1 About this document
As Blood Bowl’s international tournament sanctioning body, the NAF seeks to provide its membership with a consistent experience regardless of where an event might take place. As such, the following guidelines and regulations are designed to ensure that there is some level of global standardization between tournaments, while still allowing organizers the possibility of customization.
Changes to the previous version of this document are highlighted in bold.
The following guidelines are also available as a downloadable PDF:
NAF Tournament Approval Document 2024 Directives d’approbation des tournois NAF 2024 (French version by Thot) Pautas para la Aprobación de Torneos NAF 2024 (Spanish version by Kafre)
2 Content
1 About this document
2 Content
3 Abbreviations
4 Relevant NAF staff
5 Before submitting a tournament application
__5.1 NAF tournament listings
__5.2 Conflicting dates
__5.3 Submission deadline
6 Applying a tournament for sanctioning
__6.1 Online submission form
__6.2 Approval process
7 Tournament Requirements
__7.1 Tournament access
__7.2 Restricted tournaments
__7.3 Available races
__7.4 Blood Bowl variants
8 Individual rulesets
__8.1 About rules variations
__8.2 General restrictions
__8.3 Tiering of races
__8.4 Inducement of Star Players
__8.5 Specialist and Classic events
__8.6 Scoring and pairing
9 Tournament code of conduct
__9.1 Mandatory requirements
__9.2 Recommended guidelines
10 NAF gifts and trophies
11 Online tournaments
12 Post-tournament requirements
3 Abbreviations
TD Tournament Director
NC National Coordinator
RC Regional Coordinator
4 Relevant NAF staff
Depending on your location, various members of the NAF staff are available to assist you with the tournament sanctioning process. Find an overview on the NAF staff page.
While this isn’t a requirement, it’s highly recommended that you contact the Regional Coordinator (RC) or National Coordinator (NC) responsible for your region when planning a tournament. This can be an important step, as your RC/NC will be familiar with the local tournament calendar and the expectations of coaches in your region.
The tournament approvers are assisting the Tournament Director (TD) in sanctioning events. They are covering different global areas, as listed on the staff website. You can contact them with questions regarding the approval process or to ask about the status of your submission.
Finally, the TD is coordinating the overall approval process, providing general guidelines and assisting with the planning of larger events. Feel free to contact the TD with general questions or if you are running into any issues.
5 Before submitting a tournament application
5.1 NAF tournament listings
Before applying a tournament for approval, make yourself familiar with the approval process. If this is the first time you are running a tournament, check out the guides on the respective NAF page.
To be able to submit a tournament, you need to have an active NAF membership account and access to the member area.
Here you can see all approved world-wide tournaments in the past and future. You can use this to identify available dates for your tournament, but keep in mind that there might be more submitted tournaments that are not approved and thus not visible yet.
You might also find some inspiration from established tournaments for designing of rulesets or tiering of races. Prominent examples are listed on the NAF site as well.
5.2 Conflicting dates
To avoid a competition for local coaches, same-day tournaments will not be approved if they are within close proximity to one another. The definition of close proximity varies depending on the region; contact your RC/NC if you are unsure about your local rules. If such a clash occurs, the TD will consult with organizers and/or RC and make the final ruling. Certain tournaments with a national or international scope (e.g. World Cup, Eurobowl, Majors or Nationals) can be granted a sphere of conflict that extends throughout their nation or continent. For example, during the NAF Championship (NAFC) no other British tournaments should be scheduled until tickets are sold out.
5.3 Submission deadline
Tournaments should be submitted at least 8 weeks before the event to not only allow enough time for proper approval and potential changes, but also to give coaches sufficient notice to plan their participation. If you cannot meet this deadline because of unforeseen changes or other reasons, immediately contact the approval team or TD to inform them.
6 Applying a tournament for sanctioning
6.1 Online submission form
A detailed guide how to add a new tournament to the site and enter all relevant data is available on the
NAF Documents page.
When adding a new tournament in the member area, make sure to include all relevant details about the tournament rules, including any house rules you may have added. If available, post any links to external websites or forums. It is highly recommended that you provide a summary of the rules in the Information field.
Once your tournament is submitted, it should be listed with the respective date under “Your Tournaments”. The status in the right column indicates that your tournament will be NEW. Note that at this point your tournament is not visible to the general membership.
6.2 Approval process
The approval team led by the TD will review the details of your submitted tournament. Provided the tournament requirements are met, they will approve the tournament. Otherwise, expect to be contacted with questions and feedback. Once sanctioned, the status of your tournament will change to APPROVED and it will become visible to the general membership.
Feel free to reach out to the approval team or the TD if you haven’t received feedback within two weeks after submission.
As soon as your tournament is approved you can advertise that it is officially NAF-sanctioned. In addition to being lots of fun in the way Blood Bowl always is, the games will also count toward participants’ NAF rankings and be recorded in their database of games.
7 Tournament Requirements
7.1 Tournament access
Most importantly, the tournament must be open to all NAF members. This means everyone applying/paying prior to the registration deadline and until all spots are occupied must be able to participate. Organizers may choose how to select participants, e.g. in order of sign-up, or through a lottery system. This process has to be fully transparent.
Invitational tournaments (in which the attending coaches are chosen by the tournament organizer) are ineligible for sanctioning unless they meet the below criteria and an exemption is made at the discretion of the Tournament Director. The only other exception to this requirement involves venues that don’t allow patrons below the age of majority (taverns and breweries, in other words); denying underage NAF members access to these venues is considered beyond an organizer’s control.
7.2 Restricted tournaments
Tournaments in which teams are selected to represent nations are eligible for approval, even when the selection aspect of the tournament restricts participation. This is only if two conditions are met. First, the national selection procedure must be discussed and a broad consensus reached amongst the community within each nation (via e.g. NAF or other forums). Second, the tournament must fundamentally be open to all e.g. via the inclusion of a fully open individual tournament alongside the selection-based event. Team tournaments in which states or provinces are selected representatively are also permitted, provided the same conditions are met.
National Championship tournaments, or tournaments that represent a ‘finals weekend’ for NAF Tournament Series are also eligible for approval, even when the qualification aspect of the tournament restricts participation.
Admitting restricted tournaments is entirely at the discretion of the Tournament Director.
7.3 Available races
All 28 teams from the following list must be allowed to play in the tournament:
| Amazon Black Orc Chaos Chosen Chaos Dwarf Chaos Renegade Dark Elf Dwarf | Elven Union Goblin Halfling High Elf Human Imperial Nobility Khorne | Lizardman Necromantic Horror Norse Nurgle Ogre Old World Alliance Orc | Shambling Undead Skaven Snotling Tomb King Underworld Denizen Vampire Wood Elf |
It is recommended that you also allow Slann. Check the “NAF Rules for Tournaments” document on the NAF site for details on this team: https://www.thenaf.net/tournaments/nafdocs/.
Exceptions can be made for online tournaments on platforms where not all races are implemented yet, at the discretion of the Tournament Director.
Should any changes to existing races be published before release of the next annual NAF review, organizers may choose to include either the old or the new rosters. Which version is available should be clearly stated in the ruleset. New rosters typically become mandatory after publication of the annual NAF review.
Organizers may want to include non-NAF approved races in the tournament. However, coaches who pick one of these races, as well as coaches playing against one of these races, will not gain any NAF points as the NAF rankings only include the approved races listed above. It is recommended that organizers carefully consider this potential inconvenience to participants before deciding to allow such teams in their tournament.
7.4 Blood Bowl variants
Three variant rulesets, Blood Bowl Sevens, Dungeon Bowl and Gutter Bowl, have seen official release. Tournaments run under these rulesets will use the respective rulebooks as a starting point in the same manner as regular Blood Bowl tournaments. A number of other variant rulesets (currently: Beach Bowl, Deathbowl, Draft, Dungeon Sevens, and Street Bowl) are recognized by the NAF but have yet to see their documents updated for BB2020. Until such time as that goes on, simply do your best to adhere to the spirit of the most recent rules for these variants, which can be found on the NAF Variants page. It should be noted that there are no immediate plans to add multiple-race Dungeon Bowl teams. Games may be played with standard teams, or the generic “Dungeon Bowl” team type may be selected to represent all multiple-race teams. Using standard teams can be considered a pre-approved deviation from the published rules.
8 Individual rulesets
8.1 About rules variations
Individual rules variations in tournaments are permitted, even encouraged. This is in order to give each tournament its unique character. However, ruleset modifications should be used with restraint.
If you wish to introduce rules variations at your tournament, please include this in the additional information at the point of submission. It may also help to discuss this with your RC prior to this point. Approval is always at the discretion of the TD.
8.2 General restrictions
The following restrictions are in place when designing a custom ruleset. Attempts to subvert any of these requirements through any means may result in the refusal of sanction. Similarly, if a tournament is found to have used rules markedly different from those that were submitted for approval, the NAF reserves the right to remove results of that tournament.
- Modifications to the 29 team rosters, to include player allowances, prescribed costs, starting statistics and starting skills are not permitted.
- Core game mechanics should not be altered. This includes, but is not limited to, the addition of mechanics where a re-roll may be re-rolled, a roll can automatically pass, or a coach can insist his opponent’s successful roll is re-rolled.
- Core skill rules should not be altered and neither skills (e.g. Leader) nor skill combos (e.g. Sneaky Git and Dirty Player) can be banned.
- Inducements may be selectively allowed or left out at the discretion of each organizer, but it’s recommended that those which allow “Stunty” teams to remain competitive (Bribes and Master Chef) are made available for these teams.
- Modifications should not radically affect the existing balance between races, but incentives may be given to the traditionally less-competitive teams, provided this is in moderation.
- Modification of kick-off or weather charts is allowed, as is the addition of custom Star Players, but organizers should not take these changes lightly. If any of them are thought to be too transformative or unbalanced, the TD may refuse sanction or ask you to alter them.
- Tournament structures where races play only within a discrete group (e.g. Stunties only play other Stunties, Elves play only other Elves) will not be permitted. It should be possible for any race to play any other race at a NAF tournament.
- The TD can allow leeway on some of these items if there is a clear thematic reason for it and game balance is preserved. Any such allowances will be at the TD’s discretion and should be discussed and approved prior to any announcement.
- In the rare instance that a rule or game convention is judged to be overly awkward or harsh for tournament play, organizers will be allowed to ignore or circumvent it. The prime examples of this are Illegal Procedure in earlier editions of the game and the “Too Many Players” rule on page 40 of the Blood Bowl 2020 rulebook. Again, this is a rare situation and the examples above are the only ones currently recognized.
8.3 Tiering of races
A lot of rulesets introduce tier structures to boost less competitive races. These can include higher budgets, more additional skills, access to Star Players, or other incentives. Organizers may choose to use the tiering provided in the rulebook and FAQs, or custom tiering of their own design. Long-term or returning organizers should note that custom tiering based on previous editions will not necessarily be appropriate and should reflect this edition’s win percentages.
8.4 Inducement of Star Players
Organizers have the freedom to decide which Star Players are available as inducements. They may ban all Star Players or allow only specific ones. Another option is to make Star Players only available for specific tiers (e.g. “Stunty” teams) or reduce the number of granted skills when a Star Player is hired. Importantly, Star Player stats may not be altered (e.g. skills, strength, cost or availability to a specific race) and special abilities must be allowed.
In addition, or instead of official Star Players, organizers may also create custom Star Players. Custom Star Players should be designed carefully to not be game breaking or create drastic changes to race balances. It is at the discretion of the TD to reject overly powerful custom Star Players. If a custom Star Player is designed to mimic a current or classic regular Star Player, it is recommended to alter their names to avoid confusion.
8.5 Specialist and Classic events
If a tournament fails to meet some of these requirements, it might still be approved at the TD’s discretion but will be classified as a “Specialist” event. As with other variants, rankings for Specialist games will be separate from the regular Blood Bowl rankings.
Organizers may choose to run tournaments using the outdated LRB6, CRP, or BB2016 rules. These will be treated as yet another sort of variant tournament and receive the “Classic” designation. Please use the existing rules document(s) for each respective game version as the basis for such tournaments.
8.6 Scoring and pairing
It is strongly suggested that organizers use game results (win/loss/draw) to determine the tournament winner, and reserve other statistics (touchdowns, casualties, clean sheets) for tiebreakers. While you are allowed to use bonus points to incentivize certain types of performance in themed tournaments, feedback suggests that this can lead to some level of dissatisfaction among the participants. An organizer can, of course, give out secondary awards for anything they like.
The Swiss system is accepted as the most balanced approach to pairing coaches each round. After individual score, the most widely used first tie breaker is opponent score, followed by e.g. scored touchdowns, caused casualties, or variations of that.
9 Tournament code of conduct
9.1 Mandatory requirements
- Prior to the game, coaches should agree what constitutes a “cocked” die and discuss any other issues relating to dice rolling mechanisms, e.g. dice towers.
- Should one coach request, dice must be shared between coaches.
- Player aids, such as probability apps, calculators and the like must not be used while in-game.
- External coaching of players in-game is not permitted. Strategic discussions at team events are permitted, but not in-game instructions. For example, “we need a draw here” is acceptable, “don’t block that player” is not.
9.2 Recommended guidelines
- Chess clocks (either physical or smartphone app) should be available at the request of either coach. This is especially recommended where game rounds must end on time and either coach is concerned the game may not be completed.
- Coaches should be encouraged to mark or highlight their players with skill rings or similar such that additional skills are clearly marked.
- Charts and apps that assist with measuring passing ranges or whether an interception is possible are useful tools. Note that range rulers might not be usable on custom boards.
10 NAF gifts and trophies
The NAF aims to make annual gifts available wherever possible for sign-ups and renewals at events. Contact the RC as soon as possible if you require dice. Note that any monies taken or dice held remain property of the NAF and any (prior arranged) recipient of dice and membership fees is to be held responsible for the return of surplus dice and timely payment of monies taken.
NAF trophies may be awarded to the individual winner of any sanctioned tournaments from the regular Blood variant (i.e. not Sevens, Deathbowl etc.), so long as it meets minimum attendance requirement. If a tournament has 4 game rounds or more, 12 coaches are required; if it has 3 rounds or fewer, 24 coaches are required. The coveted trophy is a small resin or metal alloy shield (material varies by region) featuring the NAF logo. The RC will distribute NAF trophies to tournament organizers as requested.
11 Online tournaments
Tournaments held on online platforms such as Fumbbl or BB3 are also eligible for NAF approval and can be submitted just as regular tabletop tournaments. This includes adherence to all general tournament rules and restrictions related to rulesets, which are equally applicable to online formats.
To prevent scheduling conflicts, it’s crucial for online tournaments to be planned in coordination with official NAF online events. Organizers are advised to reach out to the NAF administrators on the platform where they intend to host their event. Assistance with tournament setup and coordination can be provided by these admins, whose contact information is accessible on the NAF staff page.
In line with other variants, results from online tournaments will be recorded in a distinct ranking system, and winners of online tournaments will not be awarded NAF trophies.
12 Post-tournament requirements
Organizers are expected to enter tournament results like match reports and tournament statistics such as overall winner and recipients of other awards in good time in order to keep the rankings and coach pages updated. This means a maximum period of one month from the close of the tourney. Failure to do so may result in a probationary period for the offending tournament organizer, during which they will not be allowed to run sanctioned tournaments. If there is going to be a problem with this then contact your RC as soon as possible.
If mistakes were made in the tournament reporting, let your RC or the TD know immediately.
While not mandatory, it is highly recommended to make use of the “Tournament Report” field (this can be found by selecting the “Edit” link next to your tournament’s listing) to convey highlights of the event.