Masters B l ood Bow l T h i s i s M a st e r s B l o o d B o w l! T h is is w h e r e Sta r ta k e s o n St a r a n d I m p o st o r s a r e r e v e a l e d. T h e r e is n o r e f a n d p r e t t y m u c h a n y t h i n g g o e s !!! Masters Blood Bowl is a chance to play fast games with the best of the best. Inspired by Masters Football, a competition in which retired soccer stars from the English Premier League are given the opportunity to represent their old clubs in a tournament of 6-a-side games. Masters is heavily based on the Blood Bowl Sevens rules written by Tom Merrigan, using the Sevens board as shown below:
This aim of this variant is not to develop a team over a number games. Instead you are playing with the cream of the crop. The reason for playing a game of Masters Blood Bowl is to revel in the chance to use all of your team’s stars at once! GAME RULES These are the core rules you will need in addition to those in the Blood Bowl rulebook in order to play Masters Blood Bowl. Except where noted below, coaches should use the rules in the Blood Bowl Living Rulebook 5+. SETTING UP THE GAME Each coach may set up 7 players between their End Zone and their line of scrimmage. In Masters Blood Bowl the teams set up apart from each other in a similar fashion to Rugby. This means that there are two lines of scrimmage (one for each team), rather than just one in the middle of the pitch. The following other restrictions also apply: 1. The kicking team always sets up first. 2. At least three players must be set-up on the line of scrimmage.
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Masters B l ood Bow l FAME Since both teams are so packed full of Stars the crowds drawn to such events are massive and allegiances are practically impossible to judge. Many fans come to watch matches played by other races, just to see the legends in action. The result of this confusion is that both teams are considered to have equal (and in game terms, zero) FAME. THE KICK OFF After both players have set up, the coach of the kicking team places the football anywhere on the field in front of the kicking team’s Line of Scrimmage. The kick then proceeds as usual but a ‘touchback’ only occurs if the ball goes off the field (as normal) or crosses back over the kicking team’s Line of Scrimmage (not over the halfway line). Note: this may result in the ball finishing in front of the receiving team. THE INJURY TABLE Masters Blood Bowl uses the following Injury table, rather than the one in the Blood Bowl Handbook. This is a simpler version of the table that is both quick and easy to use. 2D6 Result 2-7 STUNNED – Leave the player on the field but turn him face down. All he may do for his next action is turn face up. Once face up, he may stand up on any subsequent turn using the normal rules. 8-9 KO’D – Take the player off the field and place this in the dugout in the KO’d Players box. At the next Kick-Off, before you set up any players, roll for each of your players that have been KO’d. On a roll of 1-3 they must remain in the KO’d box and may not be used, although you may roll again for them at the next kick-off. On a roll of 4-6, you may return the player to the Reserves box and can use them as normal from then on. 10-12 BADLY HURT – Take the player off the field and place him in the Dead & Injured Players box. The player must miss the rest of the game. As with Star Players in the ‘normal’ games of Blood Bowl, they each have their own apothecaries who can bring them back from even the most severe injuries. As such Masters players never miss more than the rest of the current game. No matter how badly injured, they will all be fight fit by the start of the next game. THE REF Put simply there isn’t one! Players may foul with impunity and secret weapons do not have to be kept secret. In other words, there are no sending offs in Masters Blood Bowl! You can still only make one foul action per turn and trying to field more than 7 players at once would result in the entire team being lynched by the crowd, but one of this variants most crowd pleasing features is TOTAL CARNAGE!!! TEAM REROLLS Team rerolls in the game of Blood Bowl represent practiced plays or the developed relationships between players allowing them to function better as a single unit. Star Players are NOT team players (They know that they are better than the rest!) and this means they don’t need team rerolls. To put it bluntly, NO TEAM REROLLS are used in Masters Blood Bowl. Although players are allowed to use rerolls granted by their skills.
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Masters B l ood Bow l THE TEAMS In LRB5+ each team has 6 Star Players available to them. These players are the core of your team. As the game are played as Sevens matches and in this sport not having a reserve is close to suicide each team can also take any 2 players that would be available to them on their races normal roster. These 2 additions are however not total rookies; they are in fact emerging stars, as yet to gain the recognition equivalent to their Masters teammates, and as such are given 3 rolls on the ‘Improvement Roll Table’ (Page 26, LRB5+). E.g. A human Masters squad could be: Helmut Wulf, Puggy Baconbreath, Mighty Zug, Zara The Slayer, Griff Oberwald, Morg ‘n’ Thorg, an ogre (with 3 improvement rolls) and a human thrower (also with 3 improvement rolls). Impostors! – When 2 teams play with the same star being available to both teams, 1 of those stars in an impostor. Both teams use their star player and if either gets killed then quite clearly, he (or she) was the impostor (the real star being too good to go down so easily!). Exceptions to team building – Teams that have Brick F’arth & Grotty on their roster already have 7 players. This means that such teams can only choose 1 addition emerging star from the races roster.
And that is it! Whether you play these as a one off game, a knock out tournament or a league. The point of these rules is simple; to play fast action games with amazing players.
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