Кровавая Чаша: Настольная игра и её видеоигровые адаптации

Board Game
the video game adaptations

Blood Bowl is a miniatures board game created by Jervis Johnson for the British games company Games Workshop as a parody of American football. The game was first released in 1986 and has been re released in new editions since. Blood Bowl is set in an alternate version of the Warhammer Fantasy setting, populated by traditional fantasy elements such as human warriors, goblins, dwarves, elves, orcs and trolls. In late 2016, Games Workshop released a new version of the game – the first in 22 years. It featured a double sided board and new plastic miniatures. In November 2020, Games Workshop released a new version of the game, titled Blood Bowl Second Season Edition, which included miniatures for two teams and referees, a board (pitch), templates and the rule book. The rule book was also available separately, both physically and digitally. Cyanide Studio confirmed that the next videogame adaptation, Blood Bowl 3, would use the new ruleset.

Blood Bowl is a two player, turn based board game that typically uses 28 mm miniatures to represent a contest between two teams on a playing field. A board containing a grid overlay represents the field. Using dice, cards, and counters, the players attempt to score higher than each other by entering the opponent's end zone with a player who possesses the ball. The "Blood" in Blood Bowl is represented by the violent actions available to players. Game play is based on a hybrid of gridiron football and Rugby. Players may attempt to injure or maim the opposition in order to make scoring easier by reducing the number of enemy players on the field. The player races are drawn from the ranks of fantasy races and have characteristics that reflect the abilities of those races. Elves tend to be agile and good at scoring, while dwarfs and orcs are more suited to a grinding, physical style of play. All teams offer a choice between player types with different statistics: related races (e. g. skeletons and zombies in undead teams, various lizardmen types), guests of allied races (e. g. trolls in orc and goblin teams), exotic or monstrous units (e. g. ghouls, wights and mummies in undead teams), and specialists of different roles (usually some combination of Blockers, Blitzers, Throwers, Catchers, Runners and Linemen). Teams can include any number of players of the most basic type (usually Linemen), while the stronger units are limited to 1, 2, 4 or 6 per team. In league play, players gain additional skills and abilities based on their accumulation of experience points. Players face potential injury or even death on the field throughout their careers. Teams improve by the purchase of off field staff such as cheerleaders, assistant coaches, and apothecaries. Disparity between team values is offset by the purchase of ad hoc star players or mercenaries, as well as bribes and additional temporary support staff, such as wizards or a halfling cook.

The Blood Bowl universe has its own fictional background story which establishes the tone and spirit of the game. Additional background exists to describe the demeanour and character of the Blood Bowl players with frequent reference to rule breaking and excessive violence in a lighthearted manner. The over the top nature of the game is reflected through the game's mechanics, including the use of stylised secret weapons ranging from chainsaws to spiked steamrollers, the ability for large teammates to throw small teammates down field (even while they possess the ball), as well as in game effects like fans throwing rocks and injuring players prior to kickoff. Blood Bowl includes numerous tongue in cheek references to real life products and companies. The deity overseeing Blood Bowl is Nuffle – a pun on the pronunciation of NFL. The game spoofs at least four real world trademarks, including McDonald's (McMurty's), Budweiser (Bloodweiser), Adidas (Orcidas), and Gatorade (Kroxorade). Many team names in the game's background are spoofs as well such as the Orcland Raiders (Oakland Raiders) and the Darkside Cowboys (Dallas Cowboys). Famous sporting personalities are parodied as well, with the most famous (and oldest) coach in Blood Bowls background being Tomolandry the Undying (Tom Landry), and one of the most recently added stars being the Ogre thrower, Brick Far'th (Brett Favre). With the advent of the 3rd edition, Blood Bowl moved closer to the traditional Warhammer Fantasy Battle world by changing the miniatures to look more similar to their Warhammer Fantasy Battle counterparts. Jervis Johnson, designer of the game, has admitted this was not the best direction for the game, and has since stated that the Blood Bowl world is similar to, but definitely not the same as, the Warhammer world. Recent changes to the rules reflect this, and newer miniatures for the game look more sporty in nature.

Blood Bowl has evolved through a series of rules revisions, boxed set releases, and electronic media.

Released in 1986, the first edition of Blood Bowl was a simple game that used many of the elements of Games Workshop's existing tabletop games. Players in the first edition boxed set were represented by small pieces of cardboard illustrated with their likeness. Citadel Miniatures did release metal miniatures to represent players for 1st edition. The pitch of this editions consists of six interlocking cardboard sections (end zones and centre, split in halves) with squares marked by white lines. In 1982, TSR published a game called Monsters of the Midway which was very similar in concept to Blood Bowl but significantly different in game play. Discussions with Jervis Johnson at the Chaos Cup tournament in 2006 revealed that he had never seen Monsters of the Midway until after Blood Bowl was published and that the concept of a fantasy football board game was simply a concept whose time had come in the 1980s.

The second edition of Blood Bowl, released in 1988, began to move Blood Bowl away from the battlefield mechanics of other Games Workshop systems and toward more brutal sports oriented play. The game included plastic 28 mm miniatures of Orcs and Humans, with another set of metal miniatures available from Citadel Miniatures to represent most (but not all) of the other races. The pitch of this edition consists of three thick, gray polystyrene boards (end zones and centre), with squares marked by grooves. Games Workshop later provided a boxed supplement, Dungeonbowl, dealing with subterranean play and dwarvish and elvish teams, and, later, two source books, Blood Bowl Star Players (1989) and the Blood Bowl Companion (1990), which added to the basic rules, creating games with greater variation which could easily last several hours.

In 1991, Games Workshop released Kerrunch, a light version of Blood Bowl, developed by Andy Jones. It was released along with Mighty Warriors, Ultra Marine and Space Fleet, and was predominantly aimed at the younger gamer as an introduction to the Games Workshop hobby. The rules are a simplified version of those from Blood Bowls second edition. The game came with 24 plastic miniatures, and is considered a collector's item.

A new edition was released in 1994, radically changing the game play from the complex, lengthy second edition game to the simpler, more dramatic third edition game. Key changes were a set number of turns and the turnover rule. These changes increased the pace of the game and allowed it to be played within the span of around 2 hours. The third edition also featured a completely new range of miniatures, including new versions of plastic 28 mm humans and orcs in the boxed set. The new range closely resembled Warhammer Fantasy Battle miniatures. Combined with the newly available races mirroring Warhammer armies, Blood Bowl moved much closer to Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In 1995, the Third Edition Blood Bowl won the Best Miniatures Rules of 1994 Origins Award. The pitch of this edition consists of a cardboard foldable board, with squares marked by black crosses at the corners.

Jervis Johnson produced a new official Fourth Edition of the Blood Bowl rules and presented it in the Fanatic Games' Official Blood Bowl magazine issue 1, with follow up rules presented in issue 2. The new rules were a large departure from the previous edition with numerous changes, and Johnson later admitted that, "some of the changes would have benefited from rather more rigorous playtesting". In 2001 the 4th edition rules, with corrections and retitled 4th Edition Gold, were placed on the Games Workshop website as a downloadable PDF file, and Johnson announced that the rules were now "experimental" With the release of the CRP the BBRC was disbanded.

In November 2015, Games Workshop announced the reintroduction of Specialist Games, and announced a new version of Blood Bowl was in development. At Warhammer Fest in May 2016, various elements of the new edition were announced, including a double sided pitch, all new plastic miniatures and an initial wave of teams (Humans, Orcs, Skaven, Elves, Nurgle and Dwarf) with future expansions in development to add more teams to the game (including a new release of Goblins).

A conversion of Blood Bowl by UK company Tynesoft was reported to be in development, but the company went into bankruptcy in June 1990. In 1995, an MS DOS version of Blood Bowl was developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc. and released by MicroLeague, featuring the base teams as well as many of the free agents. In 2004, French based Cyanide Studio developed a game called Chaos League (and, later, a subsequent expansion Chaos League: Sudden Death) which bore a heavy resemblance to Blood Bowl in its style and rules, even though it was a real time game (rather than turn based, like Blood Bowl). Games Workshop sued over the similarities, but later announced that Cyanide Studios had been granted a license to create computer games based on Blood Bowl, and that "Any differences between Games Workshop and Cyanide have been amicably settled for an undisclosed sum, and as part of the settlement the Chaos League title has been assigned to Games Workshop". This settlement led directly to Cyanide's release of an official new version for Windows computers on 26 June 2009 (with both "classic" turn based mode and real time mode). The playable races in the original video game version of Blood Bowl included Dwarfs, Wood Elves, Humans, Goblins, Orcs, Chaos, Skaven, and Lizardmen. With a subsequent patch, Dark Elves were added to the game as a playable race. On 14 November 2007, the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox 360 versions were announced. These were subsequently released, and followed very closely the tabletop rules at that time. On 28 October 2010, Cyanide Studios released the Legendary Edition of Blood Bowl for PC only, called Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition. The game includes a reworked interface in the menu screens and a large number of new races added to the game, including Undead, Khemri, Norse, Elves, Halfling, Amazon, Ogre, Necromantic, Nurgle, Vampire and High Elves. This brings the total races represented to 20. The Chaos Edition released in October 2012 adds a further three races in the form of the Underworld, Chaos Dwarf, and Khorne teams, bringing the total to 23. Cyanide Studios released an adaption of Dungeonbowl in the same year. A sequel, Blood Bowl 2, was released in 2015. Another sequel, Blood Bowl 3, originally scheduled to be released in 2021, has been pushed back to 2022, and again to 2023. Closed beta started in early 2021.

In May 2008 Boom! Studios published Blood Bowl: Killer Contract a 5 issue mini series written by Matt Forbeck and drawn by Lads Helloven. Storyline followed the "Bad Bay Hackers" in a grudge match against the "Orcland Raiders." The mini series was collected into a graphic novel that was released in November 2008 as both a softcover and a hardcover.

Richard Meadows reviewed Blood Bowl for White Dwarf #85, and stated that "The combination of [its] presentation, and the chaos death mayhem that occurs on the pitch, makes this game very, very entertaining, and a must for all fans of American football, good old fashioned death and violence, or just having a good time." In the October 1988 edition of Games International (Issue 1), Brian Walker gave the game an above average rating of 4 out of 5, calling it "Highly suitable for two players interested in American football and gratuitous violence."