch. The rules were short, easy to pick up and it was fun, balanced game. There were rules for other races, that GW duly brought out minatures for. And eventually there were a couple of rule supplement books (one introduced the concept of “Star Players” the other focussed on rules for running a league/seasons) and the add-on, Dungeonball.
The game and minatures had a really nice unified aesthetic that set it apart from the other GW games. While ostensibly set in the same world as Warhammer Fantasy, the tongue in cheek background material and the comic-book style art of Pete Knifton made it unique in my eyes. The minatures resembled like American footballers, albeit shot through the prism of Rollerball and Speedball (the obvious influences) and then adorned with crazy spikes. Later editions of the game made the teams look more like ordinary Warhammer minatures stripped of weapons, completely missing the charm of this edition.
Outside of Talisman, which I still play on occasion, this would be the one GW game I’d like to play again. At some point I should get it out my parents loft space, dust it down and play a game.