What is tiering?
It should be obvious from looking at the rosters for each of the different teams in Blood Bowl, they are not all created equal. Each team has their own unique strengths, weaknesses and playstyle (some have more strengths than weaknesses, and some will have more weaknesses than strengths).
In the Blood Bowl: Second Season box set released in 2020, Games Workshop introduced their official tiering. This has been expanded in Spike! Magazines with releases of new teams and a full list of the official tiers is below. Tier 1 contains the strongest teams in the game which are generally more forgiving and more likely to win games. Tier 2 teams require a bit more experience to coach and Tier 3 is the “stunty” teams – which are generally considered the hardest teams to master.
The latest tiering can be found in their bi-annual Designer’s Commentary which is available on Games Workshop’s website and as of November 2023 lists the tiers as below. It is important to note that some of these have been changed since the release of the rulebook or relevant Spike! Magazine.
Tier 1: Amazon, Chaos Dwarf, Dark Elf, Dwarf, High Elf, Lizardmen, Norse, Shambling Undead, Skaven, Underworld Denizen, Wood Elf
Tier 2: Black Orc, Chaos Chosen, Chaos Renegades, Elven Union, Human, Imperial Nobility, Khorne, Necromantic Horror, Nurgle, Old World Alliance, Orc, Tomb King, Vampire
Tier 3: Goblin, Halfling, Ogre, Snotling
How should I tier an event?
Traditionally tournament organisers (TOs) have used tiering at events to allow coaches to take a few extra skills to make playing them more enjoyable at tournaments. The lower tiered teams are usually given more skills, money or star player access to make it a bit more of an even playing field amongst teams of different tiers.
In Games Workshop’s Matched Play Guide (only available on their website) they make a suggestion about how you can give additional skills to each tier based on a points system.
It is possible to have no tiering at all and allow all teams the same upgrades (or lack thereof). This was the approach taken by the NAF Championship, the English major, for the first tournament that was run after the Second Season box set was released. The thinking was that there wasn’t enough data to be able to accurately tier the races and so they put everyone on an even keel.
The other extreme is to have a significant number of tiers in an attempt to make all teams viable. You could have one tier per team if you really wanted to, although that is likely to be seen as excessive.
Most TOs fall somewhere in the middle, with four or five tiers being common at tournaments. The additional tiers usually fall between the Games Workshop tiers, with some teams that are not quite good enough for the GW tier dropping down, or some that are a little bit too good for the GW tier they are in jumping up.
Whilst it might be useful for the NAF to make suggestions about what these tiering adjustments should be, it is a very subjective subject and the NAF prefer to allow TOs to make their own decisions. Often the meta can shift on one subtle change to the game. For example, access to snotlings with swarming significantly helped Underworld Denizens. Any suggestions made could be out of date with a minor change to the meta.
This is why it is recommended instead to look at the latest win percentages of teams which is available on the NAF website or on Sann’s tableau which will allow you to see how teams are currently performing in NAF competitions. This might help guide you on any tweaks to tiering you are looking to make.
It is also sensible to review what other TOs have been doing with their tiering. You can find lots of rulesets on the NAF website for previous events. You may also want to look at the approach that the Major Bloodbowl events have taken as they will likely have tried to make as balanced a ruleset as possible.
What advantages should I give to each tier?
Once you have decided which tier each team should be placed in, you then need to work out what upgrades are available in each tier. Generally, this will be some combination of extra skills, stat increases, and access to star players. Usually, each tier has access to a little bit more than the tier just above it.
The standard addition to your roster in a tournament is additional skills for your players. There are several ways to do this.
– Some tournaments follow the Games Workshop model of allowing a set number of points for each tier, with one point being a primary skill and two points being a secondary skill.
– Some TOs opt to say something like Tier 1 can have six primary skills, tier 2 six primaries and one secondary and Tier 3 six primaries and two secondaries. In this instance, it is common to allow a player to decline a secondary in place of a primary.
In both instances, it is up to the TO whether they allow skill stacking (that is more than one additional skill on players). If it is allowed, sometimes this is at the cost of additional skills or skill points.
– Some events will have an SPP allocation, allowing coaches to spend their allocation as they wish following the rules in the rulebook (although usually banning random skills).
Stat increases are very rare to see in tournaments and if they are available, they are usually only accessible to the lowest tier or the stunty teams.
In the Second Season revamp of Blood Bowl, star players generally became more powerful, more useful, and cheaper. As such, they can split views amongst the Blood Bowl community.
Some people feel that they can unbalance the game. As such, some tournaments make the decision ban them completely. These are usually events which are seen as the more competitive events.
The NAF allows for selective banning or penalising of star players within rulesets. Some events will either ban or charge a penalty for taking “Mega-Stars.” The current list of Mega-Stars is available free from Games Workshop online. Some TOs will add other players to the restricted list such as Cindy Piewhistle or Varag Ghoul-Chewer who are also seen as strong players.
If a penalty is charged for taking a Mega-Star, it will often be in the form of forfeiting skills or cash available for your roster building. Sometimes star players who are not on the restricted list are also penalised. If a TO is penalising star players and allowing Mega-Stars, they may have a harsher penalty for Mega-Stars than other stars.
Who will benefit?
Whatever approach you take, it is likely that it will favour some teams more than others. For example, if you have a high budget and allow access to star players, it is likely to help the stunty teams who are often reliant on being able to roster one or two strong star players to help their cause.
If you opt to have a generous skill allocation then teams which have few starting skills on their players are likely to benefit, such as Chaos Chosen, Lizardmen or Vampires.
If you have neither of these and have a budget of 1,150,000 (as is common in tournaments) and relatively few additional skills, then the teams who don’t need many additional skills are likely to prosper, such as Dark Elves and Underworld Denizens.
Blood Bowl is an inherently unbalanced game, and so it should be expected that all rulesets will lend themselves to some teams being picked more than others.
Tiering in variants?
Stephen Knowles has spent a couple of years compiling data for Blood Bowl Sevens to look at tiering in Sevens if you want to do so. His post around this can be found here. As of October 2023, there are only a couple of tweaks that he suggests from the Games Workshop tiers. This is Humans, Elven Union and Old World Alliance moving to Tier 1 and Undead and Dwarfs moving to Tier 2.
This is based on the relevant teams win percentages, although the data set is obviously a lot smaller than the data for full Blood Bowl. Often in Sevens tournaments you won’t receive any additional skills at all, or you might gain one skill for each game played.
Dungeon Bowl and Gutter Bowl are less frequently played and so there is not enough data available to see whether tiering would be a useful thing to implement in these variants. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do so if you’re running one of these events – just that it’s difficult to offer much guidance on how you should do so!