Zelmor
Joined: Sep 29, 2022
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 Posted:
Jan 06, 2026 - 13:55 |
 
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I do not like guessing what's coming. I'd rather share my thoughts on the design space in general. I'm taking with league only in mind, as GW designs Their games for Their intended gameplay, not NAF tournaments.
With 2020 what we had was
- Dark Elves being the punchy team.
- Wood Elves being the ball-hawk glass cannons with high potential but also a more variance.
- I feel that High Elves were supposed to be the best throwing elf team, but the player costs made the thrower a rather unappealing start. They couldn't punch as well as DE, they couldn't run as good as WE, and the passing game was suboptimal, so they struggled and were underrepresented as a result.
- Elven Union filled that dynamic pass oriented gap in my eyes, with aggressive plays with higher risk than Dark Elves, where they could actually afford the tools for an interesting elf-bowl experience, but were were balanced out with fragility. If someone breaks, you have the money to replace them, unlike Woodies or HE.
As for 2025, I'm unsure.
- Wood Elves getting cheaper suffocates the argument for playing Elven Union, especially with the increased cost on the Union linemen. Now you can have a much better start with woodies, have all the risks Union has but with better everything. You are fast and furious, not as affordable as Union, but you mostly only care for the positional players anyway.
- Dark Elves could have been interesting with the assassins now, but you are 10k short for an ideal start for that kind of play. I would prefer to start with 2 witches now, because of the early blodgers. You can drop one witch to fit an assassin, but then you are faced with the 2020 problem of needing apo, a reroll and more positionals on your team, all while replacing losses. With a 2-2-1 start where you take a runner to carry you only have to bother about a quick apo and then the 3rd reroll. You could get an assassin late into the season, but why? What is the expected value that would bring when you already have 3 blodgers (maybe 4 with the runner?), one probably with tackle, and a witch with wrestle? MVP changes mean your core will develop faster, so the value proposition for a late season assassin with no dodge is getting worse.
So where does this leave High Elves? The fast and furious spot is still taken by Woodies and partly the Union, while the Coalminers are turning into a weird team with fewer punches but more running game. Woodies are made unique with the tree, Darks are made unique with the assassin and the lack of a capable thrower. Union has no personality of its own whatsoever, but that can be a niche in and of itself.
What would make High Elves something different? A different kind of punching game with the inclusion of a pass potential seems plausible, but that's what they had previously and were mediocre compared to the Darks. Now that the Darks are worse, maybe there is an argument for such a design approach. Then the question becomes, do you give them dedicated catchers? |
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Trollbreath
Joined: Feb 07, 2008
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Jan 09, 2026 - 12:53 |
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Throwers already highly skilled. Sure hands if you wanted something more for him, agility means he rarely misses pickup. Blodge blitzers would be great - better ball carrier, better to slip through elven style (and then risk the blitz rolling a POW). ANother thematic could be the opposite of foul appearance, ie presence of the dragon warrior causes fear so the block/blitz fails |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jan 09, 2026 - 13:08 |
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CrisisChris
Joined: Dec 11, 2023
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Jan 09, 2026 - 13:49 |
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| Trollbreath wrote: | | ANother thematic could be the opposite of foul appearance, ie presence of the dragon warrior causes fear so the block/blitz fails |
I love that idea. Something that really makes a difference compared to the other Elf teams.
Lion Warriors with 'Fear the Beast' (Foul appearance and disturbing presence)
Dragon Princes with 'my Ball' trait is a nice part as well. Maybe the High Elf get the Dragon Cloak for Rhick Skull or IHS?
The Phoenix Thrower really should be 0-1 only and if they want to push passing there is an argument for 2 more 'vanilla' Catchers.
But I guess that is wishful thinking. |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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Jan 09, 2026 - 14:27 |
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Now is a good time to think wishfully, for soon we will find out, and thence all dreaming shall yield but regret.
What does the current edition of WFB Helves do that's special? I haven't played since college. |
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Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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Zelmor
Joined: Sep 29, 2022
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Jan 09, 2026 - 15:26 |
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| koadah wrote: | | Zelmor wrote: | | ...I'm taking with league only in mind, as GW designs Their games for Their intended gameplay, not NAF tournaments. |
Is that a known fact?
There are even sections for Matched Play and Exhibition Play in the rulebook. |
This is my own opinion, having read and talked about game design extensively and having my own pet projects on the side that I work on:
League is the primary intended play experience, as progression is a core design pillar of the game.
Exhibition is intended for those not looking to commit to regular play and only want it over the dinner table once every while. It is a pick-up style game that is so prevalent in their main line games (ToW, 40k, AoS). It is a selling point for casual people, so to say.
Matched Play is there to provide people with a tournament foundation because GW does not recognize anything outside of their own product range. It is brief and non-committal to anything large and community organizing. Essentially tacked on to check off boxes management requires from releases. Those thinking the company gives two flips about the NAF are naive, and to a large degree I think the NAF feels the same (see the current tournament errata that pretty much rewrites parts of the book to fix the game). |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jan 09, 2026 - 15:47 |
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| Zelmor wrote: | | Those thinking the company gives two flips about the NAF are naive, and to a large degree I think the NAF feels the same (see the current tournament errata that pretty much rewrites parts of the book to fix the game). |
It may be that people who think that GW gives two flips about anything beyond people buying more stuff are the naïve ones. 
With the push towards lower TV, I think that the gap between league & res is probably smaller than it has been in the past.
If anything, I think that people who play one off games with loads of different teams may be more valuable to GW than people who lock in to playing the same team for two, three, four months. 
Have you spoken to people who are reall in the know? Are you saying that they don't consider it at all? |
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Carthage
Joined: Mar 18, 2021
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Jan 10, 2026 - 04:58 |
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GW isn't a living thinking entity. It doesn't give two flips about anything because it can't, its not alive.
Individual members that make up the team that work on BB absolutely care about putting a quality product in our hands. Their CFO above them probably doesn't care as much and just wants to see number going up and the CEO cares about how fast number go up. Because without number go up, then company value go down since that's all speculation. If company value go down; paychecks go down to make number go up again or all paychecks go down.
Not relevant, I know, just some philosophizing from a project manager that sees the inside picture of a consistently lambasted industry. |
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CrisisChris
Joined: Dec 11, 2023
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Jan 10, 2026 - 07:12 |
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You can even see it from the investment / money needed perspective: We all want an awesome game (rules and teams / minis). To produce that you need money. The better the product should be the more money you will need. Which is a simplification, but true in general, I guess.
So companies earning money is not a bad thing. Companies beeing greedy and selling crappy products overpriced is another thing. But mostly the market forces take care of those greedy ones sooner or later.
The question for me is: was GWs intention with the 'One Box Roster' philosophy based on greed or just they listened to coaches complaining? Or the Wish to reduce the entry barriers?
I remember thinking myself 'Damn for an Elven Union Team I need two boxes' or 'I cannot roster an additional lineman, because I do not have the mini yet'.
I fully agree with Carthage here. I have the feeling that the people working on the product care... If management allocates enough money is another question. (To prevent day one FAQs  ) |
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Carthage
Joined: Mar 18, 2021
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Jan 10, 2026 - 09:56 |
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Market forces work until IP laws create artificial limits. Nobody can legally sell you a box of GW branded delfs without GW permission or ignorance.
I suspect its a mix tho for your question. There was probably a pitch deck on how to make number go uo by getting more players to join blood bowl and someone offered up that if they made the boxes exactly what someone needs to field a team, it lowers the cost to entry. If they combine that with some marketing about being a cheap entry level GW experience they can capture more of the gaming market.
Since most players have multiple teams, the single box strategy scales multiplicatively with player base.
When the designers pointed out half the positionals suck and players need a second box to have enough linemen they likely countered with "make them not suck snd ship it, we are out of money for dev time".
Just speculating based on my 13 years of project management experience there. |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Jan 10, 2026 - 11:33 |
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The number of miniatures inside a box is for sure an important thing, but not the most important one. You may need to buy 1 or 2 boxes to field a complete team, fair, that doesn't make a big difference in the end (it's not a game requiring hundreds of miniatures), but what is the excuse for making Elven Union (using EU as example) a bad roster?
I may be willing to buy all the boxes, but if you make a crappy roster I won't buy any of them.
That's the point, proper game design. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jan 10, 2026 - 14:10 |
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| CrisisChris wrote: | | You can even see it from the investment / money needed perspective: We all want an awesome game (rules and teams / minis). To produce that you need money. The better the product should be the more money you will need. Which is a simplification, but true in general, I guess. |
It could be that they would have had a better "product" if they had left the rules alone
| CrisisChris wrote: | | So companies earning money is not a bad thing. Companies beeing greedy and selling crappy products overpriced is another thing. But mostly the market forces take care of those greedy ones sooner or later. |
GW has a certain umm... userbase.
I've heard people say that they don't care if the new edition is worse as long as it is different. I've heard other people say that they don't care if it is not better as long as it is different.
Go, I suppose they are just playing to their userbase.
| CrisisChris wrote: | The question for me is: was GWs intention with the 'One Box Roster' philosophy based on greed or just they listened to coaches complaining? Or the Wish to reduce the entry barriers?
I remember thinking myself 'Damn for an Elven Union Team I need two boxes' or 'I cannot roster an additional lineman, because I do not have the mini yet'. |
It is probably based on other companies selling boxes that do contain all the minis needed for a team at competitive prices.
The expansion packs with 4 players seemed good to me. There are probably business reasons for not doing that any more.
It feels to me that they have made the game worse by trimming down the rosters.
But hey, brand new coaches coming in won't know any different. People will eventually get used to it. People who really can't handle it can use their own rosters based on the old ones and carry on buying two boxes
| CrisisChris wrote: |
I fully agree with Carthage here. I have the feeling that the people working on the product care... If management allocates enough money is another question. (To prevent day one FAQs ) |
I don't remember what the day one faq did. It didn't fix the most egregious errors.
Is it really that expensive to create a new PDF featuring a couple of fixs tht the majority of coaches & commishes seem to agree on?
But hey, why bother. If it is really so bad, commishes will fix it themselves. |
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moph
Joined: Sep 16, 2020
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Jan 10, 2026 - 17:23 |
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| koadah wrote: |
Is it really that expensive to create a new PDF featuring a couple of fixs tht the majority of coaches & commishes seem to agree on?
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The cost is mainly to admit that you sold a crappy product (badly edited rule book) in the first place. |
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Sp00keh
Joined: Dec 06, 2011
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Jan 10, 2026 - 17:42 |
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Also they do do a pdf fix
It’s the FAQ/errata |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Jan 10, 2026 - 18:04 |
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| Sp00keh wrote: | Also they do do a pdf fix
It’s the FAQ/errata |
Sure, but as I was saying, it's taking them a while to address the AG1 & PA1 things. Which I'd have thought should have been in the day 1 faq.
Or really shouldn't have been wrong in the first place.
Unless they're holding an inquiry to work out whether it really is wrong.
Though, yeah. I know. I have it too.
"It's done. It's released. You can't touch it again beyond completely breaking bugs until This other stuff is done."
"But that'll be months. This fix won't take more than an hour or two."
"Nope. Higher ups are screaming for this other stuff. You've gotta be 100% on it" |
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