Starting Blood Bowl in 2026: Returning After 20 Years Away

There are some games that never really leave you.

The miniatures may end up boxed away in a loft. New editions may come and go. Entire gaming groups may move on to other systems. Yet every now and then something happens that reminds you why you enjoyed a game in the first place.

For me, that game is Blood Bowl.

At the time of writing, I have not actually returned to Blood Bowl. My first game is still later this month. The team has been ordered, the enthusiasm is there and I have started looking at the current rules, but for now I find myself standing on the edge of a hobby journey that I haven't undertaken for almost twenty years.

If you are new to Jon Grant Miniatures, Start Here →

The Early Years

My first experience with Blood Bowl came in 1994. I had been in the hobby for four years and I was heavily invested in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, where I collected and played Undead. Unsurprisingly, my first Blood Bowl team was the Champions of Death, a collection of skeletons, zombies, mummies and wights.

Looking back, it was a great time to discover the game. My friends collected a variety of teams including Skaven, Dwarves, Orcs and Humans. Someone even had a polystyrene astrogranite pitch! We played often and rivalries quickly developed. There was one team, however, that I absolutely hated playing against. The Skaven.

As an Undead coach I wanted to control space, beat-up opposing players and slowly grind my way up the pitch. The Skaven were never interested in that. Their Gutter Runners would simply run around my players, score a touchdown and then do it again a few turns later.

My Necromantic Blood Bowl Team

Looking back, it was probably my first lesson that Blood Bowl is not won by blocking alone but I did enjoy crumping stuff.

When Blood Bowl Faded Away

Like many of Games Workshop's Specialist Games, Blood Bowl gradually faded from my gaming table as the 1990s came to an end as my friends found other games to play. Whilst I collect and paint the miniatures I like, having opponents to play has always played a huge part in the games I play.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000 increasingly dominated my gaming time, while Blood Bowl became one of those games that sat patiently on the shelf waiting for its next opportunity.

Eventually I went to university, and gaming became less of a priority for a while. Blood Bowl faded into the background for several years.

The Living Rulebook Era

In the mid to late 2000s, I was introduced to Blood bowl again during the Living Rulebook era. This marked the second part of my Blood Bowl journey and was probably the period when I invested the most time into the game.

I began by building a necromantic team, returning to something similar to my old Champions of Death. Around the same time, I also built a Tomb Kings team. Like many hobby projects from that era, it was assembled from a mixture of sources. Games Workshop Skeleton Warriors provided the core of the roster, while the Mummies and Throw-Ras came from various white-metal miniatures produced by independent companies that I discovered online. 

My Tomb Kings of Khemri Team

It was a very different hobby environment from today. Blood Bowl teams often felt unique because they were built from whatever suitable miniatures you could find rather than from a dedicated plastic kit.

During this period, a group of us would meet up regularly in a local pub and we played a league. In order to be competitive I discovered what would become my favourite Blood Bowl team. The Elf Union Team, the Elfheim Eagles. I enjoyed coaching Elves far more than I expected. After years of playing Undead teams, it was refreshing to play the throwing and scoring game that the Eagles offered.

Many of my favourite Blood Bowl memories come from games involving that team.

Ogre Kingdoms Arrive

In 2005, Games Workshop released Ogre Kingdoms  for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. While Blood Bowl occupied part of my hobby time, this army rapidly became my favourite replacing the undead and occupying the rest of my gaming.

Interestingly, looking back across my hobby collection, I can see that I have always been drawn towards games and armies where individual models matter.

One of the attractions of Ogre Kingdoms was that a complete army could be built from a relatively small number of larger (40mm bases) models, each one with its own appearance, equipment and personality. Even the basic Ogres, that then made up the rank-and-file of the army, felt like individual models. So much so that I painted them with tattoos and never batch painted any.

As I look back across my hobby collection, that preference appears again and again.

It is there in Ogre Kingdoms. It is there in Warhammer Underworlds. It is there in my Tyranid collections, where I have always preferred Warriors, Raveners, Lictors and Zoanthropes over endless swarms of smaller creatures.

I enjoy painting characterful models and giving them their own identity. I think this, in part, explains why I struggle with Space Marines, they do get a bit same-y.

Blood Bowl on the Xbox 360

In 2009, Blood Bowl arrived on the Xbox 360. The game certainly wasn't perfect, but it solved a problem familiar to many adult gamers. Finding opponents.

I never played Blood Bowl on PC, but I did spend time with the Xbox version. It allowed me to continue enjoying the game even when regular tabletop opportunities were becoming more difficult to arrange. Interestingly, I found myself drawn towards Chaos teams. If I am being completely honest, I probably enjoyed the punching side of Blood Bowl a bit more than the scoring side. You opponent cannot score if they are knocked out, injured or dead!

Life Gets Busy

Not long after this, life entered a different phase. I got married and started a family. Like many hobbyists, I found that gaming time became considerably harder to find. For several years I played relatively few games. Then of course Covid and lockdowns came along, making gaming, in person, impossible.

The hobby, however, never completely disappeared. Even when I wasn't gaming, I continued to paint miniatures and work on hobby projects whenever I could. This led me into Warhammer Underworlds, a game where I could paint a small group of miniatures from a single faction. Once complete, a warband was a whole painting project.

My Elven Blood Bowl Team

Warhammer Underworlds and the Agents of Sigmar

For the past seven years, my primary game has been Warhammer Underworlds.

One of the reasons the game has held my attention for so long is that every fighter feels like an individual character. Each warband is made up of named fighters with distinct abilities, personalities and miniatures. Even before I played a single game, I was hooked on the miniatures.

Warhammer Underworlds also introduced me to the Agents of Sigmar. I was watching their videos on YouTube and found out they were literally 15 minutes from my home. They have run tournaments in the local area and this eventually let them realise there were enough of us around to set up a small gaming group where we have been playing Underworlds.

My main warband has been, for the last year, Blackpowder's Buccaneers, an Ogor pirate and his motley crew. I have loved playing with Blackpowder and his Buccaneers and I have even had some semblance of success, although I have not yet won a tournament with them. More importantly. I have loved having playing with Ogors again. Recently, to keep things interesting, I have started using Hrothgorn's Mantrappers, the other Ogor warband, in Underworlds.

Blackpowder's Buccaneers

Without really planning it, Ogors have quietly become a recurring theme in my gaming collection.

If you are interested, check out my Warhammer Underworlds warbands review for Blackpowder's Buccaneers

So Why Am I Returning to Blood Bowl?

The answer is actually very simple. At a recent club night, Pete from the Agents of Sigmar asked if I would be interested in playing Blood Bowl. What he didn't realise was that I used to play and my answer was an immediate YES.

As soon as I got home, I ordered a team. I didn't spend hours researching win rates. I didn't watch countless tier-list videos. I didn't spend weeks trying to identify the strongest roster in the game.I didn't even look to see what teams were available. I just and chose the one that appealed to me most. An Ogre team.

Once the Ogor team were already on their way, I decided to see how they played and if they would be any good. It turns out that many people consider Ogres to be one of the more challenging teams to use in Blood Bowl.

That doesn't bother me. I am a competitive gamer and I genuinely enjoy improving at games. I enjoy learning tactics, making better decisions and becoming a stronger player over time. I have never chosen an army, warband or team simply because it was considered the strongest. I am not interested in chasing the latest meta. In fact, I often find myself drawn towards things that other people overlook. I choose armies, warbands and teams because I like them, then I work hard to learn how to use them effectively.

That approach has served me well in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer Underworlds and numerous other games over the years. Blood Bowl will be no different.

The Ogres may not be an A tier team, but they are the team that genuinely excites me as a hobby project. Each Ogre can become an individual named character. Each can develop their own story, reputation, skills and personality as the team grows. That will be far more interesting and rewarding than simply playing the best thing.

The Journey Begins

As I write this, I have not played a game of Blood Bowl Season 3. My first match is still a few weeks away. That first game will be all about getting to grips with the new rules, my new team and what has changed since the 'old days'.

However, before any of that happens, there is a more important task to complete. I need to build and paint my team. Over the years I have developed a simple rule when it comes to tabletop gaming. I never play with unpainted miniatures. For me, miniatures need names, colours and personality before they earn their place on the tabletop. After all, if they are not painted, why would they do what I want them to do?

So before any touchdowns are scored, before any Gnoblar are thrown and before any opponents become half-time snacks, there is work to be done.

The Ogres need building. The Gnoblar need painting. The team needs a name.

And I need to start learning the rules of a game that I haven't played properly for almost twenty years.

If you are new to Jon Grant Miniatures, Start Here →

Next Time: Building and painting my Ogre team and preparing for my first Blood Bowl game in nearly twenty years.

If you have any thoughts, questions or Blood Bowl memories of your own, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment below and tell me what first got you into the game.

If you're enjoying the content, please consider following the blog to stay up to date with new articles, reviews, painting guides and hobby projects.