Pointless College Stories III, Sanguine Saucers
I was having trouble figuring out how to kick off this year’s Pointless College Posts. I had a list of topics, but I seemed to have misplaced it. Luckily, I my yearning for this to be released gave me an easy out.
By the time I hit State College, my gaming playing preferences were more toward the card, computer and role-playing variety. Sure I would play the occasional board game, but those were your run-of-the-mill one off types. When I started hanging out in Room 51, the Dread Lord was just ramping up his table top gaming addiction.
At that stage, Games Workshop had most of the market there and being a British based company with a macabre sensibility, it was really attractive to our Bob. I had some exposure to their Warhammer 40k stuff through a friend in New Jersey, but I hadn’t been bitten by the bug simply since it seemed geared towards strategy guys who also wanted to paint their playing pieces. Not being an artist by any stretch, I kept it at arm’s length.
However, Bob had just bought some miniatures for a game called Blood Bowl. I believe it was on its second generation and the concept was fantasy football. Not in the way that it is today mind you, but orcs, elves and dwarves, etc. duking it out on the gridiron. Each type of team had their strengths and weaknesses as well as a way to develop players over time as a result of what they did in a game.
I have to admit, mixing an RPG element with a board game had a certain appeal. On top of which the mechanics for the game were simple enough to allow for creative playmaking. So I was intrigued, but not completely sold.
What starting the downward spiral was when the local comic shop had opened up an area to sign up and play in a league. It had a pretty innocuous start with a few teams here and there, but it soon grew into more than a dozen people… many fielding several different teams. From what I was told later, it turned out to be one of the larger leagues in the country.
Anyway, It would not be uncommon for me to play three or four (or more) games in a week either after classes or over the weekend. With the range of coaches and teams the games always remained fresh. My main team was a Dark Elf team (kind of a cross between passing and defense) and later I started playing a Chaos team (a bruiser type team which had access to interesting mutations).
Over time it was cool to see how some of my players would develop and change the strategy of my play. I will confess that I got pretty attached to one or two of them. It made it all the more sad when they were inevitably crippled or killed on the pitch.
The league was strong for about one to two years. After that, the same crowd started shifting over to Necromunda, another Games Workshop game where it was small squad tactics in a subterranean wasteland… and then to Mordheim (think Necromunda in a fantasy setting). While fun, it never had the same impact on me that the Blood Bowl league had.
After moving, I tried a few times to find a league near me. The ones I found weren’t really healthy enough to warrant the commute or the sustained effort. Then I found FUMBBL, an online Blood Bowl league. It is a pretty snazzy system but I could not quite break into it.
Now with this new release coming up, a lot of my old hankerings are starting to resurface. I am both eager and horrified at the fact that I may end up buying this thing for several platforms. At least I won’t be wanting for a game when the mood strikes me.
Depending on time, I may dig out my minis and take a few snaps of them. Hell, I may even have one of my old rosters tucked away in the files somewhere.
By the time I hit State College, my gaming playing preferences were more toward the card, computer and role-playing variety. Sure I would play the occasional board game, but those were your run-of-the-mill one off types. When I started hanging out in Room 51, the Dread Lord was just ramping up his table top gaming addiction.
At that stage, Games Workshop had most of the market there and being a British based company with a macabre sensibility, it was really attractive to our Bob. I had some exposure to their Warhammer 40k stuff through a friend in New Jersey, but I hadn’t been bitten by the bug simply since it seemed geared towards strategy guys who also wanted to paint their playing pieces. Not being an artist by any stretch, I kept it at arm’s length.
However, Bob had just bought some miniatures for a game called Blood Bowl. I believe it was on its second generation and the concept was fantasy football. Not in the way that it is today mind you, but orcs, elves and dwarves, etc. duking it out on the gridiron. Each type of team had their strengths and weaknesses as well as a way to develop players over time as a result of what they did in a game.
I have to admit, mixing an RPG element with a board game had a certain appeal. On top of which the mechanics for the game were simple enough to allow for creative playmaking. So I was intrigued, but not completely sold.
What starting the downward spiral was when the local comic shop had opened up an area to sign up and play in a league. It had a pretty innocuous start with a few teams here and there, but it soon grew into more than a dozen people… many fielding several different teams. From what I was told later, it turned out to be one of the larger leagues in the country.
Anyway, It would not be uncommon for me to play three or four (or more) games in a week either after classes or over the weekend. With the range of coaches and teams the games always remained fresh. My main team was a Dark Elf team (kind of a cross between passing and defense) and later I started playing a Chaos team (a bruiser type team which had access to interesting mutations).
Over time it was cool to see how some of my players would develop and change the strategy of my play. I will confess that I got pretty attached to one or two of them. It made it all the more sad when they were inevitably crippled or killed on the pitch.
The league was strong for about one to two years. After that, the same crowd started shifting over to Necromunda, another Games Workshop game where it was small squad tactics in a subterranean wasteland… and then to Mordheim (think Necromunda in a fantasy setting). While fun, it never had the same impact on me that the Blood Bowl league had.
After moving, I tried a few times to find a league near me. The ones I found weren’t really healthy enough to warrant the commute or the sustained effort. Then I found FUMBBL, an online Blood Bowl league. It is a pretty snazzy system but I could not quite break into it.
Now with this new release coming up, a lot of my old hankerings are starting to resurface. I am both eager and horrified at the fact that I may end up buying this thing for several platforms. At least I won’t be wanting for a game when the mood strikes me.
Depending on time, I may dig out my minis and take a few snaps of them. Hell, I may even have one of my old rosters tucked away in the files somewhere.