A few thoughts on the November update…
November comes around and Games Workshop release their regular 6 monthly FAQ/Errata for BloodBowl. Or, in this case they released two in quick succession. They obviously realised that the update to the Inducement rules was causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth and so the original November FAQ was replaced by a second November FAQ after only a day.
So what is in the FAQ? As per usual it is mostly rules clarifications that pretty much reflect how everybody was playing the game anyway. There were however two big changes…
Throw Team Mate
Six months ago, the May FAQ contained a controversial change to Throw Team Mate that made it a Turnover if the thrown player lands on an opposing player. A terrible change in my view, it took a lot of fun out of stunty teams when you can’t use your own players as improvised missiles.
Luckily Games Workshop have changed seen the error of their ways and Throw Team Mate no longer causes a Turnover when the thrown player lands on an opponent which makes throwing stunties fun again.
Inducements, Petty Cash and Treasury Spending
The FAQs rarely make any big changes to the game but this is the biggest change since the 2020 FAQ that made multiple Team Rerolls per turn a thing. The Inducement system from the rulebook has been completely scrapped and replaced by a new system vaguely reminiscent of the systems from earlier editions where the team with the highest TV can spend Treasury gold on inducements but if they do then the amount they spend is added to the Petty Cash of the lower TV team. The lower TV team is now banned from spending any Treasury cash. Presumably if TVs are equal then neither team gets to purchase inducements.
The primary impact of this is that we have suddenly gone from a Star Player rich environment to a Star Player poor one. Some people will welcome this change as it shifts the focus more to which coach has the better team rather than which coach has enough money in their Treasury to hire Griff for an important match.
For the highest TV team, hiring Star Players is still an option if they can afford it from their Treasury gold. The big problem here is that their opponent will receive extra Petty Cash equal to the Treasury gold spent. Let’s say the highest TV team decides to spend 140K on hiring Helmut for the upcoming match. The lower TV team now gets Petty Cash equal to the original TV difference plus an extra 140K which they can immediately spend on hiring Helmut as well resulting in neither coach getting Helmut and the highest TV team is now 140K poorer with nothing to show for it.
Hiring Stars is still going to be viable in some situations, for example an Orc team going up against a Chaos Chosen team where the Orcs are the highest TV team by a slim margin might choose to spend Treasury cash on one of the cheap goblin stars such as Bomba Dribblesnot. He’s not available to Chaos Chosen teams and so the Chaos coach can’t spend his extra 50K on also hiring Bomba in order to prevent the Orc team from fielding him.
There’s certainly an advantage here for teams that have the cheapest Stars available to them as they might be able to hire those cheap Star Players without gifting their opponents enough gold to buy a decent Star of their own.
Overall I predict that mid to high priced Star Players are going to be a much rarer sight. Higher TV teams will be less inclined to spend their gold when they are gifting their opponent extra Petty Cash, and lower TV teams can’t top up their Petty Cash if they can’t quite afford the Stars they want from the Petty Cash alone.
I have mixed feelings about this change. It should certainly help level the playing field now that gold can no longer be freely spent. On the other hand it renders gold rather pointless. Once you have purchased all the players and Team Rerolls you require, and saved up a small amount in case you need to replace a crippled player, then what is the point of earning any more? Your options for spending it on anything are now very limited so it will just accumulate until Expensive Mistakes takes it away.
Perhaps coaches of high TV teams with plenty of gold in their Treasuries will buy expensive Star Players anyway and hope that the opposing coach wasn’t expecting to field any Star Players and won’t have any suitable Star Player miniatures with them thus preventing them from replying by hiring a Star Player of their own.