Tournament Director Blog December 2023

Welcome to the December edition of the Tournament Director Blog! The final issue for 2023 is once again packed with news related to the NAF tournament scene. As usual, we highlight tournament-relevant content, give an outlook on upcoming events, and, most importantly, publish reports on a few recent tournaments. For this month’s edition, our coverage includes two tournaments from the Southern hemisphere, The Big V and the Powtearoa Provincial Championship, as well as the Grottenbowl Dungeonbowl tournament and the Stress Cup.

As always, if you want to contribute any content to this blog (e.g. a report of a recent tournament you visited or ran), reach out! Contact info are available on our NAF staff site.

Content

1. NAF Chatter
   1.1 Updated Tournament Approval Guidelines
   1.2 November Errata
   1.3 Upcoming Presidential Election
   1.4 2024 Nationals and Eurobowl
   1.5 Adversity Off the Pitch
   1.6 NAF Ethics Committee
2. Report: The Big V (by JohnnyBravo)
3. Report: Powtearoa Provincial Championship (by Ramchop)
4. Report: Grottenbowl (by Dirk)
5. Report: Stress Cup (by Volkajo)
6. Outlook

1. NAF Chatter

1.1. Updated Tournament Approval Guidelines 2024

Keeping up with our annual tradition, the specific NAF rules for tournaments 2024, as well as an updated version of the general NAF sanctioning guidelines have been published on the NAF site.

You shouldn’t find any major surprises. The new Vampire roster is now mandatory and replaces the old roster in all regular tournaments. Also, we continue to allow leeway for inclusion or exclusion of inducements and star players. Tournament organizers will still be able to restrict certain star players, or introduce customs stars. Importantly, as this has been recently discussed frequently, we emphasize once again that the banning of skills (and combos thereof) is not permitted. This has always been the case, but apparently not been publicized well enough.

Besides a few other changes, the 2024 NAF sanctioning guidelines now clarify that only individual winners of regular BB2020 tournaments are eligible for a NAF trophy. You’ll find all updated sections highlighted in bold.

I’d like to express a big thank you to Thot and Kafre, who have provided French and Spanish versions of both documents.

1.2 November Errata

With a few minutes of November to spare (something I can relate to every month), the most recent version of the Errata and Commentary was published by Games Workshop. No grand changes, but a few clarifications will be relevant in tournament play, most notably:

• Multiple bribes can be used in one attempt, should the first (few) fail.
• Stunned own players will always unstun at the end of the turn, even if their armor breaks again in your active turn (e.g. by a vampire bite, a bomb, being rolled over by a fanatic, or being hit by a thrown player).

As a reminder, while any newly published rosters are optional for TOs until end of year, rule clarifications and corrections have to be applied instantly after publication!

1.3 Upcoming Presidential Election

The 2024 presidential election has been all over the news for a while now (even though NAF has been awkwardly often misspelled as USA). All active members will have a chance to participate in the upcoming voting, with “active” meaning that the membership has been recently renewed and has not expired.

Schedule and job description, as posted by our vice president, are:

• 7 Jan 2024 Nominations start
• 14 Jan 2024 Nominations end and Q&A start
• 21 Jan 2024 Voting start
• 28 Jan 2024 Election ends and the new President is elected

There will be separate threads for both Nominations, Q&A and the final election. Aside of this there will be a thread where all discussion on the nominees, the questions and the answers can take place.

According to the NAF Charter, the elected president:

• Directs NAF strategy and planning
• Chairs meetings
• Serves as liaison between members and officers
• Serves as liaison between outside organization and NAF
• Fulfills duties of other officers if absent from meetings or events
• Reviews regular reports from other officers and offers direction
• Sets meeting agenda items

1.4 2024 Nationals and Eurobowl

The list of 2024 Nationals (prestigious events equivalent to established Major tournaments with higher impact on your ranking) is now complete, both Poland and Denmark have announced date and locations of their respective Nationals.

You can find the current overview on the slightly reworked respective NAF site.

Meanwhile, also the 2024 Eurobowl has been finalized. It will be held on September 28/29th in Athens. See the official website for all relevant information.

In the past, it has been very common for many tournaments to adapt current Eurobowl or World Cup rulesets. Nothing wrong with it, as these rulesets are typically very balanced. But keep in mind that the 2024 Eurobowl ruleset has a strong emphasis on the squad element and will require some adaptation for individual tournaments. And while everybody loves a good practice tournament with Eurobowl rules, one positive aspect of the NAF tournament scene is the variety of tournament rulesets. Let’s keep up this diversity.

1.5 Adversity off the pitch

Blood Bowl, our beloved ultra violent, bone shattering, skull smashing fantasy football game is nothing without its community. And as often as we together celebrate another untimely death or crippling injury of a star player or a league legend (some admittedly more joyous than others), it is easy to forget that not all of us live in a world where death and violence are limited to the board or the video screen.

Amidst this backdrop, it fills me with joy to share some uplifting news from our Blood Bowl family. This January marks a significant milestone: the launch of the first-ever NAF-approved tournament in Ukraine, the Kharkiv Winter Cup – bringing some light in these trying times.

Our community’s expansion into Ukraine is not just about spreading a game; it’s about nurturing a spirit of togetherness. It’s a reminder that even in the midst of adversity, we can find reasons to gather, to celebrate, and to engage in the friendly rivalry that defines our game. Amidst painted miniatures and playfields, we find a sense of normalcy, a momentary break from reality that is both rare and precious.

December should have also been the month to see the first-ever tournament in Israel – which for obvious reason had to be postponed. Maccabi Bowl will hopefully be held in March, a testament that our shared love for Blood Bowl transcends the turbulence of our times.

As we roll our dice and move our teams across the board, let’s remember the strength we draw from each other. Let’s celebrate not just our victories on the field, but appreciate the moments we have with our opponents and the uplifting spirit of our community.

1.6 NAF Ethics Committee

As just pointed out, the Blood Bowl community is a great one, and statistically speaking, the chance of running into a bad apple is the same as re-rolling triple skulls into triple skulls. So rare that it barely ever happens. Why even prepare for it, as the chances are so low. But as the excellent coaches that we are, we should do exactly that. Our organization has grown tremendously, we are likely going to hit membership number 40,000 by the end of year (unfortunately, Warhammer is already taken as a coach name, what a missed opportunity!). This is far beyond any self-regulating size.

Although still in very low numbers (so low that many never witness such behavior personally in their Blood Bowl career), NAF staff has occasionally been approached with reports of fraud, bullying, verbal and physical abuse. While we do have a code of conduct, we do lack a proper process to investigate these cases and need better support structures for tournament organizers and other members that approach us asking for assistance, guidelines or disciplinary consequences.

For these reasons, we are setting up a new support function. In the future, a newly appointed ethics committee will advise in such cases. If you want to know more, or are interested in joining, read our call for volunteers.

2. Report: The Big V (by JohnnyBravo)

The Big V originally grew out of the post-2016 Games Workshop relaunch of Blood Bowl when tournaments were still very few and far between here in Victoria, Australia. For those confused as to the name of the tournament, the name actually originates from the nickname “The Big V” given to the team that represented Victoria in Australian Rules Football State of Origin series in the 70’s through to the 90’s. I wanted to create something quintessentially Victorian, as well as Australian.

And sticking true to the tournament’s Victorian roots, I introduced a unique Star Player. Based on The Mighty Zug and available to any team, “The Mighty Plug” represented famous Australian Rules footballer and Big V superstar Tony ”Plugger” Lockett. There was a special mini designed by Ugni Miniatures and printed by Jester Prints for sale before the tournament, and we even ran a special Painting Comp for the best painted Mighty Plug. Plug proved very popular and there are already plans in place to follow-up next year with another Aussie Rules themed Blood Bowler!
From the humble beginnings of a one-day tournament in 2017 with a mere 20 coaches, The Big V became a two-day affair in 2018 and increased to 29 coaches. Fast forward to the post-COVID era and in 2023 we broke the Australasian (and Southern Hemisphere) record for the second year in a row, with 144 coaches in attendance!

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To accommodate an increase of coaches from 87 to 140+, I moved the tournament out of the Eastern Suburbs and right into Melbourne CBD itself, surrounded by everything the great city of Melbourne has to offer. The Drill Hall is a 1937 Art Deco heritage building and was the perfect host for such a large tournament.
All rules and roster building instructions were included on the tournament website – www.bigvbloodbowl.com – and all tickets sales, registration and roster submissions were handled exclusively by the site. This led to an overall smooth build up to the tournament. All rosters were published a few days before, and the first-round draw made about 10pm on the eve of the event.
Only one drop-out in the days before the tournament with one coach’s wife going into labour, and only one no-show on the morning of the event itself, meaning we dropped from 146 to our final total of 144. I’m still astounded by that result!

As has been tradition for a couple of years now, Robbie Last ran “The Cheeky V” on the Friday evening, at the same venue. The Cheeky V is a 7s tournament with more of a relaxed atmosphere and a real fun vibe. With a cap at 30 coaches, Robbie puts on an impeccably run event which caters mainly for those interstate coaches who have arrived in Melbourne on the day before the event and are looking for some casual Blood Bowl on a Friday night. On the day itself one of the key issues I wanted to solve was tables, table size and pitches. I spent weeks sourcing the correct tables to allow coaches to play end-to-end, and then was able to fulfill a dream of mine, and that was to supply all the pitches (all 72 of them!) to the tournament. I designed these myself and had them manufactured in 3mm stitched-edge neoprene, to not only create a uniformity but also to ensure one less thing for coaches to think about.
Tournament-supplied pitches and table numbers meant that all matchups were organised by table numbers. Coaches didn’t have to stress about leaving their pitches behind on a random table, and no more reading out of matchups over the PA system. The coaches just had to log onto the website through the supplied QR-codes on the tables and see what table they were playing at and who their opponent was.

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With round one drawn in advance, coaches were able to set up and even start their matches before the official kick-off time. The first round ran smoothly, and it didn’t take long for the round spot prizes of “Double Skulls rerolled into Double Skulls” to be won!
The on-site refreshments provided by local brewery Cavalier opened early and the beers flowed freely from even before the first dice were rolled. We even had our first Aussie tradition at the end of Round 1, when one coach performed a “shoey” after losing a rashly made bet from the Friday night before!
At lunchtime on day one we held the Best Painted comp, with five categories – Reikland Fleshshade, Caledor Sky, Waargh! Flesh, Ushabti Bone and Chaos Black. Top prize was taken out by Heath Burkill and his outstanding Shambling Undead team!

The tournament was taken out in impressive style by Foad (Australia #1 and World #3 Amazon coach) with a perfect 6-0-0 record, followed by runner-up lukeadrian (Australia #1 and World #20 Dark Elf coach) on 5-1-0, plus PianoDan (Australia #1 and World #17 Elf Union Coach) and JamesDSF (Australia #1 and World #1 Necro coach), bringing up 3rd and 4th on 5-0-1.
The Big V always incorporates a Squad Challenge alongside its main tournament. Coaches form up into Squads of four loosely based around their local leagues, and their individual scores are pooled together to get an overall Squad result. Defending champions and #1 Seed “Admiral Nelson and his Crew” pipped the #3 Seed “Feel Good Inc.” to win again this year by just 5 points (the equivalent of one win), followed by the #6 Seed “Brawling Slobbe” who finished in 3rd place a further 5 points back.
Shout out of course to “Nonna Rona’s Orphanarium for the Kids of Parents who didn’t Go For It Good” who won the best Squad Theme prize, and shared it with their fellow Nonn Squads “Nonna Rona’s Therapy Pets” and “Nonna’s Disappoint Mints”.

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Special thanks to the volunteer crew on the weekend – Kate Last, Charles Tricker and Dan Cass, without whom we wouldn’t have made it through to Sunday night successfully.
Whilst it was a resounding success and went off without too many hitches, the weekend was exhausting, and really hit home how big a step-up running an 80+ tournament to hosting a 140+ event. The whole preparation, build-up and organisation is next level, and is way too much for just one person to handle. Thankfully the local Victorian and Australian scene is nothing short of amazing, and I’ve already had a heap of coaches put their hands up to be part of the team to set up and prepare for next year! So onwards and upwards for The Big V for 2024, and who knows, maybe we can inch our way to 200 coaches…

3. Report: Powtearoa Provincial Championship (by Ramchop)

Provincial pride! December saw coaches from around New Zealand descend upon Saigon Van Grill Bar in Wellington for the country’s first homegrown NAF teams event. The big city provinces Auckland, Wellington, and Canterbury (Christchurch) were joined by travellers from the Bay of Plenty, Hawke’s Bay, Manawatū and Kāpiti. A Barbarians squad made up of four unrepresented provinces, a Rejects team of travellers who didn’t make the cut, and a Wellington B squad (Welly Subs) took us to 10. Squads of 4 coaches each, this made it the biggest Blood Bowl tournament ever held in New Zealand.

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The ruleset was quite a tight one. 1150k to spend, plus a tiered spp budget is fairly standard. What made it difficult was that skills needed to be purchased with cash as well. Essentially, all teams were at exactly the same TV. This had the effect that the most TV efficient races were well represented – Underworld, Dwarf, Human, Skaven and Chaos Dwarf were very popular choices. Despite the powergamers identifying which races were the best, we did see a total of 19 different races attend the event. 

In the lead up to the tournament, banter and strategising was in fine form. Auckland even “leaked” photos from their secret training camp, complete with pixelated miniatures so that we wouldn’t know too far in advance what races they were bringing. It was hard to pick a winner. The big three cities all had very solid squads. However, Hawke’s Bay had Sandune, who had danced across the top tables of Alicante – would NZ’s #1 coach be able to carry them to victory? My biggest fear though was that our first provincial championship would go to the non-province “Rejects” a team of strong coaches including a West Islander (an Aussie) with over 700 NAF games under his belt.

Round 1, the Rejects smashed their Manawatū opposition with 3 wins and a draw, my fears seemed justified. Wellington, matched against Welly Subs, fought hard to avoid the embarrassment of losing to their B team. The battle of the Bays was won by Hawke’s Bay, Canterbury ploughed through the BaaBaas, and in perhaps the biggest upset of the round, Auckland were held to a draw with tiny Kāpiti.

The next four rounds were all played in good spirit as well as being fiercely competitive. 40 coaches crammed into a relatively small space made for a bustling event. Occasionally, the voice of an individual would boom over the throng. One such instance was when Waikato and Barbarians rep BigBullies announced proudly “I won with Chaos! I WON with Chaos!” (this was his 21^st game with the race and his first win).

As TO, my prime focus was on the event itself, and I don’t think I even witnessed a single coin toss or the captain matchup picks at the start of each round. But I did manage to sit down every time and play some Blood Bowl. I took Orcs and faced Lizards (Welly Subs 1-1 draw), Lizards (Rejects, 0-2 loss), Underworld (Canterbury, 1-1 draw), Amazon (Auckland 0-1 loss) and Norse (Hawke’s Bay, 1-1 draw). All enjoyable games, 0/3/2, not a great contribution to the Wellington cause though.

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However, despite the TO’s mediocre efforts on the pitch, Wellington (3 wins, 2 draws) emerged victorious! Canterbury were close behind (2 wins, 3 draws), and undefeated Auckland sneaked into 3^rd (1 win, 4 draws) beating out 2 other provinces on tiebreaker.

A successful event, and it’s clear that after getting our first taste of a team tournament, the kiwi coaches are all keen to come back for more. Who will take out the next edition? Will Wellington build a dynasty, will another province rise or will a Barbarian challenger break hearts?

4. Report: Grottenbowl (by Dirk)

The Dungeonbowl tournament „Der Grottenbowl“, or short „die Grotte“, is the traditional Christmas event of the NAFL (www.nafl.de). It originates from an issue of the White Dwarf and was introduced to our league by coach Prince. Since then it evolved in the real Blood Bowl way by rules being forgotten and re-invented as needed every year while also the organizer changed several times. In fact it was the first event I joined as a new coach in our league back in 2018. So I happily took over, as the next organizer was needed, and with Dungeonbowl having its own official ruleset nowadays, I thought it was time for a big makeover.

With near to no variant tournaments taking place in Southern Germany, I was sure I wanted to open it up and make the event an official NAF tournament. With some games played under NAF variant rules from 2019 and the GW rules from 2021 and 2022 I had a rough idea what I like and what not, but did not feel comfortable with building the event pack from the ground up. So I was quite happy I could talk to Tojurub who organized “Ins dunkle Verlies” in Austria and base my event pack on his, just giving it my personal twist. Another influence was the Bonehead Podcast, as I used the Dungeon layout created by the two Bens for Dorset Dungeon Bowl.

I am in the happy situation that I have access to a nice event location owned by my employer, a local IT company, normally used for training and business events. But just before I could finalize my plan and make it public, a set back happened when the room was flooded by heavy rain, and it was unclear if it will be usable. As this happened directly before I flew to the World Cup and some busy weeks awaited me after coming back home I lost about a month for preparations.

When I finally made the public announcement, the feedback was good, with the first coaches directly signing up. I offered 6 spots because of three dungeons I own (one 3d printed, two paper mats from Bonehead Podcast), with an option to increase by 2 for every available dungeon. The initial spots were gone quickly, but also 2 dungeons offered allowed for more to join. I made the team budget 1.200.000 to allow for interesting teams and some shenanigans, and 40 SPP with stacking for the same reason. This was directly taken from Tojurub’s ruleset, as was the scoring system with bonus points for finding bombs, jumping into portals or causing casualties. My twists were to also allow the Sponsorships from Death Match (the 2022 supplement) as an alternative to the wizards, reducing it to 4 games with a slightly higher time limit for a more relaxed game play and limiting the special rooms.

So, when the day came I had 8 coaches with the last one signing up the day before. This meant instead of playing myself, I could concentrate on organization. All of them were from our league but as we consist of 3 divisions in three different cities (one in Nuremberg, one in Weißenburg and one in Ingolstadt), not all faces were familiar to everyone. So, some had to introduce each other, while others were happy to meet again after some time. But I had to interrupt the chatting for some explanation. I had prepared the dungeons with a sheet explaining the layout and the special rules next to them, accompanied by some markers to remember the room. The scoring sheet was needed to keep not only track about winning or losing, but also found bombs, used teleporters and casualties caused for the bonus points. The rounds were planned with 90 minutes each, 10 min to find opponent, introduce teams and dungeons, 70 min game time and 10 min for me collecting results and preparing the next draw. Also, some rule questions had to be answered.

But then the first round could start. This meant no special rules, except for the 3D dungeon which had always the same rules active as I built it with some special tiles. Some concentrated on winning, some on the bonus points based on their strategy, but everyone had fun searching the ball, teleporting around and losing players while doing so. First round finished well in time and we could directly move to round two. This time, one room was the kitchen, allowing the players to throw food at each other (the players, not the coaches!) marked by some donuts and hot dogs (only
markers, uneatable!). I witnessed a skink trying to bring down some dwarfs with a rain of food, but it seemed they were unstoppable.

After two rounds I served self-made, vegetarian Chili with a fair warning that it is not hot, but the hot sauces (from a local company I really recommend, called The 4/20 Chilli Company) really are. Of course this was ignored, but if you play for the College of Fire you like it hot, I guess. Also the first hot spiced wine and mead was served.

After lunch in round three, the players were hunted by a werewolf. Every dungeon had a different strategy to deal with him. One tried to avoid him, one attempted to lure him to opponents, and the third one simply placed an Oger in front of him to bite his teeth into. Before the last round I announced the standing for the special prices, but skipped the rankings as one coach was already a clear winner (only to be drawn if another coach won with all bonus points, while the coach in the lead got zero points) and luckily no one asked.

For the final round, one room was overgrown by roots and players could get caught, while in another one a chaos ritual took place – perhaps strengthening the players, but filling up some space. This round had the fastest game with about 10 minutes, and the only draw, as one dwarf failed the dodge needed to rush to the endzone, and the opponents’ dwarves were too short to grab the ball and pass and dodge towards the other endzone to at least get the bonus points for being in reach of it.

After the four rounds, Prince and his “Come On, Baby, Bright My Fire” (being a College of Bright, not Fire as the old man insisted) took both special prizes with him, the “Portal Navigator” which he claimed by using every teleporter in every round, and the “Bomb Squad” for disarming 13 bombs (no snotlings were harmed for this or at least nobody cared). The rookie Lubbock playing his first tournament was announced the “Dungeon Cleaner” for making the last place with his College of Death. The “Runner-Up” was Bravestar with his fantastically named College of Heaven “College der Lustigen, Optimistischen und/oder Witzigen Nerds (CLOWN)” and the “Champion” was the undefeated Wulfgar with his College of Shadow “Ungeziefer”.

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Only a small number of coaches went afterwards to Nuremberg’s famous “Christkindelmarkt” for some more drinks. But perhaps this was my worst idea of the day as I felt there like a Bloater dodging a defense while knowing I will still need some rushes for the endzone.

Everyone had fun and I got great feedback, so I plan for another “Grottenbowl” next year. There was some mixed feedback on the special rooms, so I will have to adjust here, but I already have some ideas, like making the werewolf a walking monster that returns to its starting spot only when knocked out or regenerating from an injury. I will also make the conditions for the bonus points even more clear on the scoring sheet, as there was some confusion. As some layouts allowed to pin someone after being teleported I will need a solution for this and likely will rule getting knocked down on a teleporter will count as movement causing the player to teleport. As you see the rules will need to evolve again!

5. Stress Cup (by Volkajo)

While I am currently packing up for my last tournament of the year (No. 30, Painkiller Cup close to Munich), I would like to tell you about the most interesting tournament I have played this year.

The Stress Cup in the French city of Metz has a special rule that I had not experienced at any other tournament so far: turns are limited to two minutes for each coach. Since I play quite fast (even though some say it is more due to the lack of thinking), I was actually quite happy having these limits. But – spoiler alert – sometimes even I was struggling with this. 

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The speed play was not the only special thing at this tournament. We got a good feel right away when we showed up on Friday night. Almost all the coaches were already gathered at the venue, playing board games, chatting, drinking. There was a crew of about four or five people in the kitchen who cooked for us the entire weekend and the first food was served right when we showed up. 

The ruleset was actually a secret until the tournament started on Saturday. On Friday night, the organizer, Mr. Durden, went around with a deck of cards. Every coach had to take one and let him know which teams you had packed. The only thing we knew was the tiering, everything else had been delivered in secret to the NAF for approval. 

After a night of drinking and games the rules were finally announced Saturday morning: Stress Cup X was a team tournament with squads based on the cards you drew on Friday. So, random squads of three had about an hour to come up with builds using a shared budget of gold and skills, depending on the combined tiers. What a fun idea! Some of the squads buffed teams which needed extra gold or skills while others kept it balanced. The match-ups between the teams were also random. 

The tournament consisted of eleven rounds, seven on Saturday and an additional four on Sunday. It was nice to meet new people on your squad, especially whilst traveling. My squad was very nice and took me in right away. We ended up runner ups because of mistakes in our last round, but we had a fantastic time. To be honest, I think everybody did. While one disadvantage of not having pairings according to the Swiss system is that you have easier / harder matches than your actual strength, it is also fun that every round basically is a fresh start with a new opponent that you do not know. 

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To me it was not only the creative and fun ruleset that made this tournament special but also the feel I got from the community at the event. Everybody seemed to have a great time! People were chatting, screaming, making jokes. It is hard to describe, but with all my traveling I have not had a tournament yet where I felt such a strong sense of community as here. Maybe it was because everybody shared the horrible pain of having to speed-play eleven games of Blood Bowl, maybe it was the great food (thanks again to the kitchen team!), maybe it was the rules which made it probably a little less try-hardy (even though there was plenty of good BB played that weekend), I don’t know. Even though we had plenty of highlights with the magnificent World Cup this year, this tournament was probably my personal favourite!

6. Outlook

January offers 66 tournaments in not fewer than 20 different countries. It is also the unofficial month of Nationals, with the Swedish National Team Championship, the Welsh National Championship, and REVA in Spain. Lucca is taking advantage of global climate change and is holding its 22nd Luccini Summer Cup now in mid Winter, while the Capital City Kick Off inaugurates the Canadian BB season for the umpteenth time. I myself have the German Emerald Bowl team tournament and the French Coupe de la Déchéance on my list.
And then, most importantly, unless some higher courts interfere, we will be able to welcome our newly elected NAF president.