My First Blood Bowl Game With Ogres

Having spent the last couple of weeks building my Ogre team and painting the first few models, I was finally ready to play my first game of Blood Bowl in 20 years. I headed down to our little local club and met up with my first opponent Neil, who was fielding a Norse team.

After a surprisingly bruising game featuring flying Gnoblars, the tw'elf'th man and plenty of casualties, the match ended in a 1-1 draw. In other words, exactly the sort of game I had hoped for.

The Game

I won the toss and chose to kick. My thinking was simple. I wanted to receive the ball at the start of the second half and have an opportunity to control the game later on.

Neil's Norse team received and made steady progress up the pitch. Despite some determined resistance from the Ogres, the Norsemen eventually broke through and scored on turn four of the first half, taking a 1-0 lead. Fortunately, that still left me five turns to respond.

Neil's Norsemen Drive for the End Zone

For the next drive, I positioned all four Ogres on the line of scrimmage and immediately looked to causes some damage. The Norse linemen hit the dirt one after another, as the ogres blocked them. This created gaps through which my gnoblars could run. Eventually I used Throw Team-Mate to launch a Gnoblar, carrying the ball, deep into Neil's half. The throw was only a Sub-Par Throw, the Gnoblar scattered, but landed successfully and ended up just one square from the end zone.

On Neil's following turn he blitzed the Gnoblar as he tried to stop me from scoring. Instead, the block pushed the Gnoblar and I used Side-step to enter the end zone, resulting in a touchdown and levelling the score at 1-1.

My Gnoblar lands next to the End Zone

That left me with one final turn before half-time. The plan was straightforward. Hit as many Norsemen as possible.

Unfortunately, the second activation of the turn resulted in a classic Blood Bowl moment. One of my Ogres threw a block and rolled Player Down and Both Down. The Norse Lineman had Block, the Ogre did not, and the big guy promptly knocked himself over. His armour failed and he ended up in the injury box. Brilliant! I had hoped for a turn of violence and maybe a cheeky foul from a gnoblar, but it was not to be.

The second half began with me receiving the ball.

Once again, the Ogres lined up on the line of scrimmage and promptly flattened several Norse players. If there was one thing my team did well throughout the match, it was winning the fight in the centre of the pitch.

My Ogres are enjoying the game.

However, I could not cause any injuries.

Both Neil and I managed to secure the ball at various points in the game before pushing into the opposing half. Then the ball carrier would be knocked down, and the ball would pass to the other team.

My best chance came when I attempted another aerial assault, this time using Kick Team-Mate to send a Gnoblar flying downfield.

Unfortunately, the landing did not go to plan. The Gnoblar hit the ground, failed his armour roll and was carried off the pitch badly hurt before he had the chance to score.

As the half wore on, both teams seemed to become increasingly distracted from scoring by the opportunity to punch each other. The Ogres and Norsemen spent much of the game locked in a huge brawl around midfield.

Neither side could find a winning touchdown and the game eventually finished as a 1-1 draw.

Building an Ogre Starting Roster

What Worked

Gnoblars

The biggest surprise of the game was just how useful the Gnoblars proved to be. On paper they do not look particularly impressive, but their combination of 3+ Agility, Dodge, Stunty and Titchy made them remarkably difficult to pin down. Throughout the game they were able to slip around Neil's Norse players with surprising ease, often appearing wherever they were needed most.

Whether it was providing assists, just being in the way or helping move the ball around the pitch, the Gnoblars consistently got where they needed to be. In fact, I rarely failed a dodge attempt all game.

The downside became very apparent whenever they were actually caught. Three Gnoblars suffered injuries during the game and it quickly became obvious that they are extremely fragile once an opponent gets hold of them. Another thing I noticed was that there is a difference between being mobile and being fast.

The Gnoblars were excellent at dodging through tackle zones, but their Movement 5 was a little too slow, which often left them just short of where I wanted them to be. Several times I found myself making Rush rolls to gain an extra square or two. Unfortunately, a couple of those rushes ended with the Gnoblars tripping over their own feet. Given how fragile they are, even a simple fall often left them stunned or worse. After one game I am already wondering whether a small bench of additional Gnoblars might be worthwhile.

The Ogres

Before the game I was concerned about Bone-head. On paper it looks like a significant weakness and I expected it to cause me all sorts of problems. In practice it was nowhere near as disruptive as I expected. I failed a couple of Bone-head rolls during the match, but team rerolls helped solve the problem and the Ogres generally did what I needed them to do.

Once they started throwing blocks they were excellent. Strength 5 made it difficult for the Norse players to gain favourable block dice and Mighty Blow helped keep opposing players on the floor, even if most of the results ended up merely stunning them.

The game also remimded me of the importance of Block. The only Ogre that suffered an injury all game managed to do it to himself when he rolled Both Down against a Norse player with Block. In a laegue I will need to add Block to the Ogres as quickly as possible.

Throw Team-Mate And Kick Team-Mate

Before playing Ogres, I had assumed these skills were mostly amusing gimmicks. However, after one game I have changed my mind. The real value wasn't that the skill had allowed me to score a touchdown. Instead, it was the ability to suddenly put a player, and the ball, deep in the opposing half, which forced Neil to react rather than play his own game.

As previously mentioned, the first attempt resulted in a touchdown. However, the second resulted in a badly injured Gnoblar. There is something to be learnt with these skills.

The Tw'elf'th Man

At the start of the game, when rolling for fans, I only manged one fan. Neil and I joked that I literally had a single fan that followed the team around. At one point in the game, he threw a rock and stunned a Norse lineman.

Later in the game, my fan contributed yet again to the game. It started with an Ogre blocking and pushing an Ulfwerener towards the sideline. Then a nearby Gnoblar blitzed and sent the Norse player into the crowd. My fan enthusiastically showed why he is my tw'elf'th man and knocked the Ulfwerener out.

Watching a Gnoblar help remove one of the most dangerous players on the Norse roster was immensely satisfying.

Final Thoughts

After my first game with Ogres I can understand why they are considered a lower-tier team.

The roster is relatively slow, the Gnoblars are incredibly fragile and it doesn't take long for the dugout to start filling up with knocked-out and injured players. As the game progressed, I found myself becoming increasingly conscious of how quickly I was losing Gnoblars whenever Neil was able to focus his attention on them.

At the same time, the team was nowhere near as bad as I had expected.

The Ogres themselves were surprisingly reliable. Bone-head was an inconvenience rather than a disaster, Strength 5 made them difficult to deal with and their high armour value allowed them to absorb a lot of punishment. Meanwhile the Gnoblars proved far more useful than I had anticipated. Their ability to dodge through tackle zones, support the Ogres and suddenly appear in unexpected places gave the team a level of flexibility that I hadn't fully appreciated before playing my first game.

Perhaps most importantly, the team was enormous fun to play.

There were crowd surfs, flying Gnoblars, plenty of casualties and a huge brawl in the middle of the pitch that seemed to distract both teams from the business of actually scoring touchdowns. It may only have ended as a 1-1 draw, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

I still have a lot to learn about coaching Ogres, but after this first game I am looking forward to getting them back onto the pitch again.

You can find all of my Blood Bowl articles on the Blood Bowl: Season 3 hub page.

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Discussion

If you have any thoughts, questions or experiences of your own, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment below and share your experiences of coaching Ogre teams or developing players in league play.

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