[review] Guildball - Kickoff!

Guildball's new boxed game, Kickoff!, is both an excellent introduction to the game of Guildball, and also a wonderful self contained game.

The contents of the box are of a high quality, featuring two full teams of single coloured, one piece, plastic miniatures, die cut, thick, card components, mini rulebooks, and a playmat, and of course dice.

Lets start with the minis. They come sat in a vacuum formed holder in their own box. The Brewers team, are in orange, and the Masons in blue. Both teams consist of their season 1 roster, including a team captain, and a mascot. This means there are 12 miniatures in total. The single piece plastics are well made, and perhaps or a better quality than those made by Privateer Press currently. This bodes well given that Guildball is shifting over to this type of plastic in for all future releases. Something that they are also using for their upcoming release, the board game of Dark Souls.

Each miniature of course comes with their associated card that details their stats, abilities and playbook. These have been updated for season 3, with some teams and characters being re-balanced, with an overall improvement in the layout of the cards.

The thick card components are great too. They have a nice non-slip finish, and there are many. Again there are plenty of coloured counters for influence for each of the teams, and coloured tokens for abilities the characters are able to activate. Then there are counters for status effects, like poison, bleed, and knockdown. A useful set of templates, are the measuring templates. There are a good number of these, and they measure a range of distances. Both these and the scatter templates have been printed so there are enough for both players.

The rulebooks included is the full rulebook in a compact form, which is also available for free online. Perhaps it could be produced to a better standard like the mini rulebooks the Privateer Press provides in their boxed games, but still it is a good thing to have. The other books included are overviews on how to use the teams included in the box, and how to expand upon them in future, and a quickstart guide, that goes through a full first turn of the game, demonstrating how everything works.

Finally there is a 3 foot square play mat, that is double sided. The one side is a generic green pitch, which the other side is printed with a thematic field with goal markers for Brewers and Masons. This pitch is marked for 3v3 starter games and of course for larger games.

What was a surprise to me was the quality of this playmat. Rather than just some printed poster, what we get in the box is in fact a fold up card mat. The mat is in fact in two pieces, with when folded out and lain together forms the 3 foot square. Again the finish is tactile and non-slip. To go with the mat there are number of card tokens for terrain.

Overall I was really impressed with the contents of the boxed game, given that it is a great introduction to game, and for the price point, is a great self contained game that is not going to break the bank are require further investment, unlike some of the competitors out there.

[battle report] Guildball Intro Game - Morticians v Alchemists

So my mate Alex (who I met through the Midnight Express boards ) was keen to try out Guildball. Who am I to say no.

What you see here is the basic intro game of a 3v3 match. Also using my graveyard terrain - because graveball is a thing!

It was a great little teaching game, showcased all the rules, and it could easily have gone either way. Alex and the Alchemists were throwing out lots of status effects, that were really grinding down the health levels. But I was able to pull of a KO on Mercury, netting 2VP and some board control, leading to Obulus pulling a crafty Puppet Master goal, by getting the opponent to pass to him, and opening up a shot on goal (what a bastard!).

Guild Ball - Post Starter Match Thoughts.

Cool game of Guild Ball with a work colleague and his Butchers team vs my Alchemists. Learning a lot more about the Alchemists, and wow can they dish out a lot of status effects that can grind away models (both in terms of damage, reducing movement, getting past armour, and sucking up momentum). Ultimately lost but a good learning game. Finding out that a) Ox when locked down by abilities is pretty much stuck out of the game and b) Double teaming those attacks to prevent those 2 inch dodges, and c) Midas getting in quick and duplicating Dirty Knives is awesome and d) gotta split those Butchers up so that OX can't help them out with his aura. Most interesting was stacking movement debuffs from two different plays (that were different names and so can stack) that led to Ox being locked down unable to move.

What?! No Miniatures in a while?!

Here we go.

Guild Ball Mortician team

Alchemists

Garden of Morr terrain, for use in lots of games.

Gravestones for use in Guild Ball and other games.

NSFW - The Kingdom Death Wet Nurse .... after the jump break

Gaming Reunion

So this weekend is a bit of a overdue catch up with sometime Darker Days guest host, James. So since he has been visiting for a few days we've got some gaming planned.

First up James gifted me with a wicked Kingdom Death figure (given we are both now very close to getting our Kickstarter pledges). The figure is the Storm Knight, and should be pretty awesome to paint.

Next up we got in a game of Hybrid, playing one of the missions from the original box. A clear win for me, but fun none the less as new figures were tried out for the mission.

Finally tomorrow morning we have planned a game of Guild Ball, using the teams I finished painting.

Guild Ball - Pitch Control

So I have a few templates to show off that I plan to use for Guild Ball.

First up are the Guild Ball specific tokens by www.counterattackbases.co.uk . I picked up the complete set, which consists of the two scatter templates, the initiative token, influence tokens, and condition tokens. The colour choice being a sort of smokey brown. I also grabbed a second set of influence tokens in smokey grey. That way I have tokens for both of my teams.

Now the other tokens I have are what I used for Warmachine and Hordes. The red tokens are from www.templatesandwidgets.com , and I have a 1 inch movement widget, a 3 inch aoe widget (useful for aoes that hit target models and you need to work out who else is hit), and 2 50 mm wreck tokens which will work as goal tokens for the time being until I make some guild specific goal tokens. The 3 inch generic aoe template rings are by www.modeldisplayproducts.co.uk , which will be useful for most aoes. Mix in a few Warmachine and Hordes tokens for anything really specific (I can see blanck tokens with space to write stat modifiers on being useful).

Well there you go. This week I will finally start painting.

Guild Ball Begins

So I picked up some new toys.....

Already put them together. So expect perhaps in a week or so the first WIP shots.

[review] "I'm Gonna Blatter You!" - Guild Ball Season 1

So I pretty much hate football. As in soccer. No let's be more fair. I hate a lot of the culture around it.

But Guild Ball is much more fun.

Now previously I had blogged about the demo game I had at my flgs in Sheffield, The Outpost. But this time I am going to delve into the rules some more and the rulebook itself.

Let's start with the obvious. The Guild Ball rulebook is free to download, and is full colour. In fact there is a lot that is free to download, such as quick start rules, print outs of the character cards, and print outs of templates, and even paper standees so you try the game out.

Next up the book itself. I have fortunately had a look at the hard copy of the book, and it is high quality, full colour, and comes in a sleeve. The book is slightly different in that it is a landscape orientation, much like the book for Battlefleet Gothic. This has some advantages in that it takes up a better amount of space on the gaming table, and is already a useful format for tablets.

Now the art. The art is lush, evocative, and has a cartoonish feel to it. Doug Telford has an excellent resume, having work on games like Kill Zone, and Heavenly Sword. Marc Molnar has worked on the Star Wars RPG and 40K RPG. All the art, character sketches and design and layout of the book really do well at depicting this new world.

Now about the world. It's a fantasy setting, but, unlike many other settings in the war gaming genre, we only have humans (well other than the team mascots). Guild Ball is a sport played in all the of the states that exist on the shared continent, and of course is controlled and managed by the various competing trade Guilds. Magic and alchemy exist in a fashion, but again, are not as explosive or significant in the game compared to say in other fantasy settings. As time passed, and states grew, and in turn so did the Guilds, the states formed a joint collective, The Empire of the Free Cities.The peace of the Empire was shattered by the Century Wars, and this caused havoc and strife, and of course ground down city states and Guilds. And it was the Guilds, who were independent and border less, who brought about peace. The Guild, seeing the power they could wield to bring about peace, sought to cement it, and so saw a institution of mass entertainment as a means to bind together the different peoples of the new empire.  This would be Guild Ball. Based upon the old sport that was played on festival days, this transnational sport would give the people something to focus on, and bring together fans from different communities. But Guild Ball would have another role. A means by which to settle disputes within the Guilds.

So what Guilds do we have?



Butchers. Fishermen. Alchemists. Masons. Morticians. Brewers. Engineers. The Union.

For each of these Guilds there are 6 characters to use in your team, and of those 1 is the team captain (and so has to be used in games), and there is a further character, the team mascot, which has to be used in the quick and regular game sizes. In a introductory game, each team consists of 3 models. In a quick game and regular game, you have 5 characters, and the team mascot. So currently that means for the larger sized games you have options by deciding which team member out of the full roster to leave out. Future releases will undoubtedly introduce new captains, players, and new mascots.

The rules I have explained a bit in the previous blog post, and the full rules expand upon them a little, detailing the issues with passing a ball, scoring, and the use of Momentum to enable team plays (so where the ball is passed and a model runs onto the ball, or snaps off a shot on goal). The rules for all characters are in the book, and each character is defined by a stat line, plays (special skills essentially) and their play book (which is a list that depending on successes gives you access to different effects when you succeed on an attack).

Having read through all the rules, it is clear how this is an incredibly well designed rules system, using concise dice rolls and  dice pools, and minimal modifiers, to create a deep, tactical game. It is clear the game is design to promote an aggressive play style, board control, synergies between models and game effects, and a flow of play that means a player is never left waiting to act.

Will I be getting this game. Oh hell yes. About 20 GBP for a starter set of 3 models, and that is enough to get gaming on a 2 foot square gaming space. I have some ideas in mind already. The setting of Guild Ball, and the rules, suggest the use of cluttered pitches. That means games taking place on farms, even with groves of trees in the play space, or in the streets, with players kicking the ball about the narrow streets, and over carriages, or hell, why not having to jump over canals. Some pitches could be on an icy tundra, and so players and the ball skid over patches of ice. Or perhaps the game is taking place in a prison, and there are sharp hooks to be avoided.

So watch this space for some future match reports for Guild Ball.

Guild Ball at the Outpost

Guten tag.... oh hold on, I moved back to the UK.

Yes, the last few months have been quiet on the blog as gaming stuff got packed up, painting ground to a halt, and reading gaming books even became a bit of a chore. But now I am back in the UK, in the city of steel - Sheffield!

Now a new city means trekking about finding the local gaming stores. Sheffield has a few, and of course in the UK, a compulsory GW. But, perhaps the best gaming store I have seen in a while for wargaming, is The Outpost.

The Outpost stocks a lot of popular games, and provides gaming space (which is also being increased in size in the future). And of course, the shop is run by some ex-GW staff, which explains a lot. So expect me playing there a lot in future, and some more batreps. Also the shop is home to one of the best Warmahordes tournament teams.

However, this morning I tried out a new game, that pulled in a total pledge that hit over 300% of their target. That game is Guildball.

Guild Ball is a 28mm fantasy sports game, in the same vein as Bloodbowl, and the more recent Dreadball. But Guild Ball stands out where Dreadball comes across as just a scifi Bloodbowl on a hexgrid.

Guild Ball takes the concept of Medieval mob football, and adds some fantasy elements (but not too much), and, shock horror, uses a game system the required no grid for movement and scoring.

Clearly Guild Ball takes popular elements from a number of wargames. Attacks and skills are resolved using dice pools against a target number. Resolving actions and attacks rely on typical a single roll. There is no I roll to hit, you roll to dodge, I roll to wound.... ad nauseam. Guild Ball also makes use of resource pools, sort of like focus points or fury points in Warmahordes, control zones about models, and alternating activations (for me this feels like a nice throw back to Confrontation).

A turn begins with each model generating Influence, which is pooled together for a team and then allocated to each team member. Models can be allocated a maximum amount, which is often more than they generate. These points are used in a turn for a model to do a number of things, but primarily they are spent to allow a model to charge, shoot, or perform extra attacks, or to activate abilities.

You may be thinking, how does a model control the ball in the game. Quite simply, a ball, that is not being controlled by a model, can be "snapped" to a model, as it passes by the ball counter within 1 inch (oh to note, you can pre-measure everything!). The way a model's activation progresses, it means it is possible to charge and attack, and then if you have movement left, continue on, have the ball snap to you, and then carry on, and then pass the ball.

But that is not all. Attacks are not as simple as they are in Warmachine. A model has a "playbook", and the number of successes on the attack pool unlocks a certain amount of types of actions. This can be dealing more damage, or it can be tackling in order to steal the ball, or knocking down the enemy model, or pushing the enemy model, getting to make a free move, or generating a free special action (rather than spending the influence for the same action).

Perhaps the most important element of the game system is the generation of Momentum. Momentum opens up new options, like counter attacks, ball passing actions (so running on once passing or receiving the ball, or increasing a model's defence i.e. the target number of attack pools). But most importantly, Momentum is spent to allow a model to make a shot on goal. This means the system is setup to promote aggressive play, and ball passing for the more defensive teams.

Add on modifiers to dice pools due to control zones of models (so ganging up on a defender) or making a shot or pass through enemy zones, pretty much completes the core concepts of the game.

What I got to play in the store for the demo game was a quick 3-a-side match, where I used the Fishermen guild, vs Myk, who used the Butchers Guild. The gameplay, once you get used to it, is rather fast and flowing, with a lot of tactical options. The best thing is that the game is that the 3-a-side quick game fits on a 2 foot square play space, while larger, typical games (involving 4, or 5-a-side) use only a 3 foot square space. That is awesome, and reflects a sort of growing trend of skirmish games that they can be played on a smaller surface, and makes it a far more beer and pretzels game.

I can definitely say I will be picking up two teams, more than likely the Alchemists and the Morticians (yeah yeah, Chris, you bloody goth!).

Oh and the rules are free to download, and there is a Vassal module ready to use! Plus excellent figures to paint.

Thanks to the guys at The Outpost for a great demo day.