Thanks to all of the astute comments on part 1 which identified the major components of Blood Bowl that I wanted to highlight. Go the read comments, I will wait.

The general consensus is that team selection and player development are the obvious strategical choices and will dictate play style. The tactics are the exact positioning of each player, where to blitz, and what order to do everything in. In between, were the plans: mark or screen to pressure a cage, run or pass to score. There are tactical and strategic considerations for creating these plans. Where exactly do we draw the line?

Let's talk about a game with a clearer definition between strategy and tactics, X-COM: Enemy Unknown. This video game has a number of mechanical parallels to Blood Bowl even if the goal is to kill aliens. I recently played it again, and found the line between tactics and strategy to be obvious. The tactical portion is when you have direct control of your squad on a mission which is similar to playing on the pitch. The strategic portion occurs back at base as is similar to team development. During previews for X-COM 2, the lead designer explicitly called it the strategic layer. The reason the line is so clear in this case is that the designers intentionally separated the two. On the missions, almost all of the decisions are tactical, and each decision has a luck element to determine the result. However, the plans required are less elaborate and have fewer long term consequences compared to Blood Bowl.

There are decisions on the Blood Bowl pitch that require strategic consideration. Creating plans is the gray area between strategy and tactics. However, there are other decisions that have both tactical and strategic implications. For example, the apothecary can be used to protect valuable players or make winning the current game easier (ideally both). Another example, the SPP hog could score the winning touchdown late in the 2nd half, but another player just short of another skill could also score if a hand-off is successful. These decisions are difficult to categorize because the consequences of the decision have both immediate and long-term consequences.

After some thought, I still cannot figure out where exactly to draw the line. However, I hope I showed that the line can be drawn and that drawing that line is required to answer our question. Does Blood Bowl emphasize tactics or strategy? I don't have the answer yet.

Next time, I keep my promise and will compare Blood Bowl to a board game.

Sal-utations and Merry Christmas