Hi, I’m Jem. Chip & Ham Bowl (working title) is my plan for a future Blood Bowl tournament. An ambitious (excessively ambitious?) Blood Bowl tournament: 1 day. Sevens. Pairs of coaches. Six games.
On the other hand, Chips in Jan Bowl is a casual affair being set up to take place on a bunch of scattered evenings (probably Wednesdays) in January 2025, mainly designed to test the Chip & Ham Bowl ruleset, see whether the timings are credible, and keep bored Blood Bowlers entertained. If Mel allows it, I might provide some chips.
Realistically, Chips in Jan Bowl will probably be a totally ad hoc thing with whichever players are down to clown that evening; getting a big enough group, consistently, to run a multi-evening tournament isn’t going to happen. That’s cool, as long as everyone is having some fun with it.
- Format
- Roster Building
- Allowed Inducements
- Mysterious Healer
- Kick Off chart changes
Format
- The basic premise of Chips in Jan is a set of back-to-back exhibition ties, resurrection style Blood Bowl so no SPP or casualties carry over.
- If in doubt, the hierarchy of rules is as follows:
- 1) Whatever Jem says.
- 2) This rules pack.
- 3) Official GW FAQs per the website
- 4) BB2020 7s rules per the Death Zone supplement book
- 5) Core BB2020 rules per the Blood Bowl Second Season Edition book, as appended by the various Spike Magazines and Almanacs.
- Coaches play in pairs so bring a spouse, a friend, a family member (a human one, your cat doesn’t count). For Chips in Jan please make sure you have a partner ready before each evening.
- There is some deliberate inter-twining of the teams within each pair:
- Roster building is connected, details in “Roster Building” below.
- Each pair gets a single use of an apothecary per round, details in “Mysterious Healer” below.
- A single evening of Chips in Jan will basically be a single round based on the Chip & Ham rules: a pair of coaches playing another pair of coaches.
- However, each round will be comprised of two matches per coach – each pair will play both coaches of their opposing pair.
- To be really clear about this; if Pair A is drawn against Pair B, then coach A1 plays coach B1 while coach A2 plays coach B2… then either Pair A or Pair B switch seats with each other and coach A1 plays coach B2, while coach A2 plays coach B1.
- Players may need to be able to play quickly.
- Scoring is a follows:
- Two points for each match won – so a maximum of 8 points on offer per round
- One point for each match drawn
- Tie breaker will be SPP earned – yep, you’ve got to keep track.
- Up to ten bonus SPP available for however much your roster, team name, and/or player names make me laugh.
- There are some minor changes to the Kick Off chart, see below.
- These changes result in Cheerleaders and Dedicated Fans being irrelevant, and therefore cannot be taken in the roster builder.
- They also result in Fan Factor being irrelevant, so you can skip it at the start of each game.
Roster Building
Roster building boils down to three sections, but you’ll want to read them all before getting too far into conjuring up your dream team(s)
- The Basics
- Cash Transfer
- Additional Skills
The Basics
The basic rules for roster composition are as follows:
- If in doubt, the official GW BB2020 rules and/or 7s rules as printed in the Death Zone supplement will be used – summarised as follows:
- Basic budget is 600k gold pieces, but see “Cash Transfer” below
- Maximum of 4 positionals per team (respecting normal positional caps)
- Rerolls cost double
- Allowable Inducements are listed separately below
- Slann roster is allowed, because why not?
- At v0.1 I’m open to other suggestions for rosters to allow, I know some US tournaments allow the Simyin team.
Cash Transfer
One coach in each pair may transfer up to 50k gold pieces to the other coach, potentially allowing for one coach to be building a roster from 650k gold pieces (but their partner would have to make do with 550k!).
The roster builder should handle this automatically. Once I set it up. Shut up I’ve been really busy.
Additional Skills
Additional skills can be added to your rosters as follows:
- Each pair is given a number of skill points based on the tiering of the two teams in that pair (see “Tier List”, below)
- Skill points can be spent to buy skills for any player on either of the teams within the pair
- To be very clear: this is a shared allocation of points and a shared spend, if as a pair youre running Ogres and Wood Elves you get 12 points total, so you can spend a total of 12 points across both teams.
- Skills have varying costs, based on which skill it is, see the table below.
- Secondary skills cost double their normal cost.
- Stacking once per player is allowed (ie. you can put up to two skills on as many players as you like) but the most expensive skill chosen costs double.
- Note that these two doublings do stack multiplicatively – so as an example taking Pro and Stand Firm on a Troll is legal but costs a lot: Stand Firm costs 2, Pro costs 8 because it’s normally 2, x2 (Secondary skill), x2 (Stacking).
- I’ll get this working on the roster builder.
Team Tier List
- Tier One – 2 skill points
- Amazons
- Elven Union
- High Elves
- Skaven
- Underworld Denizens
- Vampires
- Tier Two – 4 skill points
- Chaos Renegades
- Dark Elves
- Lizardmen
- Old World Alliance
- Slann
- Norse
- Tomb Kings
- Wood Elves
- Tier Three – 6 skill points
- Black Orcs
- Chaos Chosen
- Chaos Dwarfs (old)
- Dwarfs
- Humans
- Imperial Nobility
- Khorne
- Necromantic Horror
- Nurgle
- Orcs
- Shambling Undead
- Tier Four – 8 skill points
- Chaos Dwarfs (new)
- Gnomes
- Ogres
- Snotlings
- Tier Five – 10 skill points
- Goblins
- Halflings
Skill Cost Lists
- Agility
- Catch – 1 pt
- Defensive – 2 pts
- Diving Catch – 1 pt
- Diving Tackle – 2 pts
- Dodge – 4 pts
- Jump Up – 2 pts
- Leap – 2 pts
- Safe Pair of Hands – 1 pt
- Side Step – 2 pts
- Sneaky Git – 3 pts
- Sprint – 3 pts
- Sure Feet – 2 pts
- General
- Block – 4 pts
- Dauntless – 2 pts
- Dirty Player – 2 pts
- Fend – 1 pt
- Frenzy – 3 pts
- Kick – 3 pts
- Pro – 2 pts
- Shadowing – 1pt
- Sure Hands – 3 pts
- Strip Ball – 3 pts
- Tackle – 3 pts
- Wrestle – 3pts
- Mutations
- Big Hand – 1 pt
- Claw – 4 pts
- Disturbing Presence – 1 pt
- Extra Arms – 1 pt
- Foul Appearance – 1 pt
- Horns – 1 pt
- Iron Hard Skin – 1 pt
- Monstrous Mouth – 1 pt
- Prehensile Tail – 2 pts
- Tentacles – 1 pt
- Two Heads – 2 pts
- Very Long Legs – 1 pt
- Passing
- Accurate – 2pts
- Cannoneer – 1 pt
- Cloudburster – 1 pt
- Dump off – 1 pt
- Fumblerooskie – 1 pt
- Hail Mary Pass – 1 pt
- Leader – 4 pts
- Nerves of Steel – 1 pt
- On the Ball – 3 pts
- Pass – 3 pts
- Running Pass – 1 pt
- Safe Pass – 2pts
- Strength
- Arm Bar – 1 pt
- Brawler – 1 pt
- Break Tackle – 2 pts
- Grab – 1 pt
- Guard – 4 pts
- Juggernaut – 2 pts
- Mighty Blow (+1) – 4 pts
- Multiple Block – 1 pt
- Pile Driver – 1 pt
- Stand Firm – 2 pts
- Strong Arm – 1 pt
- Thick Skull – 1 pt
Kick Off chart changes
For anyone who hasn’t played much 7s before, note that the Kick Off chart uses d3+1 players in all cases where it would normally be d3+3 players; so Solid Defence, Quick Snap and Blitz.
The following results are changed slightly – this has been done mainly for simplicity and streamlining games.
11 – Officious Ref result is directly replaced with Moles Under the Pitch, the Prayers to Nuffle result. If this kick-off result has already been rolled this half (i.e.. the PtN would normally be rerolled) ignore it, nothing happens just as if the teams had drawn the Cheering Fans roll-off. Yes I am aware that MUtP is usually not possible in exhibition games. No, I do not care.
6 – Cheering Fans result is directly replaced with Treacherous Trapdoor, the Prayers to Nuffle result. If this kick-off result has already been rolled this half (i.e.. the PtN would normally be rerolled) ignore it, nothing happens just as if the teams had drawn the Cheering Fans roll-off.
12 – Pitch Invasion is always treated as a tie, and the kicking coach rolls a single d3 to decide the number of players affected on both sides.
Allowed Inducements
The list of allowed inducements is something of a work-in-progress but it probably looks like this:
- Biased Referee – 120k/80k as normal; just the standard one. I don’t think there’s any good reason why it’s not on the 7s list of inducements.
- Bloodweiser Kegs – 50k each as normal
- Bribes – 100k/50k as normal
- Mortuary Assistant – 100k as normal, for those teams who can take one
- Plague Doctor – 100k as normal, for those teams who can take one
- Team Mascot – price increased to 50k though because 7s rerolls are so expensive.
- Wandering Apothecary – 100k as normal (note that most teams can roster an apothecary in 7s for 80k)
- Weather Mage – 30k each as normal, why not?
If you have any requests for other inducements to allow, contact me (Jem) on Discord and I’ll consider it.
Note that as part of standard 7s roster building you can take:
- Assistant Coaches – 20k each, 0-6 as normal
- Apothecary – 80k each, 0-1 as normal
If I don’t get around to disabling them in the roster builder, you may be able to take Cheerleaders and Dedicated Fans but please don’t, they do nothing in this ruleset.
Mysterious Healer
Each pair gets one free use of an Apothecary each round, so yes that’s effectively one Apothecary use across four matches.
This Apothecary should only be used with the agreement of your partner – I’m not engaging in couples counselling.
This Apothecary performs exactly as normal, being usable to turn a KO into a stun or to reroll a Casualty roll as normal.
This is in addition to any rostered and/or induced Apothecary on your team.
This is applicable to teams which normally cannot take an Apothecary, but remember that the choice to (or not to) use the Apothecary applies before any regeneration rolls are made (and therefore before a Mortuary Assistant or Plague Doctor would be used too).
No responses yet